Project Proponent: People’s Alternative Center for Environmental and Sectoral Services, Incorporated (PACESS, Inc.)

Project Title :  Capacitating Indigenous Peoples (IP) and Provision of Sustainable Livelihood in Ancestral Domain Claim of Palibo, Novele, Rosario, Agusan del Sur

Site Location: Palibo, Novele, Rosario, Agusan del Sur

Type/Sector: Indigenous People

Project Duration:  3 Years

Background:

The enactment of RA 8371 or the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) in 1997 lays down the legal framework for addressing indigenous peoples’ poverty. It seeks to alleviate the plight of the IPs by correcting, by legislation, the historical errors that led to systematic dispossession of and discrimination against indigenous peoples. The IPRA provides that development programs, projects, and activities must be developed along the fourfold agenda of recognition and protection of ancestral domain/land rights, self-governance and empowerment, cultural integrity, and social justice and human rights.

With the recognition of the IP’s rights to their ancestral land, they can also utilize a vital instrument for their empowerment—the principle of free and prior informed consent (FPIC). Section 3, Part III of the IPRA states that: The [indigenous peoples] shall, within their communities, determine for themselves policies, development programs, projects and plans to meet their identified priority needs and concerns. The [indigenous peoples] shall have the right to accept or reject a certain development intervention in their particular communities. The indigenous peoples’ decision to accept or reject a proposed policy, program, or plan shall be assessed in accordance with their development framework and their value systems for the protection of land and resources.

The IP community of Palibo, Novele in the municipality of Rosario, Agusan del Sur is clearly a very poor community within a significant wetland ecosystem. It is in this context that the proposed project will focus on facilitating the tenurial security of ancestral domain claim, conservation and protection and the same time on improving the living condition of the community residents. Based on the barangay profile of 2004, the estimated total land area is 5,716 hectares of which 300 hectares are cultivated and planted mostly with corn, rice and some vegetables, 10 hectares is the sacred forest, 8 hectares barangay site, 5 hectares cemetery, 5 hectares residential, 4,693 is forest and around 700 hectares are abandoned.

The proponent of this project is really confident on proposing this kind of project based on the process they undergone in identifying and prioritizing of the needs and problems of which the IP community really involved on it.

Problems to be Addressed

The project will address the following problems:

1.    Tenurial Security. The Manobo IPs believes that their cultural identity is integrated in their ancestral domain. Without their ancestral land, their cultural integrity is also gone. Regaining their land will ensure the survival of their cultural identity.  Intrusions of investors are putting the lands of the IPs taken from them.  Further complicating the loss of ancestral lands is the out migration of IPs to other places because of lack of opportunities in their own land and their inability to control intrusion of investors and other migrants into their lands.

2.    No livelihood support (farming facilities and appropriate technology). Most of the residents in the sitio Palibo, Novele, Rosario, Agusan del Sur rely on farming as their main livelihood but because of lack access to farm facilities and lack of appropriate farming technology, their farm production is low and their income remain insufficient and not even enough to response their basic needs.

3.    Insufficient delivery of basic services. At their present situation, the residents in this community had experienced the water-borne diseases and other health related problems. Access to basic services is very limited.

4.    Unsustainable practices in farming and wetland resources. The people in this community need to understand the linkage between the poverty and the importance of wetland resources for a sustainable livelihood. Building the local people’s environmental consciousness is important to have an informed community that can take more responsibility and accountability in managing their critical environment which will eventually be reflected in terms of their willingness to engage in an actual wetland IP resource management project that has strong links in maintaining sustainable livelihoods.

5.    Diminishing traditional & cultural practices of the IPs. The loss of ancestral land is also aggravating the loss of IP traditions and cultural practices. For example, electric fishing is replacing traditional fishing methods to the detriment of the environment.  Their language and customary laws are in danger of vanishing with the advent of mass media communications.

6.    Environmental degradation. The IP’s are dependent on the vast land and water resources such as agricultural production, fisheries, forest products and minerals for their livelihood. Loss of their ancestral lands due to encroachment of outsiders is resulting in the destruction and depletion of natural resources from which IP livelihoods are dependent.