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PICOP SPOKESMAN’S HALF-TRUTHS AND INACCURACIES IMPUGNS SC DECISION?
The Philippine STAR
January 15, 2007
Mr. Domingo R. Tumambing, a senior forester and president of the Society of Filipino Foresters Inc., Caraga Council has been criticizing my decision as DENR Secretary that withdrew a logging concession of 75,545 hectares from PICOP in Mindanao, a decision which was affirmed by the Supreme Court in its Nov. 29, 2006 ruling against PICOP.
It is simply clear that Mr. Tumambing, as PICOP spokesman, is misleading with misinformation, and shifting the issue away from PICOP’s responsibility in damaging the forests, particularly its failure to undertake reforestation, and its evasion to pay forest charges amounting to P167 million.
The violations of PICOP were adjudged by the Supreme Court as “so glaring” evidences of “PICOP’s noncompliance with the requirements” of conversion, with almost a reluctance to uphold the law…”
Mr. Tumambing’s CLAIMS ARE INACCURATE AND PEDDLES HALF-TRUTHS. He claims that I denied PICOP the area because I wanted to: First, convert 8,100 hectares for mining activities.
On my recommendation, President Arroyo declared the Mt. Diwalwal gold rush area into a mineral reservation on Nov. 25, 2002 thru Proclamation No. 297. We organized 24 small-scale mining cooperatives that allowed for a fairer profit sharing scheme of 85%-15% in favor of the small miners.
For the first time in 20 years, government was able to collect taxes there, and the program was launched to manage the mine tailings pollution with the Mabatas containment dam. The unabated violence in the area, where more than 6,000 lives have already been lost since gold was discovered there in 1983, was stopped.
The President praised this as a “crowning glory” of service as DENR Secretary because it brought peace to the area, which four past Philippine Presidents failed to manage.
Under the mineral reservation declaration, we were able to stabilize the conflicting claims on mineral rights asserted by big mining companies with vested interests, like Southeast Mindanao (SEM) Gold Mining Corporation, a sister company of PICOP which is owned by Mr. Teodoro Bernardino.
SEM claimed mining rights over Mt. Diwalwal via an Exploration Permit of Marcopper Mining. But ultimately, in a separate decision on June 23, 2006, the High Court ruled that Mr. Bernardino’s mineral claim in Mt. Diwalwal is a privilege and not a vested property right which he can transfer from Marcopper to SEM, a Bernardino company.
In a special feature in the January 20, 2003 issue of GRAPHIC Magazine, Compostela Valley Rep. Manuel “Way Kurat” Zamora called our actions a pro-poor “social justice program of President Arroyo” that would spur a social revolution for Diwalwal “to democratize wealth, create a middle class, mitigate the harm done to the environment, and restore the area and its surroundings to a more livable and benign state.”
Second, PICOP’s Tumambing faults me for issuing five Integrated Forest Management Agreements (IFMAs) for 169,000 hectares. This is an agro-industrial project of Shannalyne, Inc. over denuded forests in the Agusan provinces in Mindanao, using state-of-the-art Finnish sustainable reforestation that will rehabilitate the forests and harvest clean alternative power from it.
The agreement was signed by the governments of New Zealand and Finland as stewards. The presence of these governments—both intolerant of any graft—guarantee the integrity of the contract.
Finnish organizational technology will be employed, and the know-how for this state-of-the-art forest system will be made available for our Filipino foresters. In fact, this project was adopted during President Arroyo’s September 11, 2006 state visit to Helsinki, Finland as an economic environmental program.
Third, he claims we converted 660 hectares of forests into residential and/or commercial use. The 660 hectare-residential or commercial usage was a proposal by the 40,000 gold rush barangay-community that was formed over a period of 20 years. They lacked decent housing and were living in the perilous hovels at the mouths of the mining pits. But this habitation has not been classified because the DENR Secretary has no power to convert forest areas for dwelling or residential use.
Fourth, he imagines that I awarded 3,400 hectares as Community-Based Forest Management (CBFM) areas. Forest dwellers have swollen to 16 million and they use destructive kaingin farming. Government adopted the CBFM to contain these negative practices that destroy the forest. Although I may have favored the granting of CBFMs for such purposes, the CBFMs in question were already there and were granted by a predecessor.
Fifth, the PICOP spokesman said that I granted 17,112 hectares Certificates of Ancestral Domain Claim (CADC) to the indigenous communities in the area. THIS IS WRONG. The claims have been established by the Manobos before I became DENR Secretary. What I set for PICOP to obtain was the prior consent of the Manobos in the area before any logging activities would be done over their ancestral domain, which is in accordance with the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA), a law I supported when I was in the Senate.
Environmental sensitivity is the guiding light of environmental protection and conservation that grew out from the precepts of Limits of Growth. This matured into Sustainable Development principles from free market economics, nurtured by caring and far-seeing entrepreneurs, not by bureaucrats and government regulators.
Government alone cannot protect the environment. It needs a responsible, caring citizenry to abide by the rules of sustainable development... otherwise, our homeland will perish.
HEHERSON T. ALVAREZ
Former DENR Secretary
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