IP Rights

Sitio Datal: Lumads want their farmlands back

LAKE SEBU, South Cotabato (LRC-KsK/FOE Philippines-Davao) — Nestled on top of the Daguma Mountain Range, sitio Datal Bonlangon of barangay Ned in Lake Sebu, South Cotabato is home to T’boli villagers who were robbed of their rights to their ancestral land and deprived of their economic activities.

Once a farming village of indigenous peoples, the land is now a vast coffee plantation that straddles the towns of Kalamansig, Palimbang, Isulan, Bagumbayan, all in Sultan Kudarat province and the towns of Lake Sebu in South Cotabato and Maitum in Sarangani. The plantation forbids the T’boli villagers from expanding their own farmland. 

In 1991, the Department of Environment Natural Resources (DENR) issued an Industrial Tree Plantation License Agreement (ITPLA) No. 238 to Silvicultural Industries, Incorporated (SII) but a year later it was converted into Industrial Forest Plantation Management Agreement (IFMA).

The agreement, which will expire in December 2016, covers 11,862 hectares.  The IFMA was introduced by the DENR in 1991 as a key component of its Industrial Forest Plantation (IFP) scheme with the issuance of DENR Administrative Order No. 42. The IFMA was designed as an integrative approach to forestry, replacing the controversial and forest-extractive Timber License Agreement (TLA) system.
IFMA drives lumads away

But IFMA is unfavorable to the Lmads living around the plantation, as it has  driven them away from their ancestral lands and hampered them from cultivating their lands.

In 2004, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples reported that: “In 1991 the company representatives informed them that their land was part of a logging concession area but that this would be a positive development because of the building of new roads to transport their produce. Company representatives made no reference to the planting of coffee, much less the conversion of the area into a large coffee plantation.”

Within seven months, trees were felled until the area was completely logged over, it added.  “Soon after, bulldozers and other heavy machinery arrived and cleared the entire area of bananas, fruit trees, native coffee and other locally grown plants including rattan to make way for a coffee plantation.

Only when the mechanized and massive clearing was in full swing did the people realize that their land had been taken away from them,” the report said. The report added: “Thereafter, they were prevented from tilling their farms and those who attempted to do so were harassed by company guards armed with carbines, armalites and rifles. Those who tried to work on the company’s clearings were fired at. Before long, the cleared areas were planted to arabica and robusta coffee.”

“Fearing their lives, especially the youth, 37 T’boli families (about 100 persons) fled in the night and without lamps, groped in the dark and reached Blugsanay, the next sitio at the dawn the next day. Without their sources of livelihood, the people had no choice but to evacuate and develop new settlements, enduring harsh conditions in breaking new ground,” the report read.

Tribal chieftain Datu Victor Danyan said until now some of the displaced villagers have yet to return in their village. “Some are still in the nearby villages because they are farming there and they will only return here if the problem will be resolved,” he said while referring to their struggle to reclaim their ancestral land.

Datu Danyan said they are dismayed that they cannot expand their farm areas because they are afraid of the company guards who might harm them when they will cultivate so near the coffee plantation.

For their subsistence, villagers are planting corn, root crops and vegetables in the slopes surrounding their village.  In 2005, the villagers engaged in potato farming. Local traders from Isulan and Bagumbayan financed the potato farming. However, they ended in debt and some farmlands were forfeited by the traders after they failed to settle their debts.

But there are at least two families who are still engaging in potato farming just to be able to reclaim their land.

There are at least 30 families now living in the sitio after some left the village in 1991. But they returned to their village in 1998. Some followed in 1999 and 2000. But in mid-2001, some of them evacuated when the company guards allegedly harassed them.

Datu Danyan said that around 300 families lived in Sitio Datal Bonlangon until the SII started its operation in 1991.  Now, there are at least 120 persons living in DBL, at least 40 of them children. There are around 26 structures, including their church, in the village but only 18 are occupied. Usually, the houses are occupied by two families.

Datu Danyan, on the other hand, relayed that the Justice Peace of Marbel (JP Marbel) discouraged them from planting potatoes because it requires pesticide and other chemicals to maintain its growth.  “Those who still owe the financiers, they will just finish the three croppings so that they can pay their debts and reclaim their land,” Datu Danyan said.

For over a year now, the Oblates of Notre Dame (OND) Sisters-run Hesed Foundation has been extending its adult literacy program and sustainable agriculture in DBL at two years for each program. Now they are in the sustainable agriculture phase.

Arnold Magpon, agriculture technician of HESED Foundation assigned in the village, said they replaced the potatoes with peanuts. On the first week of May this year, Magpon said their trial cropping yielded 91 cans or approximately 35-40 sacks.  By June, they will plant peanuts on the former potato area.  They also hunt for bats inside the cave, which is about 500 meters from the heart of the village. They will just contribute for the batteries for the flashlight of the lone bat hunter. Also they sometimes catch fish locally known as “paitan” at the stream outside the cave.

T’boli villagers push for CADT

Currently, the community, with the assistance from Legal Rights Center- Kasama sa Kalikasan/ Friends of the Earth Philippines (LRC-KsK/FOE) and Tri-Peoples Concern for Peace, Progress and Development of Mindanao, Inc (TRICOM), is still preparing for the application of Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT).  The villagers believe that if they can secure CADT, they can expand and cultivate their farmlands.

“We can plant more crops if we can finally secure our own land,” they said.  Of the 11, 862 hectares under the IFMA, the T’boli villagers claim at least 6,000 hectares as their ancestral domain.

In 1992, the Department of Agrarian Reform issued Certificate of Land Ownership Award (CLOA) to 30 families in the village. The sitio is part of the 21,700-hectare resettlement area declared under Presidential Proclamation 550 in 1969. (Keith Kristoffer Bacongco is Campaigns Paralegal Staff of the Legal Rights Center- Kasama sa Kalikasan Friends of the Earth Philippines Davao Regional Office)

© 2006 KontraDevAgg.