BENCHWARMER

Ramon Dacawi
Host communities

With utmost efficiency in applying the techniques of Technology of Participation (ToP), facilitators saved the day in last Wednesday’s Cordillera Watershed Summit at the Hotel Supreme here. Driven by a sense of urgency due to time constraint as a result of a delayed start, the ToP experts were able to draw within an hour issues and recommendations from participants clustered into four workshop groups that initially looked unwieldy because of their big number.

(ToP, a group discussion method developed by the US-based Institute of Cultural Affairs, was used several years ago by the Associates in Rural Development in drawing the participation of partners in local government unit projects in the Philippines supported by the US Agency for International Development. ARD was then led by returning university professor. Alex Brillantes, the same Baguio boy who helped us out in the “Eco-Walk” children’s watershed program here.)

Some participants raised issues quite familiar, encountered in previous forums – low public awareness of policies and laws, conflicts between state laws and tribal practices, aside from the divisiveness among government agencies supposed to harmonize and implement watershed policies.

The breakthrough came from youthful Gov. Teddy Baguilat Jr. of Ifugao, the same leader who, during his first term, told visiting top national officials that his administration is corruption-free. Fittingly, his presentation focused on “the continuing struggle of upland watershed communities for just payments”.

Baguilat bewailed the lack of government policy incentives for the keepers of the watersheds they have sustained for generations through time-tested indigenous management practices. He also called for a better deal for these uplands in the renewed efforts of giant firms to extract gold and other remaining mineral deposits below the remaining watersheds.

The power of his presentation lies not on the issues he focused, as these have been aired over the years by his constituents and those in other provinces of the Cordillera. It lies on the passion with which a credible leader like him gave a voice to the tribal communities muted for long “in the name of national development”.

Whether it’s a bane or boon to the Igorots and their fellow indigenous peoples all over the world, most of the remaining natural wealth lies on tribal land. It has been more of a curse, as the Cordillera provinces remain among the country’s poorest despite gold mining and electric power generation.

Baguilat is kept busy by his steep fight for Ifugao’s benefits as watershed and host of the 360-megawatt Magat Dam. Because of the national wealth tax and other funds accruing to the “host community”, Isabela is also claiming Magat Dam lies within its turf.

With his grounded commitment to the push for rights of Cordillerans over their resources, the governor will be a crucial voice when the Cordillera Regional Development Council will begin talks with its counterpart in Region 1 this December.

The upcoming talks were triggered by the recent concern of Regions 1 and 2 over the dwindling flow of water from the Cordillera. Previously, Region 1 officials blamed the occasional silting and flooding of their communities on the mining and the hydro-power generation up here.

Their present concern has given us the leverage to tell them the obvious often ignored by those who established policies about sharing of resources – that watershed conservation is as much a concern of the lowlands as it is ours, for they are the life-blood of the industries and farmlands down there.

It should give them enough reason to support our stand that, for one, Benguet is as much a host as Pangasinan and Region 1 are to the 345-megawatt San Roque Dam built in San Manuel and San Nicolas towns. Finally, the lowlands can help push equitable sharing of benefits accruing from the harnessing of our water resources, through a redefinition of a “host community” entitled to these. For years now, the Cordillera has been alone in asking national planners to re-define the term that excludes us from a share of such benefits.

When he was up here in 2001 for a public hearing on the implementing rules and regulations of the controversial Electric Power Industry Reform Act, then Energy Secretary Vincent Perez was told of the inequity triggered by the myopic definition of a “host community”, which is limited to where the dam was built.
“That’s an insightful observation,” Perez told a press conference. He promised to consider a redefinition that would encompass the upland communities serving as watersheds of San Roque and Magat. When the IRR came out, however, it retained the infrastructure-based definition, lifted in-toto from that of the earlier Energy Crisis Act.

Early this year, now Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes was told in another press conference that, unless the river basin concept is adopted, Ifugao natives in Hungduan town would divert the flow of the Hapao River, the major feeder to Magat.

The revelation startled Secretary Reyes, who was told it was more a jest than a threat, to underscore the lack of incentive policy for the uplands. When push comes to shove, however (as Gov. Baguilat noted), the Ifugaos may take it seriously, as their ancestors did in carving whole mountainsides into rice terraces.

Before that happens, national development planners might as well take us seriously. After all, the effectiveness of the Technology of Participation is measured by the degree with which they listen to the keepers of the watersheds up here. (e-mail:rdacawi@yahoo.com for comments).