Palawan wants 5 areas out of E-Nipas

PUERTO PRINCESA CITY—A Senate initiative to amend a law governing protected areas in the country has touched off yet another environmental debate in Congress and in Palawan, which hosts most of the country’s established national parks and protected areas.

The Palawan provincial government wants five of the province’s protected areas excluded from the proposed Enhanced National Integrated Protected Areas System (E-Nipas) law, claiming it would restrict development projects around these protected areas.

The sites are the Puerto Princesa Underground River, El Nido Marine Reserve, Rasa Island, Mantalingahan Range and Malampaya Sound.

Instead, the provincial government is supporting the complementary House bill which had already excised Palawan from the original measure.

Gov. Jose Alvarez, who also chairs the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development, a policy and regulatory body created for Palawan under a special law called the Strategic Environmental Plan (SEP), said in a position paper earlier submitted to the House Committee on Natural Resources that the biodiversity importance of Palawan requires instead a separate law for the province.

He added that the SEP law is enough for the province to manage its protected areas.

“The people of Palawan and its leaders are in unison that Palawan conservation and protection areas be separated from the omnibus bill and that a specific law intended only for Palawan be promulgated,” Alvarez said.

Contrary position

Palawan hosts two World Heritage sites declared by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco), 10 Nipas sites and 32 “key biodiversity areas”classified for conservation. The entire province is also a Unesco-designated “Man and Biosphere Reserve” because of its overall environmental features.

Major stakeholders in all of the five protected areas, however, disagreed with the provincial government’s position and are submitting to Congress separate position papers seeking their inclusion in the final version of the E-Nipas bill.

“These (five) protected areas are critical components of the Man and Biosphere Reserve status of Palawan. The legislative enactment will further strengthen the implementation of the Strategic Environmental Plan for Palawan,” Conservation International (CI) foundation, a nonprofit organization which helped establish Mt. Mantalingahan in southern Palawan as a protected area, said in its position paper.

CI also denied the assertion by the provincial government that the proposed E-Nipas law would restrict development and the tenure of communities living near protected areas.

“The legislative enactment will not result in the resettlement of local communities. Protected area occupants are recognized in each protected areas,” CI executive director Enrique Nunez Jr. said.

The city government of Puerto Princesa, which manages the Underground River as a Nipas site, is expected to adopt the opinion of its legal office urging the province to support the Senate version.

“These laws (Nipas and SEP) both work complementarily in the achievement of the state policy of the protection of the environment,” city legal officer Philip Jerome Hilario said in a memo submitted to the city council this week.

“E-Nipas does not run counter to the SEP law but rather complements it,” stated Katala Foundation Inc., the nonprofit group that manages the Rasa Island, a bird sanctuary for the critically endangered Palawan cockatoo.

The Palawan NGO Network Inc., the umbrella group of nongovernment organizations in the province, also warned that singling out five existing Nipas sites from the enhanced law would violate the constitutional provision on equal protection and is disadvantageous to the protected areas.

The provincial government began holding public hearings on Thursday in El Nido to shore up support to its position submitted to Congress.

Environmental groups, which had previously locked horns with the provincial government on a range of issues including a planned construction of coal-fired power facilities in the province, said they were bracing to lobby Congress not to amend the current House version due for plenary deliberations in the chamber.