The looming FPIC Guidelines is an existential threat to Indigenous Peoples’ rights and must be halted

(QUEZON CITY–July 23, 2026) Legal, policy, and advocacy institution Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center (LRC) warned that the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) impending new guidelines on Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) posed an ‘existential threat’ to the ancestral domains and rights of Indigenous Peoples through its dangerous provisions on shortened processes and diminished agencies. 

“The numerous draft iterations of the new FPIC Guidelines announced by the NCIP since 2024 are characterized by shortened timelines and processes, diminished roles and powers of indigenous communities and political structures, and weakened mechanisms on regulations, grievance, and remedies. This undermines the ability of Indigenous Peoples to keep the drivers of deforestation, biodiversity loss, and ecological destruction at bay away from their territories,” said Leon Dulce, Campaigns Support and Linkages Coordinator of LRC. 

“The present form of the Guidelines seem to favor corporate and business interests by downgrading FPIC as a substantive right and robust process of ensuring Indigenous Peoples’ right to self-determination into a fast-tracked regulatory permitting process,” Dulce furthered.

These changes in the FPIC Guidelines are happening in the context of increasing overlaps of various development and infrastructure projects with indigenous territories. In its 2025 State of Indigenous Peoples Address Report, the Center revealed that a total of 2.8 million hectares of land and environment within indigenous territories are in conflict with various extractive and destructive projects such as large-scale mining, agribusiness, energy, and infrastructure projects, among others.

This size is equivalent to 51% of the total land area of Certificate of Ancestral Domain Titles (CADTs) based on official government records as of 2025.

“We urge the NCIP to halt its impending promulgation of the FPIC Guidelines until genuine, transparent, and thoroughgoing consultations with Indigenous Peoples across the country are ensured. The dilution of the FPIC process undermines any attempt at a just green transition of economies within the vast extent of Indigenous territories across the country,” ended Dulce.#