Given the foregoing premises, it is our opinion that the claimant Tagbanwas have sufficiently established that they have been using the two islands and the waters between and around them, as indicated in their community sketch map, since time immemorial, the same areas are part of their ancestral domain … “ Outcome of the Initiative On 12 June 1998, the Tagbanwa struggle for recognition of their Ancestral Domain (land and water) finally came into fruition. The CADC of Coron island consisting of 22,400 hectares of land and waters was signed and approved by then DENR Secretary Victor O. Ramos after an exhaustive review of the claim. In 2002, five years after the enactment of IPRA, the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) converted the Tagbanwa’s CADC into a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT), a legal title formally recognizing the rights of possession of IPs over their ancestral domains identified and delineated in accordance with the rules of the IPRA. Upon further review of the claim, in 2002 the NCIP promulgated Administrative Order 1, series of 2002 that determined with finality the validity of the CADT. After the review and revalidation, the total area of the CADT increased by 2,236 hectares from their previous coverage of the Tagbanwa’s claim. The approval and issuance of the Coron CADT served as a precedent for the recognition of two other CADT claims in Northern Palawan, which included substantial parts of the ocean and aquatic resources. In 2008, the CADT application of the Tagbanwa of Calauit Island covering 55,539.1057 hectares (93 percent or 51,855 as ancestral waters), was approved and was later awarded in March 2010. The CADT of the Tagbanwa communities in barangays Tara, Malawig and Buenavista covering at least 75,639.39 hectares was also approved in 2010, but has not been awarded as of this writing. Issues and Analysis Overlapping Tenure The approval of the Tagbanwa CADT and its consequent issuance is a huge victory for the community, however policy overlaps threaten to undermine its value and deny the Tagbanwa the opportunity to enjoy the bundle of rights that the CADT provides. While there are also policy conflicts regarding the disposition and ownership of the terrestrial portion of the ancestral domain, these pale in comparison to the jurisdictional discord and policy incoherence that arise on the inclusion of parts of the ocean in the CADT and its conversion into private property. The coverage of municipal waters as defined by the Local Government Code and the Fisheries Code7 is in direct conflict with the IPRA. Furthermore, existing laws of the country do not vest private ownership to any body of water, which are considered a part of the Public 14