AR Now! Opposes DAR-NCIP Harmonization Guidelines on Land Coverage

The People’s Campaign for Agrarian Reform Network, Inc. (AR Now!), a coalition of non-government organizations and people’s organizations working for the effective implementation of agrarian reform in the Philippines, calls on our colleagues and friends in the peasant, indigenous peoples, church and environmental groups to join us in protesting against the issuance of a Joint DAR-NCIP Memorandum Circular calling for the “clarification and restating” of “the respective jurisdiction of the Department of Agrarian Reform and the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples in the coverage of certain landholdings under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL) and the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA).” 

The said draft memorandum circular contains the following provisions which would be detrimental to the interest of our brother IPs and to the integrity of their ancestral domains:

• Section 9 of the draft MC provides that the NCIP, in delineating and titling of Ancestral Domains/Titles, must “EXCLUDE or SEGREGATE all lands covered by the existing Certificates of Landownership Award (CLOAs)”;
• Section 11 also orders the NCIP to furnish the DENR and LRA all its processed survey plans “so that TITLED PROPERTIES  and other PRIVATELY-OWNED LANDHOLDINGS are SEGREGATED in the survey;
• Section 12 places under the DAR’s jurisdiction for CARP coverage the following types of landholdings:

1. All alienable & disposable lands of the public domain DEVOTED TO or SUITABLE TO AGRICULTURE xxx;
2. All lands of the public domain in excess of the specific limits as determined by Congress;
3. All other lands owned by the government devoted to or suitable for agriculture; and
4. All private lands devoted to or suitable for agriculture regardless of the agricultural products raised or that can be raised thereon.

• Section 12 also places under the DAR’s jurisdiction “all public lands, i.e., resettlement areas and reservations, which have been proclaimed (by way of Presidential Proclamations) for DAR, other government agencies, and for government financial institutions and were subsequently turned over to DAR for CARP coverage” and all untitled private agricultural lands (UPALs); and  

• Section 13 orders the NCIP to “not include, but segregate, all agricultural landholdings covered by validly issued CLOAs, EPs, Free Patent, and other titles” in their delineation of ADs/ALs.

 With said provisions, it is clear that the effect will be the subjugation of the IPRA under CARP.  We also suspect that the said MC, which has not been subjected to any public hearing but has already been scheduled to be signed next week, is part of the government’s plan to secure public lands for private agribusiness investors (i.e. RP-China Agreement, San Miguel Corporation’s cassava plantation project). 

 The said Joint Memorandum Circular is also highly irregular as the DAR and the NCIP, through a mere memorandum circular, are effectively defining jurisdiction over certain landholdings, a power which the DAR nor the NCIP do not have.  Only Congress has the power to do so. 

A community of Buhid Mangyans in Bongabong, Mindoro Occidental already possessing a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Claim (CADC) have been constantly harassed by the DAR by conducting surveys inside their ancestral domain.  The DAR has been citing Presidential Proclamation No. 2282 which declared as alienable and disposable some 1.5 million hectares of upland areas all over the country as their basis for covering areas within the ancestral domains of the Buhid Mangyans. 

Although we have been campaigning for the extension and reform of CARP, the harmonization of conflicting land laws/claims and the coverage of UPALs under CARP, we, however, strongly oppose any move to implement CARP at the expense of other marginalized groups such as our brother IPs. 

CARL is a social justice measure, it should correct the historical injustice that the peasantry has suffered under the hands of the big landlords and haciendros.  With the enactment of this Joint Memorandum Circular the government would have effectively used CARL as means of further causing injustice to our brother katutubos/IPs.