DENR URGED TO REVOKE LOGGING LICENSE OF STC
BusinessWorld
Written by Bong D. Fabe / Correspondent
Tuesday, 12 January 2010 18:57
CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY—At least 25,000 signatories are urging the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to revoke the industrial forest management agreement (IFMA) it granted to the logging firm Southwood Timber Corp. (STC) on May 8, 2008. The petition was filed with the DENR yesterday morning. The opposition stems from the firm’s alleged illegal logging operations inside the ancestral domain of the Higaonon people in barangay Minalwang, Claveria, Misamis Oriental. Carl Cesar Rebuta, team leader for Cagayan de Oro of the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center-Kasama sa Kalikasan/Friends of the Earth, said STC is using the endorsement given by the Gingoog City Council in its logging operation in Claveria. Last Dec. 28, after a nine-hour public hearing, the Gingoog City council revoked its favorable endorsement of the STC’s operation in the area. BusinessMirror staff attempted to contact the company, but their efforts were in vain. “Technically, Southwoods Timber Corp. is engaged in illegal-logging activities in Claveria,” said Rebuta during a press conference which was called as a “sendoff” of at least 25,000 signatures from Higaonon people in Gingoog City and Claveria and concerned individuals to compel the DENR to cancel the IFMA It granted to STC on May 8, 2008. Worst, STC also cut old-growth trees like lauan instead of only second-growth trees, said Party-list Rep. Ariel Hernandez of Anak Mindanao, a native of Gingoog City. “Logging and mining are proof that our government lacks the creativity to develop our natural resources for the common good,” he said, adding that these two industries are the “greatest divider of a community” because they are “magnets of conflict.” Instead of encouraging extractive industries like logging and mining which destroy the environment, Hernandez is urging the alternative sources of livelihood in line with carbon trading. The Minalwang Higaonon Tribal Council, a group of Higaonon people in Claveria, has been granted the certificate of ancestral domain title (CADT) over 8,000 hectares of territory on Nov. 19, 2009, after waiting for seven long years. This same CADT territory is inside the 11,476 hectares of logging concession granted to STC through IFMA. “The Higaonon people have not given their consent to STC’s logging operations in their territory or even in the whole IFMA area,” Rebuta said. Because of this, the Higaonon people, supported by non-government organizations, Church-based groups such as the Ecological Care and the Ecology Desk of the Archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro, environmentalists and concerned individuals organized and rallied against the continued destruction and degradation by STC of the forests of Gingoog and Claveria. Higaonon community organizer Alberto “Tay Berting” Pinagawa emerged as the “face” of the lumad antilogging struggle in Gingoog and Claveria as his house in located in the middle of a diphterocarp forest which is daily cut by STC. Wanting to stop STC’s continued and wanton destruction of the forest, Pinagawa, 54, used his influence and status as a lay minister of the Anakan Parish to organize his community to protect their remaining forest. He also initiated a signature campaign to pressure the DENR to cancel STC’s IFMA. Cagayan de Oro Archbishop Antonio Ledesma, SJ, said that on the early morning on Christmas Eve 2009, Pinagawa was walking along a remote road in barangay Minalwang on his way home to barangay Kalipayan, Gingoog City, with his 10-year-old nephew when an unknown number of assailants opened fire and immediately hit him. Pinagawa told his newphew to run. Because high and thick weeds lined the road, the boy did not see the assailants. Pinagawa sustained 20 gunshots that shattered his abdomen. He died on the spot. Ledesma, a staunch environmentalist and ecologist, has urged the archdiocese’s Ecology Desk, under its Social Action Center, headed by Rev. Fr. Jose Cabantan, to help the Higaonon people’s struggle in protecting the forests. He praised Pinagawa for living the Gospel truth of being “his brothers’ keeper.” Ledesma said it is very important to protect the environment, especially the remaining forests of Gingoog and Claveria, because STC’s designated IFMA area “encroaches on the wider watershed area along the Bukidnon-Agusan-Misamis Oriental borders, which protect the headwaters of the Pulangi River to the south and other major tributaries like the Odiongan River to the northern coastal areas.” If and when Environment Secretary Eleazar Quinto cancels Southwood’s Ifma, it would be the realization of Pinagawa’s wish, for which he shed his own blood, said his widow Genara. “More than calling that justice be given for his death, we are urging the immediate cancellation of STC’s Ifma. If that happens, then his death is not in vain because he always said when he was still alive, I am my brothers’ keeper,” a misty-eyed Genara said in the vernacular. Lawyer Jeanne Ivy Abrina, Northern Mindanao director of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR-10), said her office has already docketed Pinagawa’s murder and that she has already requested the CHR en banc in Manila to conduct an exhaustive investigation into his death and those of other Higaonon people killed defending their ancestral domain and the environment. “Their deaths deserved more than just an entry in the police blotter. Their killings merit a full-blown investigation,” she said. In Photo: Party-List Rep. Ariel Hernandez of Anak Mindanao, Genara Pinagawa, widow of murdered antilogging lumad leader Alberto “Tay Berting” Pinagawa; and Rev. Fr. Jose Cabantan, director of the Social Action Center of the Archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro, show the media volumes of documents containing at least 25,000 signatures urging the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to cancel the industrial forest management agreement it granted to Southwoods Timber Corp. (Bong Fabe) |
