because of its limited coverage. The total area under ISF in 1986 was only 446,156 hectares, compared to 159 timber licenses that covered a total area of 5.85 million hectares (Pulhin, et. al, 2008). Meanwhile, there were initial efforts at tenure reform in public lands. In 1974, Presidential Decree (PD) 410 declared ancestral lands occupied and cultivated by national cultural minorities as alienable and disposable. It provided for the issuance of Land Occupancy Certificates to members of national cultural minorities, to cover family-sized farm lots not exceeding five hectares each. PD 410 was the first policy that recognized indigenous peoples’ rights to public lands and forests; however, it did not provide for collective rights nor recognize their rights to ancestral domains. In 1983, Proclamation No. 2282 reclassified 1.5 million hectares of the public domain in 64 provinces as A&D lands for agricultural and resettlement purposes under the government’s Kilusang Kabuhayan sa Kaunlaran (KKK) program. However, many of the proclaimed KKK lands overlapped with ancestral domains – later triggering land conflicts between migrant-settlers and indigenous communities. It was after the Marcos regime that tenure policies involving public lands became anchored on social justice and equity. Following the 1987 Constitution, Executive Order (EO) 192 emphasized the principle of “equitable access” in the management of the country’s natural resources. EO 229 then defined the mechanisms to implement the agrarian reform program. It provided for the distribution of “lands of the public domain suitable to agriculture” subject to the “prior rights, homestead rights of small settlers and rights of indigenous communities to their ancestral domains. RA 6657 (Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law) mandated the redistribution of both private and public agricultural lands to landless farmers and farmworkers. Section 2 of RA 6657 further provided for “the principle of distribution or stewardship, wherever applicable, in the disposition or utilization of lands of the public domain” (emphasis supplied). Although CARP included parts of the public lands for distribution, it was not enough to address environmental degradation in the State-held forestlands. To address this insufficiency, the earlier ISF programs and recognition of ancestral domains were integrated into the CBFM Program that was instituted in 1995 through EO 263. Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ANGOC) 65