A Lumad tribe’s saga against a carbon agro-forest reaches UN Special Rapporteur on Environment at CBD COP17

(Yerevan, Armenia, 26 October 2026)–Legal, policy and advocacy group Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center (LRC) raised the case of land grabbing in Indigenous Kirinteken-Ilentungen Menuvu territories by an agro-forest plantation before the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to a Healthy Environment, at a dialogue held in the 17th Conference of Parties of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP17) in Yerevan, Armenia.

“We highlight the case of the agrochemical-based banana plantation of Kennemer Foods International in Southern Philippines, as the company has benefited from carbon and biodiversity credits while one of its plantations stand on disputed indigenous Kirinteken-Ilentungen Menuvu lands where blood has been spilled. There are no regulatory hard stops to such drivers of both biodiversity loss and human rights harm that have been documented to have caused human rights violations,” said Leon Dulce, campaigns support and linkages coordinator of LRC, who joined the international delegation of Friends of the Earth International to raise global attention on human rights harms against environmental defenders in the Philippines.

The Center noted that Kennemer leveraged land ownership titles conflicting with the Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) of the tribe, which had the effect of manufacturing tenurial legitimacy and social acceptability.

“As a consequence, the tribe continues to live through the deadly atmospheres of the plantation’s aerial spraying operations. They continue to document epidermal and respiratory problems especially among women and children, and observed their deep well water sources turn milky white and unsafe to consume,” Dulce explained.

The tribe is able to live in and nurture just seven hectares out of 2,084 hectares of their original lands because of the encroachment of Kennemer and various other agribusiness companies. The Indigenous community reforests the land with native tree species, to prevent the occupation of conflicting land uses such as industrial agriculture. 

This land struggle has come at great cost–since 2020, two of their Datus or tribal chieftains have been killed, at least three harassment charges have been filed against their members, and multiple incidents of threats and intimidation, including an attempt to fence them out of their land last May 2026, have been recorded.

“This is but one of 27 case studies we documented in 2025. In our latest report on the State of Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines, we estimated that 2.8 million hectares or 51% of the total land area of formal Ancestral Domain Titles are potentially conflated with various projects such as forestry tenements, plantations, critical minerals, fossil fuels and renewable energy alike, infrastructure,” said Dulce.

UN Special Rapporteur on Environment Astrid Puentes welcomed the engagement, inviting defenders in the dialogue to submit data that will feed into her upcoming reports on environmental human rights defenders and environmental rights legislation, among others. She reminded States of their obligations to ensure human rights is at the center of their biodiversity conservation and protection policies.#