The solution to Bohol is to be found in Masungi

Antonio Contreras

ENVIRONMENT Secretary Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga planned to cancel the 2017 memorandum of agreement (MoA) that the late environment secretary Gina Lopez signed with the Masungi Georeserve Foundation Inc. (MGFI) for the conservation of 2,700 hectares of the Upper Marikina River Basin Protected Landscape (UMRBPL).

When this article comes out, we are not even certain if she would have already signed the order and allowed irrationality to get the better of her or whether she will remain true to her past image of a socially just environmental crusader that endeared her to environmental advocates.

The other firestorm buffeting Yulo-Loyzaga is coming from the direction of Bohol, where the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is again accused of allowing private interests to spoil a natural beauty that is the renowned Chocolate Hills. It is easy for ordinary citizens not to have the time to understand and study the pertinent laws, rules, and regulations to jump to the conclusion that the DENR erred in approving titles to land that has since been developed by their owners into resorts. Faced with the onslaught of criticism both online from netizens and from legislators sitting in their hearing chambers, Yulo-Loyzaga appears to be succumbing to the pressure and thus would tragically contribute to the gross misreading of the laws and mixing up apples and oranges.

Yulo-Loyzaga is now offering the head of Masungi, which is the wrong sacrificial lamb. Canceling the MoA between DENR and Masungi will not make the problem of private landowners inside protected areas go away but will only invite a very expensive lawsuit against the DENR and the ire of local and international environmental activists and celebrities. It will be hard for the DENR and the government to explain how it can terminate a contract with a party that has performed well and won awards and accolades for environmental protection.

The irony here is that the solution to the problem buffeting the DENR triggered by the Chocolate Hills scandal can be found in the innovative manner in which the Masungi Geopark Project has been conceptualized and executed by MGFI pursuant to the 2017 MoA.

But first, DENR should make the public, including the senators and representatives, and even environmental activists, that include even Masungi advocates and allies, understand that the presence of privately titled lands inside protected areas is not blanketly illegal, nor is it solely the DENR’s fault. It also does not necessarily follow that these private lands are even part of the protected area.

Presidents from Ferdinand Marcos Sr. to Gloria Macapagal Arroyo had been reclassifying protected areas into alienable and disposable (A and D) lands and vice-versa. Marcos Sr. issued PD 324 in 1973, which reclassified portions of what is now UMRBPL as A and D lands, which he later reversed in PD 1636 in 1977.

President Fidel Ramos issued Proclamation 776, which reclassified a portion of the area covered by PD 324, which was earlier reclassified back to a protected area through Proclamation 1636, to A and D and turned it into a housing site for government employees in 1996. In 1997, the DENR entered into a joint venture agreement (JVA) with Blue Star Development Corp. (BSDC), which is the parent company of MGFI, to implement these government housing projects. The housing project was stopped due to DENR’s failure to eject illegal settlers in the area, and it is at this site that MGFI established its current ecotourism park.

It was also in 1997 that Ramos issued Proclamation 1037, which established the Chocolate Hills National Monument (CHNM) in Bohol.

In 2003, Arroyo amended Ramos’ Proclamation 1037 by issuing Proclamation 333, where she excluded all alienable and disposable lands and flat and rolling lands below 18 percent in slope between the hills from the coverage of CHNM, even as she retained those lands 20 meters from the baseline of every hill outward to serve as a drawback.

In 2006, Arroyo also signed Proclamation 1158, where she set aside 270 hectares inside Masungi as a new site for the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) of the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor), and 30 hectares was reserved for the field office of DENR Region 4A.

Thus, when Republic Act 11038, or the Expanded National Integrated Protected Areas System (E-Nipas) Law, was passed in 2017, the area managed by MGFI as an ecotourism park, which is covered by the JVA, and the land now titled under BuCor and the one set aside for DENR Calabarzon, which are now considered as A and D, should have been technically excluded from UMRBPL. Likewise, the delineated A and D lands, some of which are already titled, between the hills and outside the 20-meter drawback, technically should no longer be considered part of CHNM.

Lands inside protected areas cannot be privately titled. However, RA 11038 has provided that the private property rights of the owners of lands within protected areas that were previously titled before 2017 would be respected, and efforts will be exerted to ensure that their use shall be harmonized, as far as practicable, with the provisions of the law.

This is not, however, the case for private lands that are adjacent to protected areas but should not have been part of them. The DENR should clearly impress on everyone this important difference. This is the case in most areas in Chocolate Hills, where private properties are even sandwiched between hills and thus were excluded from CHNM by Proclamation 333. It is here that the innovative institutional arrangement in Masungi can be used as a model, where private land owners or those assigned to have fiduciary relationships with them, such as in the case of MGFI, would be assigned as trustees to protect and conserve the portion of the protected area that is contiguous to their lots. These lots within the protected areas will now be considered as being held in trust. In exchange, incentives and technical assistance will be provided to these private landowners toward ecologically appropriate and sustainable development initiatives within their properties.

It would be a shame if the DENR throws away a potential solution to a problem just to appease legislators and the public crying for blood.