Crossroads: Food security vs ethanol vs mining vs climate change

By MARY LOU O. MARIGZA
www.nordis.net

Food security and food sovereignty had always been related to the land problem. It is a pitiful state of affairs that those who till the land and provide food for our table have for the longest time been deprived of the right to own the land they till. Blood, sweat, tears, hunger, dispossession and ejection are the sorrowful realities they face.

In our hunger for clean energy and more production to feed a hungry world, our farmers have been the least of the concern of state planners and investors, especially foreign investors who have to keep their deep pockets full and their economies rolling. Poor Filipino farmers at the receiving end.

This is the problem faced by the farmers of San Mariano town in Isabela who are facing a rich giant conglomerate of Japanese investors and local sugarlords that needs the energy and the clean environment “pogi points” to turn sugarcane to bio-ethanol for electricity and transport fuel. Theoretically, the bio-ethanol enterprise will provide the necessary shift from fossil fuels to renewable resources for energy and transport that was mandated into law through the BioFuels Act.

However, what is hidden in the equation is the gargantuan shift from farming for food to farming for energy. To use the analogy of Ka Daning Ramos of Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, the farmer who produces the chicken for the market will now be reduced to buying chicken cubes if he wants to eat chicken. The farmers who will be contracting with the bioethanol company will now be reduced to buying all their needs including rice since they will be forced to plant only “ethanol” to meet the company’s quota. Even their language has changed. The farmers of San Mariano no longer say they will plant sugarcane, no, they will plant “ethanol”.

The International Fact-finding Mission to San Mariano, Isabela last week of May was conducted by several experts on food security and land rights on the national and international level. This is a follow-up activity to an earlier national Fact-finding mission last February to probe into land grabbing vis a vis the biofuels project.

The IFFM documented cases already brought as early as 2005 to the municipal, provincial and national levels of the government and heard new cases of landgrabbing with the open knowledge of government agencies like the DENR, DAR, Land Bank and the like. The land problem is so massive and deep but the tillers of the soil stood their ground – “Laban kung laban” as they said it so eloquently. They had to confront a bureaucracy that was clearly washing its hands off the problem or outright sitting on the complaints while they “study the matter further” until the next fact-finding mission maybe. They gritted their teeth when a legal officer accused them of “nagpapaloko” even when they presented evidences of the scam and fraud in several barrios of San Mariano.

San Mariano has a history of land struggle that started when the logging of the forest region started. The first to be affected are the Agtas. They have been displaced by migrants who have heard of the land frontiers and the richness of the Isabela soil. The vast expanse of logged over areas that had water resources and roads however bad became home to communities of Ifugaos, Ilokanos and Ibanags and the Agtas who later realized they have to claim some piece of land with “paper” ownership and stay in one place if they have to show proof of their claim to these paper documents.

In one barangay, an Ifugao settler who has been a local official has been “resourceful” to title his ownership over hundreds of hectares. In Ilocos, he would have been a big landlord but in San Mariano, he is just one of the big guys. San Mariano is so big that a lot of people can easily settle and make the land productive. And therein lies the problem. The land in San Mariano is up for grabs even if it is knowledge that these lands have been occupied since the tillers can remember or were themselves born there.

In the midst of these land problems, a Japanese funded consortium is planning to lease/rent lands for sugarcane plantations for bio-ethanol. What will be left of the farmers then? Only the knowledge that once upon a morning they “own” a piece of land and in the afternoon, another has claimed it by paper documents? What will they put on their tables if all they will be planting are “ethanol”? After all, 11,000 hectares is not a small number. And would 11,000 hectares suffice if there is crop failure due to weather and pests? Where will the farmers now get their food (and it is knowledge also that most of the rice fields have been converted to yellow or animal corn fields)?

And yet another specter is looming in San Mariano – mining companies have applied for permit to mine the areas for minerals. Where will the farmers of San Mariano get their food? # nordis.net

Philippine CSOs present position at multi-stakeholders forum on aid effectiveness

Last June 2, Philippine Civil Society Organizations represented by AidWatch Philippines and the Council for People's Development and Governance (CPDG) were able to present their statement for the Busan High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness which will happen on November 29-December 1 this year, in the Multi-stakeholders forum on aid effectiveness.

The multi-stakeholders forum was facilitated by the Philippine Harmonization Committee on Aid Effectiveness and was attended by the National Economic Development Authority- Project Monitoring Staff (NEDA-PMS), Department of Finance, Representative Luzviminda Ilagan of Gabriela Partylist, a representative from the office of Kabataan Partylist Representative Raymond Palatino, donor agencies US Aid, World Bank, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the German KFW Bankengruppe and the United Nations and CSOs.

In the statement presented by Jazminda Lumang of AidWatch, the CSOs calls were:

1. Fully evaluate and deepen the Paris and Accra commitments through ensuring reforms based on democratic ownership. This can be done through giving emphasis on the agency of citizens, communities and marginalized groups in constructing their own paths to development by giving more space for locally-defined goals and locally-led strategies that better reflect people’s aspiration, practices and knowledge and allow for greater democratic participation. We demand particularly the government for accountability mechanisms on ensuring that ODA and development programs reflect the interest and truly benefit the people especially the marginalized segments and in ensuring that ODA is free from corruption.

2. Strengthen Development Effectiveness through development cooperation practices that promote human rights and focus on the eradication of poverty and inequality. The government and development partners must commit to and implement rights-based approaches to development focusing their attention to the most marginalized people and people living in poverty; ensuring inclusive participation and empowerment and upholding of the right to development; promote and implement gender equality and women’s rights; and implement a decent work (and decent wage) agenda.

3. Affirm and ensure the participation of the full diversity of CSOs in the Philippines as independent development actors in their own right in development cooperation processes.

• Enact and support House Bill 3230 which provides for greater democratic ownership in the country’s official development assistance and ensuring the role of CSOs in development cooperation.
• Recognize the Istanbul Principles as basis for context-specific assessment of CSO contributions to development.
• Commit to creating an enabling environment for CSOs for them to reach their full potential as development actors. Basic enabling mechanisms for CSOs must be in place in keeping with international human rights guarantees, including freedom of association, freedom of expression, the right to operate free from unwarranted state interference, the right to communicate and cooperate, the right to seek and secure funding, and the state’s duty to protect its people.

4. Promote an equitable and just development cooperation architecture that is inclusive, rights-based and democratic.

• Work for an inclusive Busan Compact for Development Effectiveness at the HLF IV – consistent with human rights conventions and covenants involving all stakeholders – governments, donors, multi-lateral institutions, parliamentarians, local governments and civil society.
• Recognize CSOs especially women’s organizations, social partners and grass roots organizations as full members in the formal structures of a new development architecture, along with governments and other defined development stakeholders.
• Create an equitable and inclusive multi-stakeholders forum for policy dialogue enabling and supporting situations where people can exercise sovereignty over their own process of development, where the voice of the marginalized groups are given space and heard, supporting and ensuring economic, social, political and cultural institutions are accountable, inclusive, participatory and democratic.

(Please read the whole statement here.)

Aside from AidWatch, CPDG and the Reality of Aid, the CSOs present were  the Council for Health and Development, Health Alliance for Democracy, Community Medicine Development Foundation, Ecumenical Institute for Labor Education and Research, Center for Women's Resources, Citizens Disaster Response Center, AGHAM (Advocates of Science and Technology for the People), Kalipunan ng mga Katutubong Mamamayan ng Pilipinas (KAMP), NARS ng Bayan, Med-herbal Pharmacy and the Center for Development Programs in the Cordillera.