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IP groups condemn DENR refusal to cancel forest permits

BAGUIO CITY (Dec. 11)—The militant Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) criticized the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) for refusing to heed calls to cancel log firms’ forest permits, especially in recent calamity areas Aurora and Quezon provinces.

The DENR pronouncement by Sec. Mike Defensor hit the headlines of the Philippine Daily Inquirer on December 6.

“We condemn such pronouncement by the DENR, since it only shows government’s willingness to protect logging concessions,” said Joan Carling, CPA chairperson.

Carling added that these loggers even get away with human rights violations, especially in the case of indigenous peoples whose lives are endangered in their effort to protect their resources.

“We recognize indigenous peoples’ inherent right to their resources. They have long used forest resources, and they only get what they need and even replace these,” Carling said.

Carling cited the case of a Kankanaey from Besao, Mt. Province in 1999 who was arrested by authorities for cutting down a tree in their own communal forest.

CPA said that logging is most rampant in Kalinga province. DENR Cordillera data shows that one Timber License Agreement (TLA) exists in the province, under the ownership of Furniture Group, Inc. An Integrated Forest Management Agreement (IFMA) was also issued in Luna, Apayao province, under the company Stervegneer.

DENR-CAR’s For. Renato Pacis said that a Socialized Industrial Forest Management Agreement (SIFMA) has been applied for in Ifugao, but has already been converted into a Community-Based Forest Management Agreement (CBFMA).

The IFMA, SIFMA, and CBFMA are stipulated under Section 2.17 of the DENR’s Rules and Regulations Governing the Special Uses of Forestlands for Tourism Purposes. Other categories in the same section are Timber License Agreement (TLA), Forestland Grazing Management Agreement (FGMA), Forestland Management Agreement (FLMA), Community Forest Management Agreement (CFMA), Community Forest Stewardship Agreement (CFSA), and Communal Forest (CF).

What probe?

While the Arroyo administration said it will give a fight to curb logging operations in the country, Carling said that there is simply “no teeth” in such kind of pronouncement, and that “it would only take political will to really go after the criminals.”

“There are even loggers in the halls of Congress. They will not give it up easily because that (logging concessions) is their economic base”, she said.

In a separate interview, CPA Secretary General Windel Bolinget said that with government bent on revitalizing the mining industry, such declaration would not mean much.

“Mining requires timber for its production, and the Supreme Court just reversed its decision on the FTAA provision of the Mining Act of 1995,” he pointed out.

What’s gone is gone

Bolinget added that even if government finally pins down those liable, the damages to people’s lives and livelihood are irreparable.

“Kahit na maparusahan sila, hindi na nila maibabalik ang kabuhayan at ari-arian ng mga nasalanta, kasama na riyan ang social at psychological trauma”, he said.

Bolinget said that the government is to blame “since it protects loggers, local and foreign capitalists.”

Meanwhile, government has gone as far as blaming the New People’s Army (NPA), kaingeros, and carabao farmers for the havoc wrought in Aurora and Quezon provinces. Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) Spokesperson Gregorio “Ka Roger” Rosal denied any involvement in logging activities and said that political clans, including the Angaras of Aurora, are to blame for forest denudation.

Deforestation and colonial rule

An emailed document from CPP’s International Department reports that deforestation peaked under Spanish colonization, accelerating during the American occupation. By the 1950’s, 200,000 trees were cut per year and 30% of Philippine rivers, dead. Logs were predominantly exported to Japan, a time when it was at its “rapid economic construction and subsequent booms.”

A paper by Dr. Perry Ong of the University of the Philippines (State of Philippine Biodiversity: Changing Mindscapes Amidst the Crisis) reports that for the last 500 years, the country’s land area decreased by 13.2 million hectares due to environmental destruction.

Ong criticized the World Bank for neither eradicating nor alleviating poverty, and even led the wholesale destruction of the country’s resources.

During the recent Water for the People Convention in Benguet, it was reported that 50 out of 421 Philippine rivers are polluted, due mainly by toxic materials. Forty rivers were reported biologically dead.

“In the 1960’s, US and Japanese monopoly firms expanded the mines and plantations without due consideration of ecological balance at the social cost,” the CPP document read.

The paper affirmed the revolutionary movement’s stance on the issue of environment and ecology, stating that it “has carried out the most vigorous struggles against policies and actions inciting plunder and destruction of human and natural resources in the country.”

Examples of such struggles include those against the World Bank-funded Chico River Dam and Cellophil projects both in the Cordillera, the Bataan nuclear power plant, and recently, a 25-year complete ban on logging for export, allowing limited logging for domestic use.

“The revolutionary forces just don’t talk on the issue of ecology, it takes decisive actions”, the document read. The paper was first released in 1995, during the Ramos administration. # AT Bengwayan for NORDIS

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