© Environment News Service (ENS) 2000
October 30, 2000
By Michael Bengwayan

MOUNT PULAG, Philippines, October 30, 2000 (ENS) - "When the deer goes, so will we, as when the river dries. When all that is here is gone, like the trees, mountains and even gold, so will the people vanish. For these we cry not for us, but for our children; not with tears but with blood. What will the outsiders do? Teach us the ways of our forefathers or strip us of the very last remnants of our life."

So said 88 year old Douglas Morata, the oldest man in barangay Lusod, Mount Pulag, in the province of Benguet, northern Luzon, to a visiting research team from the United Nations Development Program Global Environmental Facility in 1988.

Today, Morata's words are even more relevant. The outsiders he referred to are staff of the National Integrated Protected Areas Program (NIPAP), which Morata and his people - the Kalanguyas - believe are trying to fool them under the guise of environmental conservation.

Feelings have been running high for some time. In 1998, locals attacked a NIPAP park ranger, almost hacking him to death, when he tried to prevent residents from cutting a tree for housing. After so many years, the Mount Pulag people resent being told they cannot use natural resources in traditional ways.

Funded by the European Union, NIPAP's mandate is to help protect, conserve and manage tropical forest biodiversity areas with endangered endemic species in eight protected areas of the country. One of these areas includes the 11,347 hectare Mount Pulag, home to the cloud rat and the dwarf bamboo - two of the most endangered animal and plant species listed in the Red Book of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Mount Pulag is about 350 kilometers (200 miles) north of Manila and covers five barangays. A barangay is a small political district in the Philippines. Several barangays make up a town or municipality.

Five thousand Kalanguya people live on Mount Pulag, the Philippines highest peak at 2,333 meters (7,654 feet). NIPAP staff are ruining Mount Pulag by disregarding the ways and culture of indigenous peoples, say the Kalanguyas, who have forwarded their refusal to support any NIPAP project in Mount Pulag to Philippine President Joseph Estrada.

Five councillors from Lusod, the barangay which encompasses most of the 11,000 hectare national reservation park, accused NIPAP staff assigned by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), as only having enriched themselves from the honoraria and salaries from NIPAP funds.

NIPAP staff, including director Nick Ashton Jones of the European Union and DENR project officers Lucita Exconde and Jude Acos attracted the harshest criticism. Earlier this year, Exconde and Acos were withdrawn from the project by DENR Secretary Antonio Cerilles. Neither would comment on their withdrawal nor on allegations of using project funds for personal gain.

"We have received nothing, we have not seen any project but we have been informed that some DENR staff involved at NIPAP now have expensive personal vehicles, something they can't afford from their meager salaries," said councillor Romeo Waclin and unelected community leader, Ambrosio Agsio.

Neither could substantiate that project funds had been used to purchase the vehicles.

NIPAP has been funded by a 12,700,000 euro (US$10.7 million) grant from the European Union since 1995. It ended in June this year but DENR is seeking a five year extension despite the protests of Mount Pulag's indigenous communities.

Of the eight national parks where the project has been implemented, Mount Pulag has caused the most controversy, said Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau (PAWB) head Leo Viray of the DENR.

The other sites are the protected areas of Mount Isarog, Camarinus Sur; Mount Iglit-Baco National park, Occidental Mindoro; Mount Guiting Guiting National Park in Sibuyan island, Romblon; Coron island, Palawan; El Nido Marine Reservation, Palawan; Malampaya Sound, Palawan; and Mount Malindang National Park, Misamis Oriental.

Viray said NIPAP had achieved some success in Mount Pulag. Biodiversity protection zones have been mapped and socio-economic surveys carried out, he said. But Viray admitted that an education campaign on biodiversity protection and public awareness initiatives among Mount Pulag residents have been unsuccessful.

The Kalanguyas say they were not consulted about the project. "We were never aware that there was going to be a NIPAP project," said Agsio, in a recent protest gathering in Babadac, Mount Pulag.

The fight between the NIPAP implementers and the Kalanguyas has been building since 1998, when NIPAP staff planted trees in Kalanguyas swidden farms without getting the communities' approval.

Swidden farming is practised by many indigenous mountain communities and relies on a long fallow period which ensures forest regeneration and high soil fertility while preventing high levels of yield loss through weeds, pests and diseases. Swidden farming differs essentially from other agricultural systems where natural processes are usually controlled to allow crop growth.

"They trampled on our crops," said councillor Romeo Waclin. "In retaliation, the people uprooted thousands of seedlings planted by NIPAP."

NIPAP park ranger Roy Lupos said problems began because NIPAP management failed to consider local peoples' feelings. "I am a Kalanguya like the rest of them, I honestly think management has not lent an ear to the peoples' wishes," he said. "NIPAP promised alternative livelihood projects but none has ever been implemented," said Lupos.

Wacklin and Agsio agreed. "They trained some 40 women in baking in Manila. Why do they have to bring our womenfolk 400 kilometers away to train in baking when it can be done right here in Mount Pulag? We suspect the funds were misused and made to look like it was made by our womenfolk," they said.

In a protest meeting near Mount Pulag's peak in May, some 60 Mount leaders and their followers lambasted NIPAP as being "insensitive to their right to speak, and their rights towards ownership and control of the vast natural resources in Mount Pulag."

Headwaters from Pulag feed Agno river, which powers Ambuklao and Binga dams for a combined equivalent of 175 megawatts. The controversial San Roque dam, which will be the third biggest hydroelectric dam in Southeast Asia, will also be fed by Agno river, which is partly fed by Pulag's tributaries.

In their letter and petition to President Estrada, the Kalanguyas' said they would oppose any move that threatens their existence, particularly an extension of the NIPAP program or the implementation of Proclamation Number 268, which makes much of their territory a resource reserve.

They complained that Jones and Exconde failed to appoint people from affected communities to represent local people.

"Jones and Exconde were insincere, such that the people have built a distrust against the DENR and the rest of the NIPAP staff," the petitioners said. They protested other development programs for Mount Pulag, which they called "a reason for enriching some government people and foreign consultancy staff."

In a related development, the Igorot tribal Assistance Group (ITAG), an non-governmental office working on environmental affairs in the Cordillera region of the Philippines, told the European Union's Commission in Manila that it would galvanize opposition towards any extension of the NIPAP program in Mount Pulag.

"The people have been exploited and abused. They are also angry and confused as to why they have to be banned from activities such as logging for housing and swidden farming operations when all the time, they have learned how to take care of their own natural resources," said ITAG.

"Indigenous people in Mount Pulag are not ignorant in the ways of conservation as NIPAP staff perceive them to be. They practice indigenous conservation practices as proven by the UNDP-GEF study in 1988, a research supported by Dublin's University College in Ireland and the Toyota Foundation."

Earlier this year, DENR secretary Antonio Cerilles appealed to the European Union to renew funding for NIPAP.

"The EU's financial support to NIPAP, as well as our budget for biodiversity conservation, should be seen as more of an investment rather than an unrecoverable expense similar to that in public education or health," said Cerilles. "For example, the maintenance of key habitats and species provide economically valuable ecosystem services or forms the indispensable basis for such major industries as fisheries, tourism, and the harvesting of non-timber products."

"The EU’s continued support will surely enhance the country’s biodiversity conservation efforts and its establishment of a protected areas system. A protected area system of a country is important since it is the core of our biodiversity program to maintain the diversity of ecosystems, species, and wild genetic resources; and to protect our great natural areas for their intrinsic, inspirational and recreational values." Error: Unable to read footer file.