Gingoog IFMA 'no consent' from IPs

Gingoog IFMA 'No Consent' from IPs
Thursday, January 28, 2010

THE Misamis Oriental Provincial Board (PB) said no consent from the indigenous peoples (IPs) was secured by controversial firm Southwood Timber Corporation (STC) for its logging operations in Claveria town.

During a committee hearing on Monday, Vice Governor Norris Babiera said STC’s Integrated Forest Management Agreement (IFMA) had no IP consent, based on their initial findings.

The PB is conducting an investigation on the case after the Higaonons filed their complaints and pushed for the immediate cancellation of the IFMA permit issued to STC by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). The call of the IPs was supported by church based groups like Ecological Care (EcoCare), Ecology Desk of the Archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro and Environmentalists.

The findings were also confirmed by the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center (LRC).

In an emailed statement, LRC team leader Carl Cesar Rebuta said the Minalwang Higaonon should be the community who would give the Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) as provided for by Department Administrative Order 1 series of 2006.

Earlier, leaders of Minalwang Higaonon Tribal Council (Mihitrico) filed an opposition in January 2007 against STC’s logging project, saying that the land belonged to Mihitrico through a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) granted by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) on Oct. 9, 2008. The CADT covers 18,023.63 hectares in Barangay Minalwang, Claveria Misamis Oriental.

“The NCIP facilitates FPIC activities in the IP communities and acts as a third party witness to the memorandum of agreement (MOA) between the project proponents,” Rebuta said in the statement.

He said NCIP also issued a Certification Precondition (CP) to confirm that project proponent has complied with the 2006 FPIC Guidelines once the community gives their consent.

Rebuta said this clearly showed that the logging permit issued to STC covering 11,476 hectares of which more than 8,000 hectares are within the ancestral domain of Mihitrico is invalid and its operation is illegal.

“While we think that logging is development project, this doesn’t correlates that this is also the development that the IP community wants,” he said.

Published in the Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro newspaper on January 28, 2010.