115 Forestry investments involve the use of forest resources that are considered public lands under Philippine law. There were seven cases that cover 115,100 hectares, all of which involved encroachment on ancestral domains. Stakeholder responses to land conflicts Responses to conflict can be categorized into four: (1) yielding; (2) violence; (3) peaceful claim-making; and, (4) conflict resolution. Yielding involves stakeholders surrendering their claims and allowing their opponent’s goals and interests to prevail. It was found that many rural poor communities were forced to yield to the interests of investors and migrants because of their poor adaptive capacity to situations of conflict and sheer fear in the midst of the vast resources available to their opponents. Of the 14 cases wherein rural poor communities yielded to the demands of investors, five cases resulted in the community members seeking employment in the enterprise that displaced them due to extreme poverty. For the rural poor under threat, the risks involved in claim-making often outweigh the potential benefits. In many instances, they are forced to yield initially to the interest of their opponents. Later, they pursue other courses of action when opportunities to assert their claims become available. Investors only yielded to rural poor communities in four cases when the government enforced decisions in favor of the communities. One particularly maladaptive form of response to conflict is engaging in acts of violence. Violence is often caused by poor access to justice, when stakeholders (particularly the rural poor), do not have the means to pursue their claims through peaceful means. When a conflict turns violent, damage to lives, health, livelihood, and people’s sense of security and normalcy are sustained by both direct and indirect stakeholders. However, the brunt of the damage is usually borne by those who have the least capacity to engage in violence. Violent responses can come in the form of acts of revenge, the installation of barriers to prevent access to land/resources under contention; and the mobilization of armed groups. Violence only further escalates conflict and breeds a vicious cycle of retaliation. Land Conflicts and Land Rights Defenders in the Philippines Infrastructure investments pose the greatest threat of displacement. These accounted for 64 percent of total households threatened with eviction and displacement/damage to livelihoods (28,010 households). Such potentially ruinous infrastructures consist of the construction of dams intended to provide hydro-electric power and water supply to cities in exchange for displacement of rural communities, mostly consisting of ICCs/IPs living adjacent to urban centers.

Select target paragraph3

Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents