The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is reviewing five agreements on the 215,950-hectare Sarangani Bay Protected Seascape to ensure that the contracts abide by existing policies.
The review is being undertaken in compliance with a directive by former DENR Secretary Roy Cimatu to convert all compliant instruments into special use agreements in protected areas (SAPAs) pursuant to the provisions of Republic Act 7586 or the National Integrated Protected Areas System (NIPAS) Act of 1992, as amended by RA 11038, otherwise known as the Expanded NIPAS (ENIPAS) Act of 2018.
The law allows the grant of tenure instrument to certain development projects called “special uses,” except in strict nature reserves and in designated strict protection zones, for a term of 25 years, renewable for the same length of period.
The resource-use projects in the seascape with SAPA applications, covers 104,049 square meters (sqm) or 10.4 hectares under a memoranda of agreement with Cargil Oil Mills Philippines Inc. for a jetty-pier project (44,358 sqm), YBS Green Oil Corp.’s oil depot and terminal project (34,444 sqm), Petron Corp.’s fuel terminal project (11,373 sqm), Seatrade Canning Corp.’s tuna processing and production plant (9,925 sqm) and Alliance Select Food International Inc.’s wastewater treatment and wharf facilities (3,949 sqm).
The Kamanga Agro-Industrial Ecozone Development Corp., which also holds a memorandum of agreement (MoA), has been issued SAPA for a jetty-pier project covering an area of 211,970 sqm.
“This measure is aimed at making development projects covered by MoA consistent not only with the NIPAS Act, as amended, but with the Indigenous Peoples Right Act of 19977,” Secretary Jim Sampulna said.
He said there are ancestral lands within protected areas that are covered by the agreements.
He cited the DENR’s arrangement with the Masungi Georeserve Foundation Inc. covering some 2,700 hectares within the Rizal watershed, as another case that needed to be rectified through the issuance of SAPA.
The agreement was issued in 2017, or one year before the ENIPAS was enacted into law.
The free and prior informed consent of concerned indigenous peoples would be required, “something that was not considered when the MoA was inked with MGFI in 2017.”
The agreement does not provide for the payment of user-fee or government share from profits and does not cite specific validity period, giving MGFI “perpetual land trust” despite some of its area is inside the 26,125-hectare Upper Marikina River Basin Protected Landscape, a legislated protected area by virtue of the ENIPAS Act of 2018, the DENR said.