The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is currently reviewing five resource-use agreements within the 215,950-hectare Sarangani Bay Protected Seascape (SBPS) in an effort to keep all agreements and contracts issued in protected areas aligned with existing policies.
The review follows the directive of former DENR Secretary Roy A. Cimatu to convert all compliant resource-use agreements and contracts into Special Use Agreement in Protected Areas (SAPA) pursuant to the provisions of Republic Act No. 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.
Section 25 of the law allows the grant of tenure instrument (SAPA) 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 SBPS, which have already submitted SAPA applications, covers 104,049 square meters or 10.4 hectares under a memoranda of agreement (MOA) with Cargil Oil Mills Philippines Inc. for a jetty-pier project (44,358 sq m); YBS Green Oil Corp.’s oil depot and terminal project (34,444 sq m); Petron Corp.’s fuel terminal project (11,373 sq m); Seatrade Canning Corp.’s tuna processing and production plant (9,925 sq m); and Alliance Select Food International Inc.’s wastewater treatment and wharf facilities (3,949 sq m).
The Kamanga Agro-Industrial Ecozone Development Corp., which is also a MOA holder, has been issued SAPA for a jetty-pier project covering an area of 211,970 sq m.
“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 DENR Acting Secretary Jim O. Sampulna said, noting that there are ancestral lands within protected areas that are covered by the said MOAs.
Sampulna cited the DENR’s MOA with the Masungi Georeserve Foundation Inc. (MGFI) covering some 2,700 hectares within the Rizal watershed, as another case that needs to be rectified through the issuance of SAPA.
The MOA was issued in 2017, or a year before the ENIPAS was enacted into law.
He said that the free and prior informed consent of concerned indigenous peoples will be required, “something that was not considered when the MOA was inked with MGFI in 2017.”
The MOA does not provide for the payment of user fee or government share from earned 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 (UMRBPL), a legislated protected area by virtue of the ENIPAS Act of 2018.
On July 18, 2018, Cimatu ordered the review of all MOA “pertaining to special uses within protected areas which are still in effect,” citing that the “holder shall be made to apply for SAPA” in accordance with Department Administrative Order (DAO) 2007-17 and DAO 2018-05.
DAO 2007-17 provides the rules and regulations governing special uses in protected areas, while DAO 2018-05 provides the formula for the calculation of development fees which is equivalent to 5 percent of the most recent zonal value of the commercial zone in the nearest barangay or municipality where the project area is located multiplied by the size of the area of development plus one percent (1 percent) of the value of improvement.
This formula is also provided for in the Section 25 of RA 11038 or the ENIPAS Act of 2018.
In 2021, DENR-CALABARZON Regional Executive Director Nilo Tamoria sent two letters to MGFI president Ben Dumaliang, advising him to start the conversion process of MGFI’s MOA into SAPA.
Dumaliang declined the request in a letter dated September 9, 2021. ###
