Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) : does it give indigenous peoples more control over development of their lands in the Philippines?

Abstract

The 1998 Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) grants indigenous peoples (IPs) in the Philippines the right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) with regard to development projects undertaken on their ancestral lands. My thesis explores whether the current practice of generating such consent guarantees indigenous peoples the control over development, particularly in relation to mining, that such procedures were designed to ensure. Two case studies involving the Mamanwa and the Manobo tribes in Region XIII of Mindanao suggest that the government agencies involved failed to follow the rules set out in the officially approved guidelines that govern the conduct of the FPIC process. The National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) - the operating agency for FPIC in the Philippines - does not seem to have either the facilitation skills or an understanding of the complexity of issues involved required to achieve the goals of the 1998 IPRA. NCIP does not have the resources it needs to do its job and at times appears powerless vis-a-vis the mining companies and the Philippine government which has aggressively pursued the expansion and deregulation of the mining industry. In my two representative case studies, the mining companies used the promise of financial benefits at the outset of the consultations to short circuit the required FPIC process. Long-term social and environmental impacts and benefits were hardly discussed. The responses of the mining companies to concerns expressed by the tribes were not transparent. The Memorandums of Agreement (MOAs) produced in both cases hardly mentioned what would be done to meet the concerns of the aboriginal leadership before, during and after mining operations commenced.

(cont.) Cultural erosion in many IP communities has led to the imposition of centralized decisionmaking that works against the goals of the FPIC process. In addition, the traditional decisionmaking procedures employed by IPs are inadequate to generate the kind .of conversation required to ensure Free, Prior and Informed Consent. Finally, most IP communities do not have a long-term development plans. They live on a day-to-day basis merely trying to survive. In the absence of such plans, it is hard to see how the tribes involved can really make informed decisions and ask for appropriate safeguards and shared commitments.