117 Agribusiness The DAR and DA are currently encouraging agribusinesses to invest in Filipino farmers. This is being conducted in the absence of a legally-binding framework for the assessment of AVAs (FAO, 2016). Private Infrastructure Despite legal mandates to protect and limit conversion of irrigated and irrigable lands, agricultural lands are still being converted to other uses, particularly for real estate (ILC-NES, 2017). Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Public Infrastructure The current administration has embarked on the Build-BuildBuild program, a massive program on infrastructure projects as preparation for the integration with Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) mostly financed by bilateral loans (PAKISAMA, 2018). When parties pursue conflict resolution, legal battles are generally timeconsuming and resource-draining with litigation lasting from 3-17 years. Legal battles are especially costly for the rural poor. Quasi-judicial bodies and local dispute resolution mechanisms are available and deliver quicker resolution of conflicts, but there is no available data on whether the decisions made through these mechanisms are favorable to rural poor communities or to landowners/ investors. Conflict-prevention mechanisms are also embedded in land and resource governance. Procedural safeguards such as permits, licenses and other government requirements can sometimes prevent land and resource conflicts. Representation and participation mechanisms, when utilized properly, allow poor sectors and communities to register their concerns to decision-making processes in governance. However, in certain instances, these only serve as rubber stamps for land investments. There are cases wherein representatives to governance bodies are beholden to the government officials who appointed them and are not necessarily held accountable by the sectors/communities they supposedly represent. Freedom of information (FOI) policies are in place, but do not necessarily translate to public access to data on land. Given all this, recourse is often fleeting if not totally absent. The government is often caught in fundamental conflicts of interest, which comes in two forms. First, various agencies imbued with their respective mandates and programs compete for jurisdiction over the same parcels of land and natural resources. In the absence of clear harmonization of overlapping laws, land and resource conflicts often turn violent and persist unresolved. This renders the tenure of land and natural resource stakeholders, particularly rural poor communities, insecure and perennially contested. Consequently, their lives are beset with danger. The second form of conflict of interest can be seen in the deliberate policies of government to expedite investments in the name of “ease of doing Land Conflicts and Land Rights Defenders in the Philippines Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and the Department of Agriculture (DA)