Separate Opinion 21 G.R. No. 224469 The IPRA' s safeguards have been suggested as insufficient, and the IPs rights over their ancestral domain may very well be so easily abused by nonIPs with proprietary interests in the forest lands. Truly, I submit that these are valid reservations. But I humbly offer, as well, that this may not be the proper yardstick against which we measure the considerations of the issues at hand. For the difficulty in arguing based on fear of a disastrous outcome is that it is impossible to disprove albeit not yet true, and in the meantime, the Court is building walls where the legislature may have intended doors. I submit that perhaps, if not with this case, a tightrope must eventually be walked with respect to the issues of environmental sustainability and indigenous peoples' rights, without having to weaken one to enable the other. For as affirmed by the IPRA, the cultural identity of the indigenous peoples has long been inseparable from the environment that surrounds it. There is, therefore, no knowable benefit in an indigenous custom or cultural belief that truthfully permits plunder of the environment that they hold synonymous with their collective identity. No legally sound argument may be built to support the premise that we ought not affirm the freedom of these indigenous peoples because they might exercise such freedom to bulldoze their own rights. That the experience on the ground shows abuses from unscrupulous non-members of ICCs/IPs of ancestral domains does not merit that the very same indigenous communities that have been taken advantage of be made to pay the highest cost of relinquishing what little control that was restored to them by law. And still, and all told, the Court must not forget, the facts of the case remain to be this: two men felling ONE dita tree to build one communal toilet for their indigenous community. Although having risen to the heights of contested constitutional interpretations, this case remains to be a criminal one, where the liberty of petitioners hang in the balance. On this note, it may be well to remember that the case of Cruz which dealt with the constitutionality of the provisions of the IPRA was decided by an equally divided Court. 48 This only goes to show that there are still nuances concerning the rights of IPs within their ancestral land and domain that are very much open to varying interpretations. Prescinding from this jurisprudential history, perhaps the instant case may not provide the most sufficient and adequate~ veque to resolve the issues brought about by this novel piece of legislation. It would be the height of unfairness to burden the instant case against petitioners with the need to resolve the intricate Constitutional matters brought about by their mere membership in the IP community 48 As the votes were equally divided (7 to 7) and the necessary majority was not obtained, the case was redeliberated upon. However, after redeliberation, the voting remained the same. Accordingly, pursuai t~ Rule 5(j, Section, 7 ofthe Rules of Civil Procedure, the petition is DISMISSED.