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Sunday, April 7, 2024 Vol. 19 No. 173
P25.00 nationwide | 2 sections 12 pages | 7 DAYS A WEEK
DENR wants power to demolish illegal structures in protected areas as Chocolate Hills fiasco opens a can of worms By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo
T
Special to the BusinessMirror
HE Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is seeking an amendment to the expanded protected areas law to give it the power to demolish illegal structures in these ecologically critical locations. This developed as senators laid the blame at the foot of DENR officials for what they perceived as the latter’s inability to enforce Republic Act 11038, or the Expanded National Integrated Protected Areas System (ENipas) Act of 2018, even issuing environmental climate certificates (ECC) that have allowed commercial structures to be built in these protected areas. Sen. Cynthia Villar, chairperson of the Senate Committee on Environment, Natural Resources, and Climate Change, stressed at a hearing of her committee on Wednesday, “Even if these areas are [individually] titled, there are limitations on what the owners can do. It’s okay if it’s for agriculture purposes, but for other uses, like resorts, this shouldn’t be allowed.” DENR officials cited that in many protected areas, there are already private property owners because large portions had been declared alienable and disposable (A&D) lands, even before the ENipas Act had been promulgated. At the hearing, jointly held with the Senate Committee on Local Government to discuss commercial structures in Chocolate Hills as well as other protected areas, Sen. Raffy Tulfo pointed out there were 57 of such structures at the Mount Apo Natural Park, which had been approved by the Protected Areas Management Bureau (PAMB), but had no ECCs from the DENR. “It should be, that if they don’t have an ECC, you [DENR] should immediately demolish [the structures],” he asserted. Mount Apo, a dormant volcano, is a popular tourist destination located along the borders of Davao City and Davao del Sur.
However, Environment Undersecretary for Legal and Administration Ernesto Adobo said the agency’s hands are tied in this regard. “Under the law, we have to go through the courts before demolition…. We have a position paper [to amend the law] to have the power to demolish.” He cited the case of Boracay Island, where DENR had been able to demolish portions of resorts that violated the easement on the main white beach, because the Malay Municipality had its own ordinance that prescribed the 25+5-meter easement rule. “But in the forestlands, we have not been able to do that [demolish the structures], and many cases are pending [in court].” The DENR chaired the Boracay Inter-Agency Task Force tasked to rehabilitate the island in 2018. Meanwhile, Senate President Pro Tempore Loren Legarda revealed at the same hearing that it was DENR Assistant Secretary for Field Operations (Luzon and Visayas) Gilbert Gonzales who approved the construction of the controversial Captain’s Peak Garden and Resort in Chocolate Hills. Gonzales was DENR regional executive director and chairman of PAMB, which had discussed the resort project, but he said he was away on an official trip when that meeting was held. Senators also learned that 95.5 percent of Chocolate Hills, the Philippines’s first Unesco Global Geopark, are A&D lands, of which 5,652 properties are privately titled covering 7,860 hectares. Aside from Captain’s Peak, there are two other resorts within the popular destination—all of them have no
AERIAL view of the Chocolate Hills in Bohol. MR.SIWABUD VEERAPAISARN | DREAMSTIME.COM
WHO PROTECTS OUR PROTECTED AREAS? THE Captain’s Peak Garden and Resort, Sagbayan, Bohol MICHAEL EDWARDS | DREAMSTIME.COM
ECCs either. Captain’s Peak was eventually closed last month after the municipality of Sagbayan, where the resort is located, cancelled the latter’s business permit after it learned DENR had issued a temporary closure order last September precisely because it had no ECC. An official of the municipality said they were never given a copy of the DENR order, thus they proceeded in giving the resort a business permit in January 2024. (See, “Controversial resort within Chocolate Hills now closed,” in the BusinessMirror, March 15, 2024.) Legarda, an environmentalist, insisted that DENR wrongly interpreted the ENipas law, which she coauthored as a bill, because its “aim has always been to protect and conserve our environment.” As such, she pointed out, that even if there are privately titled lands in protected areas, “any development on those properties will still have to conform to the law’s objective, i.e., ecological conservation.”
Sen. Nancy Binay, chairperson of the Committee on Tourism, had filed Resolution No. 967 urging relevant Senate committees to investigate the presence of commercial structures within Chocolate Hills and other protected areas after a vlogger’s video of Captain’s Peak went viral. In her opening statement at Wednesday’s hearing, she said in a mix of Filipino and English that aside from seeking the DENR and its other agencies’ side on the Chocolate Hills issue, “it would be good to find out what the local government units are doing to care for our protected areas, and if their comprehensive land use plans are aligned, harmonized, and complementing with ‘no-build zones,’ ‘protection zones,’ and ‘buildable areas’ to the unique physical and geographical character of Bohol and in line with the protection of the province’s geological heritage.” She stressed that the Senate hearing didn’t intend to have officials point fingers at each other,
“but we want to know where the policy gaps are, the gray areas in laws and ordinances, the failure in coordination and implementation, and why mandates were not faithfully carried out.” DENR’s Gonzales tried to defend his endorsement of Captain’s Peak, which was approved for construction in February 2018, saying that the project went through a stringent process and despite his absence when the project was discussed by PAMB, “the barangay captains imposed strict conditions such as no building on top of the hills. They actually debated what is acceptable to the PAMB. They also insisted that the proponent secure an ECC. But because the proponent didn’t seek an ECC, we were not given the chance to scrutinize the project.” To this, Binay urged DENR to “tighten the policy” on how the PAMB hearings should be convened. Under the law, PAMB meetContinued on A2
PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 56.4130 n JAPAN 0.3728 n UK 71.3286 n HK 7.2062 n CHINA 7.8005 n SINGAPORE 41.8494 n AUSTRALIA 37.1536 n EU 61.1573 n KOREA 0.0418 n SAUDI ARABIA 15.0403 Source: BSP (April 5, 2024)