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First Posted on Inside Mindanao (www.insidemindanao.com) on November 1, 2008

Indigenous People in South Mindanao vow to protect ancestral lands
from biofuel plantations
By Ellen Red

Lorna Mora, secretary general of Kahugpungan sa mga Lumad sa Halayong Habagatang Mindanao or Federation of Indigenous People in Far South Mindanao (KALUHAMIN) in a statement said, "... the Arroyo government, in partnership with foreign corporations, is planning to establish jatropha (biofuel) plantations covering 30,000 hectares of agricultural lands in Sarangani Province and General Santos City."

"This will definitely drive us again from our lands, destroy our livelihoods and affect our culture and tradition as an indigenous people," she added.

"We will continue the struggle of our ancestors to protect our indigenous peoples' rights and ancestral lands. It is now the foreign mining and biofuel corporations which are encroaching into our ancestral domain and grabbing our lands," Pareng Tamba, a B'laan leader and chairperson of KALUHAMIN said.

Lumads or indigenous peoples (IPs) in South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani, General Santos City (SocCSkSarGen) Region 12 recently formed a regional lumad alliance and forged a pact to oppose government's biofuel plantation projects, as well as large–scale mining in the region.

In her state of the nation address last year, President Gloria Macapagal–Arroyo supported jatropha production to lessen the country's dependence on imported fossil fuel.

After signing Republic Act 9367 or the Biofuels Act last January, the President directed the Philippine National Oil Corporation–Alternative Fuels Corporation (PNOC–AFC) to spearhead the biofuels project and to consider jatropha curcas, locally known as tuba–tuba, as the most viable feedstock for biodiesel production.

Philippine Information Agency reported that on February 7, 2008, the PNOC–AFC and Jubilee Agri–Advancement Corporation (JAC) signed a Memorandum of Agreement on the establishment of a 500–hectare jatropha orchard in SOCSKSARGEN for seedlings propagation and seed production to supply the requirements of jatropha plantations in the region.

On July 3, 2008, PIA reported that the PNOC–AFC and Landan People's Multi–Purpose Cooperative (LPMC), a private independent pineapple growers' cooperative of DOLE Philippines based in Polomolok, South Cotabato, also signed an agreement to plant jatropha on 5,000 hectares of lands in SOCSKSARGEN.

END