Environmentalists expressed concern over the Department of Environment and Natural Resources’s (DENR) recent announcement that protected areas are now open to special private use, expressing fear that this will open protected areas to exploitation.
“Greenpeace is very concerned over this development, and we fear that this move will do nothing but open the protected areas to exploitation,” Vince Cinches, Greenpeace Southeast Asia-Philippines political campaigner, said in a news release on May 8.
“Lifting the moratorium on issuance of special permits will not protect nor lift people from poverty, but rather expose our indigenous peoples to further abuse and oppression,” he added.
Environment Secretary Roy A. Cimatu announced on May 4 that protected areas are open to special private use once interested parties apply for a Special-Use Agreement in Protected Areas (Sapa).
Cimatu was quoted in news reports as saying that Sapa will “provide access and economic opportunities to indigenous peoples, tenured migrant communities and other stakeholders of protected areas.”
“We would like to remind the Philippine government that our environment is not for sale,” Greenpeace said. It added that the environment “does not belong to businesses that only seek to suck it dry with profit, but rather it belongs to the future generations, according to the Oposa v. Factoran Supreme Court decision on intergenerational responsibility to a healthy and balanced ecology.”
“Let us not allow greed to lord over our constitutional right to a balanced and healthful environment. Our protected areas belong to the Filipino people, and we are but just stewards of this beautiful place that is our country. It belongs to the future generations that they would still have natural places to appreciate and enjoy. We owe it to our children, and we sincerely hope the DENR will remember that,” Cinches said.
Cinches cited that the utilization of some of the country’s protected areas do not have a General Management Planning Strategy (GMPS), as subscribed by Rule 10 of DENR Administrative Order 2008-26 (2).
He said this is the reason “even current protected areas are still being ravaged by destructive human activities, such as mining, quarrying, fishing, farming and general disregard for environmental protection laws.”
He added it was the reason Sapa was suspended in the first place, because this violates the National Integrated Protected Areas System (Nipas) law.
“It is important to note that human activities are still allowed in the identified buffer zones of protected areas, as long as these would not impair the integrity of the strict protection zone,” Cinches said.
In some protected areas with GMPS, allowable human activities are not enumerated, because all activities are subjected to clear impact assessment.
“The revival of Sapa is in violation of the spirit or general objectives of the Nipas, and will only enrich a few, worsen the current environmental problems and poverty situation in the Philippines,” he noted.