Provisions in the NDFP CASER draft1 with direct reference

to the environment and science & technology sectors

 

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Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms (CASER)

Between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP)

and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP)

 

NDFP Draft - February 26, 1998

 

 

I. Outline of the NDFP Draft

 

I.

Preamble

II. Declaration of Principles

III. Bases, Scope, and Applicability

IV. Economic Sovereignty and National Patrimony

V. Agrarian Reform and Agricultural Development

VI. National Industrialization and Economic Development

VII. Economic Planning

VIII. Rights of the Working People, Livelihood, and Social Services

IX. Environmental Protection, Rehabilitation, and Compensation

X. Monetary and Fiscal Policies

XI. Foreign Economic and Trade Relations

XII. Final Provisions

 

II. Provisions in direct reference to the environment and natural resources

 

Part I. PREAMBLE

4. Realizing that the Philippines with its competent labor force, technologically adept managerial and

entrepreneurial forces and a comprehensive natural resource base, will make itself economically self-

reliant.

 

The following provisions remain unresolved:

 

3.Upholding national economic sovereignty and a self-reliant and independent economy and aiming to

protect, conserve and, as far as practicable, recover the national patrimony, protect the environment,

carry out agrarian reform and national industrialization and thus bring about comprehensive and

sustainable social and economic development;

 

Note difference between GRP and NDFP on phrase “national industrialization”; NDFP maintains

“national”; GRP wants to omit “national.”

Declaration of Principles2

Article 4. The Parties shall resolve to review and, as necessary, reverse all economic policies,

programs, laws, agreements and treaties that have negated the objective of social and economic

development and adversely affected the lives of the Filipino people.

 

Article 6. The Parties uphold the welfare of the people, especially the workers, peasants and

indigenous people’s and ethnic minorities and other basic sectors as the primary consideration in the

sustainable utilization of national patrimony to bring about social and economic development.

 

Note: GRP-NDFP: Same reservations in preamble apply regarding standing issue on indigenous

 

1 NB 2004 revisions replace relevant sections in 1998 draft

 

2 April 2, 2004

 

people’s and ethnic minorities.

 

Article 10. The Parties agree to conduct economic reconstruction and development along the principle

of securing the people’s welfare, maintaining ecological balance, assuring continuous regeneration of

renewable natural resources and judiciously using nonrenewable resources.

 

Economic Sovereignty and National Patrimony 3

Our country and its people have suffered foreign economic exploitation for more than four centuries, first

under Spanish colonial masters, then US colonial and imperialist masters and now by foreign

multinational corporations and multilateral agencies of the dominant capitalist powers, particularly the

United States, Japan and the European Union. Every year, foreign monopoly firms and banks draw from

our shores huge amounts of capital in the form of repatriated profits, dividends, royalties and capital.

 

Together with the mounting import bill, amortization of loans and interest payments to foreign entities,

these huge amounts of capital outflow have resulted in chronic balance of payments deficits.

 

The lack of economic opportunity and the depressed economic conditions in our country compel our

workers and professionals to seek jobs and a better life in the increasingly exploitative, oppressive and

inhospitable working and living conditions of other countries, thereby draining our human resources.

 

The Philippine environment has been wantonly violated and degraded. This disaster impelled by the

exploiters’ greed for profit has caused displacement of hundreds of thousands of our people from their

habitation, among them the national and ethnic minorities from their ancestral lands. The rapacious

activities of foreign corporations and their local partners take no heed of the well-being of our people and

their environment.

 

Under these circumstances, the Parties recognize that the will and unity of the Filipino people must be

forged to promote and achieve economic sovereignty and secure our national patrimony. To this end,

the Parties, jointly and separately, assume the duties and responsibilities in effecting the Articles

hereunder.

 

Article 1. The Parties recognize the need for the Filipino people to liberate the economy from foreign

dominance and pursue a program of national economic development that harnesses both the public and

private sectors.

