The JAO has resulted in the further marginalization of indigenous peoples. The IPs still are struggling to come up with strategies to resolve these agency-jurisdiction contested areas, realize the registration of their CADT and finally have the CADT awarded. This should not be the case if the JAO was functional. Rather, the affected IPs should be able to devote their energy and time to positive activities – i.e., improving their management over their CADT, developing their ancestral domain and livelihoods, and addressing existing threats of encroachment of illegal logging in forested areas and illegal cattle pastures in grasslands. The non-registration of CADTs has fostered a negative attitude among local governments and national agencies to question ancestral domain rights. The never-ending prolonging of the registration and awarding of the CADT has undermined the indigenous people’s rights to ancestral domain. It has encouraged the other groups and government agencies to disregard or selectively respect the rights of the IPs to their CADT area. Out of the 221 approved CADTs to date, only 50 have so far been registered under LRA. Uncertainty in ARMM. Since NCIP’s inception in 1998, a representative of the Central Mindanao Ethnographic Region has been appointed to the NCIP. The jurisdiction of this commissioner includes several provinces and a city of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). However, no CADT application from the ARMM has been processed and approved by the NCIP. This is mainly due to the uncertainty and potential conflict of jurisdiction between the NCIP and the ARMM Government. As a result, thousands of indigenous Teduray, Lambangian and Manobo communities have not been able to secure CADTs over their ancestral domains. It is only in the past two years that the NCIP has taken the initiative to support the CADT claim of the Teduray-Lambangian ancestral domain claimants in South Upi, Maguindanao. Emerging policy issues and threats Expansion of Special Economic Zones. Special Economic Zones or ecozones consist of selected areas in the country that are transformed into highly developed agro-industrial, tourist/recreational, commercial, banking, investment, and financial centers, and where highly trained workers and efficient services will be made available to commercial enterprises. 84 Status of Land and Resource Tenure Reform in the Philippines 2018