Enact the National Land Use Act and Sustainable Forest Management Act, now!

SEN. Raffy Tulfo posed the perfect question to the right person when he asked Sen. Cynthia Villar why it was that the National Land Use Act (NLUA) has yet to be enacted into law. He was on point simply because Villar is probably one of the reasons why until now the NLUA has not seen the light of day in the Senate.

The first attempt to legislate a national land use act was in 1994, when Fidel Ramos was our president. Five presidents have since occupied Malacañang and yet no law has reached the Office of the President for signing into law. And yet, in every Congress, there is a plethora of bills filed, all designed to pass such a law. In the last Congress, there were at least 18 bills filed in the House of Representatives and four in the Senate.

Land use zoning under the present system is the jurisdiction of the local government units (LGUs). This system has, however, led to inconsistent and incongruent practices among LGUs. It has also led to the unbridled conversion of land from agriculture to residential and commercial purposes which could have serious implications to food security. Furthermore, using a framework that subsists on political boundaries can be inconsistent with the natural boundaries of landscapes such as watersheds and river basins, where land classification decisions made by LGUs upstream can seriously have implications on LGUs downstream.

What the NLUA envisions is a national overarching framework where we can rationalize the designation of land uses. This can be achieved by establishing a mechanism that would review and rationalize the classification of land based on its intended or allowed use. Lands would thus be classified for protection and conservation; production, which would include lands for agriculture and fish culture; settlements development and residential purposes; and for infrastructure development, which include those intended for transportation, communication, water resources and social infrastructure. The proposed law also envisions to formulate a guide for LGUs in their development initiatives, and would establish rules that would prohibit the building of human settlements in hazardous zones, would delineate agricultural lands for food production to ensure food security, and to clearly delimit protected areas.

Senator Villar’s opposition to the NLUA is an open secret. In the 17th Congress, and despite President Rodrigo Duterte’s directive to push for the NLUA, she sat on five NLUA bills and allowed them to lie and die in her committee. The House already passed its version in 2017. The bill was again refiled in the 18th Congress, but it once again failed to pass. This time, Villar articulated her opposition to any land use bill since according to her this would antagonize LGUs. These were the exact words of Villar, as reported by Rappler in July 2019: “Who will remove it from the local governments to centralize it? Do you want all the ire of the mayors in the Philippines? That’s their power. No congress will do that. Now they want to centralize it? I don’t want to do that.”

Her reasoning was wrong then, and it is as wrong now, because it is based on a false premise. She makes it appear that the LGUs will lose total power to decide, and that there is no middle ground. Her job as senator is precisely to find that balance where while LGUs can retain some discretionary power, there would be a larger framework that would ensure that land use would be rational vis-à-vis the prevailing landscape conditions and land capacity. No one is stopping any LGUs from developing their own areas and allowing companies owned by the Villars to establish subdivisions and malls.

But certainly, there has to be a system of national rules that would regulate the conversion of agricultural lands to subdivisions and malls, and this should not be left to LGUs to decide on their own. It should be a decision that should take into consideration the externalities, which such a decision bears on food security, as well as on its impacts on the socio-ecological system and landscape within which that possible land use conversion can have its footprint beyond the LGU political boundaries.

Villar, in her tussle with Senator Tulfo on the Senate floor, proudly boasted that she felt no guilt toward farmers for authoring the Rice Tariffication Law. She claimed that it was a rational decision since whatever money was earned from rice importation was used to modernize agriculture, as if a P5,000 subsidy to farmers tilling less than two hectares would be enough to modernize and render them competitive. But let us grant Villar the luxury of liberating herself from any guilt on this one. What she cannot have is to be totally guilt-free for using flawed logic in killing the NLUA not only once, but repeatedly.

And it is not just NLUA that she buried in the legislative graveyard that her committee has become. She also failed to act on the Sustainable Forest Management Act (SFMA), which is designed to amend Presidential Decree (PD 705), or the Revised Forestry Code, which was passed in 1975 and badly needs updating to fully rationalize forest management in the country. Failing to get it past in previous congresses, proponents of the SFMA bill refiled it in the 18th Congress, and the House passed its version in February 2021, long before the May 2022 elections. Villar once again presided over its demise in the Senate committee on environment, natural resources and climate change which she chaired in the 18th Congress.

President Duterte supported and wished for the passage of the NLUA, but Villar effectively denied him that wish. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. stated in his first state of the nation address (SONA) the same directive. It’s about time the Senate passed it, and President Marcos should tell Villar that we need to enact not only the NLUA but also the SFMA. And that time is now.