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| NGO sees destruction in Bukidnon Mega Dam |
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| Monday, 26 October 2009 08:25 |
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THE proposed Pulangi V Hydro dam in Bukidnon will submerge not only the lands belonging to the tribal communities but also the ancient burial sites and other heritage spots of the natives, a legal advocacy group warned. “Throughout history, the Manobo tribe considers their lands sacred and the burial ground of their ancestors as highly-protected areas. First Bukidnon Electric Cooperative (Fibeco) fails to understand that the very own land that they are going to submerge and destroy through the building of such dam, is the source of their identities, their culture, their livelihood, their homes and their very existence,” said the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center/Kasama sa Kalikasan (LRC-KsK) in emailed statement to the Sun.Star. Sun.Star accepts donations for victims of Typhoon Ondoy Fibeco, which has partnered with the Greenergy Development Corp to develop the proposed 300 MW Pulangi V Hydro Electric Power Plant. The project is still on pre-development stage. When completed, the dam—which would generate at least 300 megawatts of power—is said to be the biggest in Mindanao. While the consortium is currently in thick of consultations with tribal communities, LRC-KsK said the project proponents have failed to provide “concrete” bases for pushing with the plan even if it would entail the inundation of at least 22 villages from Bukidnon and Cotabato provinces. “The Manobo culture prohibits the transfer of the burial site of their ancestors, especially of Apo Mamalu, their Great Ancestor. This site and their area are considered to be their last territory. Such annihilation of their lands will be the slow demise of one tribe, one culture, a part of our history,” LRC-KsK said. It said “Fibeco has no justifiable reasons and concrete statistics” to validate the project, and that it may have been only conceived for “profit” and not on “providing quality energy.” The group recalled that when Pulangi IV dam was constructed in the 80s, affected communities are “still waiting for their benefits to materialize.” The Pulangi IV hydro dam project submerged at least 1,400 hectares of agricultural lands and displacing four barangays in the municipality of Maramag. Strong opposition of the people also hindered the construction of Pulangi I, II, and III in the subsequent years World Commission on Dams (WCD) says that most big dams failed to evaluate the gravity of the implications of the construction, noting that projects of such magnitude can potentially have negative impact on rivers, watersheds, water ecosystems. Around 4,000 tribesmen from the towns of Damulog, Kibawe, Dangcagan, Kitaotao, and President Roxas in North Cotabato signed a manifesto declaring their opposition to the project last week. The manifesto was formally filed before the Department of Energy (DOE), said Carl Cesar Rebuta of the LRC-KsK. (Sun.Star/PR) Published in the Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro newspaper on October 26, 2009. 
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