 

Article 2. All resources of the public domain, including land, waters, minerals, coal, petroleum and other

mineral oils, all forces of potential energy, fisheries, forests, wildlife, flora and fauna and other natural

resources shall not be alienated. In this regard, the legitimate rights of settlers and national and ethnic

minorities shall be fully respected.

 

Article 3. All mining operations shall be regulated with the objective of ensuring the domestic processing

of mineral resources up to the secondary and tertiary stages of industrial production while at the same

time guaranteeing environmental protection, social compensation for disturbance and damage caused

as well as democratic consultation with, and the consent of, the people in the communities immediately

and directly affected by such operations.

 

Article 4. Logging for export shall be prohibited until sufficient forest cover for the country has been

regenerated. Logging for domestic use shall be regulated. All logging shall be reserved exclusively for

Filipino citizens. A program of forestry management and rehabilitation, including massive reforestation

and afforestation campaigns, assured of adequate budgetary appropriations, shall be carried out.

 

Article 5. The nation’s marine wealth in its archipelagic waters, territorial seas and exclusive economic

zone shall be protected and its use shall be reserved exclusively for Filipino citizens. Cooperative fish

farming, subsistence fishermen and fishworkers in rivers, lakes, bays and lagoons shall be assured of

preferential rights thereto.

 

Article 6. Measures to decisively transfer and promote technology to Filipino enterprises from foreign

 

 

3 July 29, 2004

entities supplying machinery, equipment and technical processes shall be undertaken.

 

Article 7. A policy to develop our human resources and generate employment for all Filipino citizens

shall be adopted. The policy shall be to promote the productivity and skills of working people through

scientific and technological research, development and education.

 

Article 8. Filipino scientists, technologists and workers shall have first priority of employment in all

enterprises. However, where no Filipino experts are qualified, foreign experts may be hired on contract

for no more than five years within which steps shall be undertaken to ensure substantial and effective

transfer of knowledge and skills to Filipinos.

 

Article 9. Research on the cultural heritage of the Filipino people shall be promoted and the spirit of

patriotism promoted. The outstanding cultural legacies of our people, including the signal achievement of

being the first to wage a revolution against Western colonialism and aspire to establish a democratic

republic in Asia, shall be promoted through research, the arts and other cultural activities.

 

Article 10. Appropriation by private and foreign agencies through intellectual property conventions such

as patenting of the genetic properties and technological processing of commonly available and wild

varieties of flora and fauna shall be prohibited. Where allowed, patenting of flora and fauna on Philippine

territory shall be the exclusive privilege of Filipino citizens.

 

Article 11. All existing laws, treaties and other issuances adverse to the preservation and protection of

our national patrimony such as, but not limited to, the Mining Act of 1995, the Foreign Investments Act of

1991, the Land Lease Law of 1995, the RP-Japan Treaty of Amity, Commerce and Navigation of 1975

and the Privatization Act of 1989 shall be reviewed and as necessary immediately repealed, abrogated

or rescinded.

Part II. BASES, SCOPE AND APPLICABILITY

Article 2. The main objectives of this Agreement are: a) to uphold, protect, defend and promote

economic sovereignty, b) to conserve the national patrimony and protect the environment, c) to carry out

agrarian reform and national industrialization, and d) to advance the rights of the working people,

women, national and ethnic minorities and other exploited, oppressed, discriminated and disadvantaged

sectors of society.

 

Article 4. The Parties are guided by such universally accepted principles and instruments of

international law as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966, the

International Labor Convention of 1948 on Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to

Organize and other similar or relevant international covenants.

 

Part IV. AGRARIAN REFORM AND AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT4

Article 25. The right of national and ethnic minorities to their ancestral domain shall be recognized and

their communal property rights shall be guaranteed under this Agreement. The demarcation of their

ancestral and communal lands shall be determined through democratic consultation with them and their

associations and other affected sectors and communities.

 

Article 28. Land-use conversion of prime agricultural land devoted to food production shall be

prohibited. Economic or agrarian schemes or policies of the GRP legitimizing the conversion of prime

agricultural lands into so-called industrial estates, urban-housing estates and subdivisions, golf courses

or for the cultivation of export luxury crops shall be immediately terminated and reversed.

