(Quezon City, December 10, 2024) — Legal and policy advocacy group Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center (LRC) today revealed that at least 237,931 Indigenous People (IP) have been affected by at least 73 recorded human rights violations (HRVs) linked to land conflict in their territories in 2014, a staggering 428 percent increase compared to the previous two-year period.
In its 2024 State of Indigenous People’s Address Report (SIPA 2024), LRC noted that this increase mostly involved conflicts over ancestral domains, reflecting the continuing lack of recognition and respect IPs struggle with over their rights to their territories.
“Virtually all the cases we monitored in this report involved conflicts with ancestral domains, with over 55 percent involving active violations of the Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) process, which is enshrined in the Indigenous People’s Rights Act,” said Leon Dulce, Campaigns Support and Linkages coordinator of LRC.
The report cited government data revealing that only one in every four listed Certificates of Ancestral Domain Titles (CADTs) has been fully approved, with the remaining 78 percent still pending in the process, which denies these lands and communities the needed protection.
The Center pointed out that one factor that has contributed to the delay is the impasse on the Joint Administrative Order for tenurial instruments, which further aggravates the conflicts over land claims, marginalizing Indigenous communities and complicating efforts to process or formalize CADTs.
Energy transition boom
For LRC, the violations of FPIC rights of Indigenous communities are likely to get worse in the coming years, given the global boom for energy transition minerals mining and renewable energy projects themselves intensifying pressure on Indigenous lands. The Center noted that around 56 percent of the country’s designated Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) potentially overlap with ancestral domains.
“The Marcos administration wants to fast-track many of these projects through policies that can undermine the FPIC process and other mechanisms for Indigenous public participation. Among these include railroaded revisions to the FPIC guidelines, in particular cutting short FPIC for energy projects, and proposed new FPIC protocols for forest carbon credits,” said Dulce.
The watering down of FPIC is thus anticipated to affect not only energy and mining, but other observed land pressures as well. This includes the expansion of plantations for coconut-based biofuels, which compose around 25 percent of the total agricultural land area in the country, and around 8 million hectares of forest-classified areas up for carbon credits schemes.
Despite the challenges, LRC noted that IPs continue to assert their rights. In July 2024, representatives of indigenous communities engaged the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous People, which was a critical step in putting pressure on the Philippine government on an international level. In addition, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity’s Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework provided a platform for indigenous groups to mainstream the recognition of IP rights and territories through the Indigenous Peoples Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan.
LRC urged the Philippine government to reverse its fast-tracking policy for energy transition projects and instead prioritize the processing of CADTs and safeguarding FPIC rights and procedures, which can protect Indigenous territories and the environmentally critical landscapes ensconced in them.###
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