PICOP files appeal at SC

The Paper Industries Corp. of the Philippines Resources Inc. (PICOP), considered as the country’s largest paper and pulpwood producer, has asked the Supreme Court to review the 2006 decision of the Court’s Third Division and set the case for oral arguments.

In its 38-page manifestation and urgent motion filed last Thursday, PICOP asked the SC to review the Third Division’s Nov. 29, 2006 decision which declared the Presidential Warranty given to it on July 29, 1969 to harvest timber for pulp in the Agusan-Davao-Surigao Forest Reserve as a mere timber license agreement (TLA) that may be revoked or suspended by the Secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

“The decision has reversed the legal principles established in the long line of decisions that a forest reserve cannot be the subject of private appropriation. It is respectfully submitted that reversal of these legal doctrines may only be done by the SC en banc and not a division if the Constitution is to be respected,” PICOP said in its manifestation.

PICOP warned the SC that if the decision of the Third Division is not reconsidered, the country’s 12 million hectares of forest reserves will be broken into “independent enclaves” which are beyond the jurisdiction of state agencies.

The Court’s Third Division ruled that despite the fact that PICOP is operating inside a forest reserve, it still has to secure a certification of non-overlapping with an ancestral domain from the NCIP (National Council of Indigenous Peoples).

PICOP argued that in effect, that decision gave imprimatur to the principle that forest reserves can be the subject of a CADC (Certificate of Ancestral Domain Claim) or a CADT  (Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title).

Under the IPRA (Indigenous People’s Rights Act) law, an ancestral domain is considered as a private but community property of indigenous peoples and indigenous cultural communities in whose areas, the departments of agriculture, environment, interior and local government; justice, education, national defense, energy, among others, will no longer have authority.

PICOP argues that the decision “opened up 12 million hectares of the country’s forest reserves, 40 percent of the country’s land area, to CADTs where the above listed government agencies have no legal basis for jurisdiction and may have the unintended consequence of such areas being independent enclaves with their own armed components.”   – Mike Frialde