‘Land, Resources Of IPs “Up for grabs” by Gov’t, Corporate interests’ Part 2

November 25, 2019 Metro BLISTT

“New Projects, Additional Sufferings By IPs” The TFIP believe new agreements of the Philippine government with Malaysian and Indonesian entities have opened up at least 120,000 hectares of land for expansion of oil palm plantations in Mindanao and Palawan. The CARAGA region, home of Manobo, Mamanwa and Banwaon peoples, remains to be the capital for oil palm production.

The Pelawan people in Sofronio Espanola, Bataraza and Rizal are slowly witnessing their forests and kaingin converted into oil palm plantations, Cariño said. She also named David M. Consunji, Inc. (DMCI) as allegedly “one of the biggest grabbers of ancestral land in Mindanao”, citing the firm’s several Integrated Forestry Management Agreement (IFMA) and logging concessions covering at least 102,954 hectares of the ancestral lands in the sacred Daguma Mountain Range in the South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Saranggani provinces.

”Despite the expiration of some of its licenses, DMCI with its investment defense forces aggressively continues and expands its operations in Sultan Kudarat, South Cotabato and Zamboanga peninsula to agribusiness plantations, commercial tree farms, and mining,” the nongovernment TFIP claimed.

The failed attempt of Silvicultural Industries, Inc., a DMCI company, to come to an agreement with Datu Victor Danyan and his group to continue its operations through a renewal of its IFMA even reportedly led to the massacre of 8 Tboli (including Datu Victor) and Dulangan Manobo in Lake Sebu in December 2017, Carino lamented.

TFIP also cited the New Clark City (NCC), previously called as Clark Green City, another priority in Pres. Rodrigo Duterte’s “Build, Build, Build” program as yet posing to adversely affect IPs. The NCC covers more than 9,400 hectares of lands, “encroaching on the ancestral territories of the indigenous Ayta in Tarlac,” Cariño claimed. The project includes building of geothermal and dam energy projects that would cover up to 59,000 hectares of ancestral lands, and maintaining the 17,000 hectares Crow Valley Military Complex for US Military exercises, all to the detriment of Ayta communities in Pampanga, Tarlac and Zambales, she cited further.

Mega roads, such as the Clark-Subic Expressway and roads in Capas-Botolan, Davao del Norte-Bukidnon-Agusan del Sur-Misamis Oriental, are also prioritized under the Build Build Build program but for the TFIP, “this) to to serve the corporate interests of the agri-plantations, mines and other big business ventures encroaching in ancestral territories.”

Artemio A. Dumlao/ABN