 |
A PRO-FOREST RULING
FIRST CRACK by Fel V. Maragay
Manila Standard TODAY
January 08, 2007
LAST Nov. 29, the Supreme Court rendered a landmark decision that called attention to the need to protect the country’s dwindling forests, and to preserve ecological balance over and above the business interests of a few.
The high tribunal condemned the destruction of the environment and drove home the message that all of us must play an important role in conserving our forests, which form part of our sources of food and water. For so many times, we have seen the disastrous consequences of forest destruction and how severely we have suffered from the fury of Mother Nature.
The court thumbed down the petition filed by the Paper Industries Corp. of the Philippines, the country’s largest logging concession, to have its Timber License Agreement 43 converted automatically into an Integrated Forest Management Agreement.
The 1987 Constitution bans the issuance of the Marcos-era license agreements and in its stead, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources has introduced the forest management agreement, with built-in safeguards for logging operations, such as tree planting and the use of sustainable forest management practices.
License agreement 43 covers 75,343 hectares of forest land in Surigao del Sur, Agusan del Sur, Compostela Valley and Davao Oriental—the single biggest area in the country set aside for logging.
When Picop applied to convert its license agreement into a forest management agreement following the expiration of TLA 43 in April 2002, then Environment Secretary Heherson Alvarez refused to approve the automatic conversion until after Picop first paid the government P167,592,440 in accumulated forest charges as of August 2002 and complied with other requirements of law.
At that time, Picop’s registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission had expired. The National Commission on Indigenous People also validated that TLA 43 overlapped with the ancestral lands of the Manobos and refused to grant Picop the necessary clearances.
A portion of TLA 43’s area within the 8,100-hectare forest land was set aside as a mineral reservation and environmentally critical area by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, through Proclamation 279 on Nov. 25, 2002 as recommended by Alvarez, as a sustainable mining solution for small miners who were operating in the gold-rich Mount Diwalwal. Under the scheme, small mixers were entitled to receive 75-percent share of the gold sales compared to the government’s 25-percent share.
In its 58-page ruling penned by Associate Justice Minita Chico Nazario, the high court reversed the earlier decision of the Court of Appeals and the Quezon City regional trial court, that favored the automatic conversion of TLA 43 into IFMA.
The Supreme Court saw that the time to act to save the environment is now when it said that those people, “fortunate to have been awarded an enormous concession area and thus, a huge chunk of the benefits of this country’s natural resources, have the responsibility to comply with the law and regulations implementing the stated legislative policies of environmental preservation and benefit distributions.”
The Supreme Court judgment now compels Picop to comply with a) payment of delinquent forest charges amounting to P167,592,440 as of Aug. 22, 2002; b) a five-year forest protection plan, c) a seven-year reforestation plan; and d) clearances from the indigenous people’s commission and local government units concerned for the remaining areas.
But this does not restore the 75,000 hectares covered by the expired TLA which Picop wanted to covert into IFMA.
Feeling vindicated by the court’s verdict, Alvarez described it as a “triumph of the environment which confirms the need to uphold the rules for environment conservation and security as mandated by the Constitution.”
|
|
|
