More than 500,000 hectares of public forest lands in Mindanao are up for investment, a recent report from the national government revealed, raising concerns among Indigenous peoples.

Joselin Marcus Fragada, Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Undersecretary for field operations and line bureaus, said during this year’s Mindanao Development Forum held in Davao City on October 28 that 500,011 hectares of Mindanao forest lands—excluding in the Bangsamoro region—have been delineated for private investments related to agroforestry, industrial timber and wood processing, and pasture management.

Thirty-five percent of the total lands belong to the Caraga region, followed by the Davao region with 28.8 percent—reportedly considered two of the country’s richest areas in terms of natural resources.

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Moreover, on top of these lands, the agency also reported that 132,896 hectares of forest lands in Mindanao were qualified for clean energy projects.

Sabokahan Youth, a group of young Lumad, expressed strong opposition to DENR’s plan. Apart from possibilities that it may affect ancestral domains of Indigenous communities and may result in the increase of land disputes, the group stressed that privatizing forest areas may lead to environmental destruction.

“We challenge the DENR to be sincere in serving the people instead of destroying the environment,” the group said in a statement, also decrying the Mindanao Development Authority’s plan of exploring options for Mindanao to supply production inputs, including raw minerals, the United States-led Pax Silica initiative if it becomes operational.

Read:Critical minerals policy framework linked to Pax Silica?

The said DENR program will be governed under the Sustainable Forest Land Management Agreement (SFLMA), a production sharing deal between the agency and a qualified applicant to undertake sustainable forest management under a renewable 25-year contract.

DENR Administrative Order No. 2025-22, or the rules and regulations governing SFLMA, shall cover forest lands outside protected areas that are suitable and available for development and utilization.

One of the requirements to be obtained by an applicant is a certificate of non-overlap (CNO), a certification issued by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) attesting that a subject area does not overlap with any ancestral domain.

Fragada said the national government needs the private sector for the state to provide better programs in the country’s timberland and forest land areas.

Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment, in an earlier statement, denounced the SFLMA policy, describing it as a blatant handover of the nation’s forests to profit-driven corporations.

“[It] only deepens the threat to Indigenous and rural poor communities, especially in Mindanao, where intensified Lumad killings are already linked to resource plunder and militarized land grabs,” it added.

Special Archives:Lumad Killings

For the environmental group, such a policy, without a genuine national industrialization that could process the country’s resources for the benefit of the Filipinos, only deepens exploitation and the nation’s dependence on foreign markets. (RVO)

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