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The Wretched of the Toxic Earth

Over the past few years, the United States government has been under pressure by militant organizations, NGOs and environmentalists in the Philippines to clean up its former military facilities in Central Luzon. The move is as critical to some 3,000 Filipinos – men, women and children – who have become victims of toxic contamination traced to these facilities but also to farmers who have developed some lands in the area into productive use. Their appeal for land distribution has been largely ignored by previous presidents including the Arroyo administration which claims to be pro-farmer.

BY YNA SORIANO
Bulatlat.com

Often overlooked in the decade-old row over the toxic waste contamination at the former United States airforce base in Clark, Pampanga is the continuing clamor of some 100 farmer families to own a 400-hectare land they have turned into productive use. The farmers said they have been tilling the land located in Mabalacat town over the past 10 years since American forces were forced to move out of the base by the Senate rejection of a proposed bases renewal treaty and it’s about time, they said, the land is awarded them.

Three administrations have come and gone - and the farmers’ plea remains largely ignored.

The Clark Development Corporation (CDC), which has supposed jurisdiction over the area claimed by the farmers, has maintained a hard-line policy on the farmers’ demand. More recently, CDC executives said the demand could not be heeded because the land is contaminated with toxic wastes left by the American servicemen.

Yet the land being claimed by the farmers is literally a small plot considering the total area of Clark – 31,824 hectares. When is Clark going to be cleaned up? CDC has no clear response.

During the weekend, Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Secretary Heherson Alvarez said that if the US government refuses to clean up the toxic wastes abandoned by its forces, then the Philippine government should do the job.

The Philippine government should have a program to clean up the toxic lands and distribute them to Filipino peasants, Alvarez said during the second annual Macapagal symposium on social reform in Angeles City.

Non-committal

Like CDC, however, Alvarez was non-committal when the cleanup program and land distribution would happen.

DENR is the leading government agency in the composite Philippine Task Force on Hazardous Wastes (PTFHW) formed in 1997 and tasked to attend to the Clark toxic waste contamination and management of other hazardous wastes.

Alvarez was the main author of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law in 1987, seen by its defenders as the panacea to farmers’ woes and by its militant opponents as nothing but hoax.

The Mabalacat farmers, who are organized under the Aguman da reng Maglalautang Capampangan (Alliance of Capampangan Farmers) which is affiliated with the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP or Peasant Movement in the Philippines), complain that CDC is just using a pretext for not distributing the land in question.

Over the years, they said, despite CDC claims that the land is contaminated with toxic wastes, they have had good grain harvests. The reason behind the quasi-government agency’s refusal to distribute the land is to use it as part of the special economic zone or an investment haven, they said.

For them, the CDC’s reasoning is calibrated to evade land distribution in the whole Clark whose land area stretches from Angeles and Mabalacat, Pampanga, to the adjoining province of Tarlac. They wonder why while authorities are all agog at granting investment privileges to foreign businessmen in the so-called special economic zone, they (CDC and DENR) continue to refuse what to them could be the solution to their lifelong woes.

Promises reneged

Farmers like Ruben Villarta and Mario Lapira have bitter words over what they consider government’s empty promises of land reform in Clark. They were among hundreds of other farmers who began occupying the then forested lands within the former Clark airbase immediately after the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo and the Philippine Senate rejection of a renewal of the US-Philippines Military Bases Agreement in 1991.

After the Americans left Clark, a squadron of the Philippine Air Force (PAF) was stationed in the area. It was from them that Villarta and other farmers got the permission to clear the land and make it productive for agricultural use. But the farmers were told to share 30% of their harvest to the PAF headquarters at Clark.

Since the former Clark airbase is deemed government or public land, the DENR is expected to deliver the promises of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) – of which he was the principal author - to Villarta and some 100 other farmers living in the area. This cannot be done however because the area has to be cleaned up first, authorities say.

A Quezon City-based non government organization, the Center for Environmental Concerns (CEC), comments that since the cleanup is seemingly impossible under the Arroyo administration which “like its predecessors has no political will” at compelling the polluter to clean its toxic wastes, “then the land reform plans are also almost impossible.”

Alienable lands

Under CARP, the DENR is charged with distributing public alienable and disposable lands suitable for agriculture through the issuance of free-patents and homestead patents. But Alvarez said that the Free Patent Act has already expired although Congress is currently deliberating to extend it.

The DENR is also tasked to award forest areas or lands suitable for agro-forestry through Certificates of Stewardship and community-based forest management agreements. It is further mandated to survey all public and private lands covered by CARP, including forest areas and ancestral lands.

Surveying is a requirement before the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) can issue Certificates of Land Ownership Awards (CLOA). The same is true before the DENR can issue patents and stewardship contracts.

During the symposium, Alvarez announced that the DENR will distribute some 1.46 million hectares of public, alienable and disposable, and forest lands under CARP before 2004. He promised to distribute 5,000 hectares per region or 60,000 hectares for all the 12 regions of the country per month.

As of June last year, he said, the DENR has distributed 1.1 million hectares of public alienable and disposable land, not including the land within the former US military bases.

Alvarez, who took over as environment secretary after the EDSA 2 people’s uprising this year, said this number represents 46 % of the DENR’s 2.5 million hectares target of public alienable and disposable lands to be distributed.

The Mabalacat farmers are asking why such claim by Alvarez is just not true in their area. Bulatlat.com

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