Protected areas and CALTs

HAPPY WEEKEND

Gina Dizon 

SAGADA, Mountain Province -- Indigenous peoples have what they call are protected, sacred and conserved areas. These include   watersheds, burial grounds, and water springs. From watersheds, spring their water sources to irrigate their rice lands and domestic water for their cooking, washing and drinking water.

Conscious of what their ancestors  have passed on to them as their world view and spiritual outlook on what protected  areas are  sets the basis for their continued sustenance, care, and protection  to their livelihood and  spirituality.

It is from this very principle of inalienability and inherent  nature that  IPs’ very nature and psyche  is built  in around their  ways of life and action as individuals living in harmony  and in collective  relationship with other IPs such that outsiders who do otherwise are considered ‘an anader’.

“An-anader” would refer to development project agressors who don’t consider the IP’s existence and sense of being, this including IPs who get out of their being IPs and exploit their fellow IPs.

This holistic attitude and practice towards  their natural resources and territories  is clearly  recognized in  State laws  as the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act(IPRA) and the United Nations  Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) setting the basis for any development project  or any activity for that matter that gets introduced in IP territory.

Now comes the protected areas concept of the government particularly the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources which envisions a “perpetual existence of biological and physical diversities in a system of protected areas and other important biological components of the environment managed by a well-informed and empowered citizenry for the sustainable use and enjoyment of present and future generations”.

While it promises a meaningful  rationale of  what seemingly is in psyche to IPs sense of  what protected  areas mean, this PAWB-DENR  program is seen with caution how it shall be implemented supposed to be conscious of IPs sense and practise of their care and protection to their  lands and resources. Not to forget the very basic requirement of what is called free prior and informed consent to any activity introduced in IP land.

While this is so, it is urgent  to  ponder on what the IPRA-provided  certificates of ancestral land  titles (CALT) which gives title to individuals to prove ownership  to a piece of land located in an ancestral domain. This practically creates individual titles in the collective land of an IP’s clan or community territory.

While this issuance of a CALT urges privatization of land holdings where the individual is free to enjoy, use and dispose off his individually owned land, the ancestral domain is also endangered of being segregated to pieces and the ancestral domain subjected to eventual evaporation and non existence of what a collective land and ownership means.   

This, especially with special reference to a protected area as a watershed where the community collectively enjoys as a source of community irrigation water and domestic water use.  With the prevalence of tax declarations having reached watershed areas and issued to individuals endangers the watershed of being equally privatized where a CALT is issued for that matter. Municipal registries in IP areas already record watersheds titled to individuals.

How IPs shall consider a CALT within a communal watershed and even a watershed which has already been privatized through the issuance of a tax declaration is at a crossroad how IPs shall consider this land security title via a CALT.

Although IP participants to the World’s Indigenous Peoples Day last August 8, 2013 at Quezon City noted the need to review guidelines on the issuance of CALTs.  An IP leader from Zambales said issuance of a CALT or a certificate of ancestral domain title (CADT) should be accompanied by the conduct of an FPIC.

In the same manner, how this PAWB-DENR program ensuring protected areas and the IPs practise of preserving their protected areas as they see fit is an interesting scenario to look forward with the basic requirement of what is indispensably and importantly called free prior and informed consent guiding all activities done on IP land.