 

Article 32. Conversion of prime agricultural land devoted to food production shall be prohibited. Policies

or programs facilitating the conversion of prime agricultural lands into so-called industrial estates, urban-

housing estates and subdivisions, tourist resorts, golf courses or for the cultivation of export crops shall

be suspended, reviewed and as necessary reversed.

 

Part V. NATIONAL INDUSTRIALIZATION AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

 

4 NDFP Draft - July 29, 2004

conomic development can avail of the comprehensively rich natural resource base, the skilled forces of

production, including the workers, peasants, pool of scientists and technologists and the rest of the

Filipino people, who at the same time are the primary consumers. Likewise, the development of industry,

science and technology can reverse the drain of highly competent and skilled human resources for

whose development huge investments have been expended from the social product.

 

Article 22. The development of industry shall be programmed in accordance with the availability of

resources and with due consideration of the capability and wellbeing of the people, especially the worker

and peasant masses.

 

Article 23. The Parties agree to develop heavy industry as the leading factor in a comprehensive and

well-balanced development of the economy and shall be guided by the following:

 

d. Ecological considerations in industrial development shall be given due emphasis and

attention in order to counter or eliminate the destructive effect on the people’s health and the

environment of certain heavy industrial processes. Measures to ensure the protection and

efficient utilization of the country’s renewable and non-renewable resource base shall be

instituted.

 

Part VI. ECONOMIC PLANNING

Article 2. The Parties recognize that the unfettered operation of the “free market” will work against any

national economic plan having the welfare of the majority of Filipinos as its primary concern and agree to

pursue overall economic and social goals effectively through economic planning that takes systematic

account of the availability of labor power and required skills, land and capital; technology; gestation

periods; scale economies; forward and backward linkages; environmental implications and competing

claims on investible resources at an economy-wide level.

 

Article 3. The Parties shall tap and direct the country’s human and natural resource potential to benefit

the majority of the people, as opposed to allowing its appropriation by parasitic foreign and local

exploiting classes, and shall ensure that domestic patterns of production and consumption are

determined according to domestic needs and capacity.

 

Article 7. In line with the objectives of general economic planning, the Parties agree to adopt a national

land use policy to determine and develop the sections of land suitable for agricultural, industrial,

reservation, recreational and other uses as well as to prevent the alienation of lands, marshes, rivers,

and the like in order to ensure sustained and self-reliant development as well as ecological balance.

 

Article 11. The Parties agree to adopt a comprehensive and balanced national policy for the country’s

natural resources and their all-round exploration, conservation, and development to redress the pattern

of neocolonial exchange of raw materials and manufactures that has resulted in the reckless depletion

and intensified extraction of the country’s natural resources. They shall institute measures to ensure a

healthy natural environment, giving due regard to the protection and efficient utilization of the country’s

renewable and non-renewable resource base.

 

Article l. The Parties shall undertake rational planning and zoning for urban and rural areas, coupled

with proper environmental planning for the construction of roads, public transport facilities and buildings

to alleviate congestion and pollution in every area and region.

Part VIII. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION, REHABILITATION AND COMPENSATION

The profit-driven nature of capitalist production, with the particular neocolonial pattern of production and

trade, that overrides social and ecological considerations has been the main factor in the devastation of

the Philippine environment and the consequent disasters that have plagued the country. The strategy of

export-led economic growth has opened the country’s natural resources to control and plunder by the

foreign monopoly capitalists, big comprador bourgeoisie and bureaucrat capitalists.

 

As the imperialists and the local exploiting classes freely siphon off the nation’s natural wealth, they

leave behind a ravaged environment. Industrial wastes like mine tailings and carbon monoxide

emissions and unsafe agricultural products pollute and destroy the environment. The GRP Mining Act of

1995 means the wholesale delivery of the national patrimony to the unbridled exploitation by foreign