Issuance of land patents – land to the claimant? Based on DENR’s reported
CARP accomplishments, some 2,753,460 families have directly benefitted from
the redistribution of public lands (through patents and leaseholds) between July
1987 and December 2015. However, the quality of DENR’s work has not been
assessed. For DENR employees, the underlying principle in titling may not be
land to the tiller but land to the claimant, even if he/she is neither a resident in
the area or an actual tiller. With the reported completion of DENR’s work under
CARP, DENR is likely to return to its administrative role of processing claims and
applications, with less concerns for equity considerations. Under RA 9176, the
filing of land patent applications is extended to CY 2020.
Need to assess household-level impacts of group tenure arrangements, such
as CBFM. Under CBFM, agreements are forged with POs and there is the danger
that the privileges and benefits are captured by the leaders or local elite especially
in the absence of regular monitoring. Furthermore, many of the current 1,884
POs with CBFMAs were created solely for the scheme. According to a 2016 GIZ
study, “… many (POs) do not have leadership and management capabilities and
disintegrate after some time. Some POs provide benefits only to the leaders and
include only part (20 to 30 percent) of the community.”
Moratorium on new tenure agreements on forestland. The 2013 DENR
moratorium on the renewal or issuance of tenure agreements on forestland has
left many forest dwelling households and communities without legal tenure.
Half of the approximately 500,000 individual CSCs have expired, although the
DENR reportedly plans to renew them through group tenure arrangements
under CBFM. Meanwhile, for CBFMA holders, there is an approaching need to
apply for renewal of their 25-year leases, as CARP was instituted in 1988. Who
decides which CBFM areas would continue? What happens to those whose CBFM
agreements have ended?
Overlapping tenure instruments and management schemes. On average, a
CBFMA covers 858 hectares and 102 families. As such, CBFMAs cover relatively
smaller parcels within larger tenure and management regimes, which include
ancestral domains, national parks and protected areas, mineral lands, timber and
forest concessions, and lands managed through local governments. Moreover,
CBFMAs and CSCs are just two among the many tenure instruments that DENR
issues over forestlands and other public lands. In many instances, there are
overlapping tenure instruments and management schemes, and these affect
especially indigenous peoples, as when CBFMAs are issued to settlers within areas
under ancestral domain claims. On occasion, resource-use conflicts contribute
Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ANGOC)
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