Nature For Life

NATURE FOR LIFE

By ANABELLE E. PLANTILLA, Manila Times

20th January 2007

Entering into law in 1997, the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) sought to give equity to the most marginal sector of the country, the original Filipinos, those who had, in their own way, successfully resisted centuries of colonial interlopers. The minerals of the Cordilleras would have been tapped by the Spaniards had not they been driven off by the tribes.

The IPRA's passage was hailed for the most part, as it allowed IP communities to finally legally claim the land which they had occupied and worked since, in the IPRA's terms, "time immemorial." This was well and good until it came to the attention of concerned parties that a great many of these ancestral lands were adjacent or on top of the richest mineral deposits, bringing them into territorial and land use conflict with the mining firms.

This led to what is known as the attempt to harmonize the IPRA to the Mining Act in an effort to remove the barriers the IPRA presented to mining. This echoed in an attempted harmonization of the National Integrated Protected Areas System and the LGU Code to also "grease the wheels" for the entry of mining.

In the case of the IPRA, it was the concept of Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) that was hamstrung. As the government recognized that the IPs may very well wish to allow firms access to their lands and resources-such as timber-the FPIC demands community level decision-making and community-given permission to industry.

While it remains in place today, its effective implementation is in question. The trends of the Mining Act are for the government to willfully weaken its own regulatory functions and encourages self-regulatory mining. This benefits no one but the miners. In the case of the IPRA and the cases made for its "harmonization" it all but screams a removal of the rights of IPs to self-determination.

An interesting side effect of this is, again, the timing. The attacks on the IPRA came before it passed into law and continued after, spearheaded by the mining industry. This was in 1997, two years after the passage of the Mining Act and not long at all after the Marinduque disaster.

In a way it helped to organize the IP groups against mining as the National Council of Indigenous Peoples were the first to leap to the IPRA's defense. And organization is indeed needed and necessary.

The case of Canatuan is an infamous one which displays the outer limits of the FPIC. As one can imagine, our remarkably inept bureaucracy and the concerns of marginalized peoples do not mix well. Canatuan and the mining firm with interests in the area-Toronto Ventures, Inc. (TVI) -have helped to explode the area's native Subanen population. The community is split in two; obviously one side is pro-mining, the other is antimining. The antimining side claims that nonnative Subanen managed to pass off their FPIC as one for Canatuan. The government acted with all speed on this, but with less speed on the complaint. The pro-mining side has since claimed victory, with TVI operations in full swing. Evictions and militarization of the area are known facts.

IP groups are wary that this will soon be the way of doing business across the country-with marginal groups cruelly robbed of promises of their rights to land, life and self-determination by the combination of industry, wealth and greed.