Youth Group Fights To Save Indigenous Land On Palawan Island In The Philippines
By Nena Palagi
It is a feat unimaginable by any modern standard. Six young people from this remote island of Palawan, in the Philippines, have taken on the goliaths of land ownership, and won. They got over 40,000 hectares of land legally declared as protected habitat with the direct endorsement from the Indigenous custodians.
The small non-profit Centre for Sustainability PH (CS) had been spearheading the campaign, helping local Indigenous Batak people since 2014. How did they do it? CS Co-founder and Advisor, Karina May (KM) Reyes, says it is through sheer grit and “resilience day in day out”, for the last seven years. They implement their mission through Land Conservation, Reforestation and Citizen Science.
They recently took their story to the global stage, to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). And next, will be the big world forum of COP 26 in Glasgow starting on October 31, which Reyes is attending.
At COP 26, Reyes will be embarking on a new role with world NGO, One Tree Planted. Carrying advocacy for the climate change agenda in the ASEAN (Southeast Asian) region, their story from Palawan Island and the Philippines, is going global.
The leadership of CS six-member youth team ranged from the ages of 17 to 28 years, when they first started out lobbying for the protection of Palawan’s rainforests. Most have grown up swimming in the pristine rivers and lakes of Palawan Island, which earned the title as the “Best Island in the World” (Travel and Leisure Magazine).
Reyes—KM as she is affectionately called by Indigenous people—was born in Australia to Filipino heritage. When she visited Palawan a decade ago, she fell in love with the island and never left. Now, committed as ever to long-term sustainable environmental development and protection, she is determined to take their story to as far as the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People (HAC) international alliance, which represents at least 70 countries.
In preparation, CS recently held an online forum attended by a massive 740 young people in the Philippines, with a keynote address from Ambassador Mr. Zakri Abdul Hamid. Mr. Hamid is the Ambassador and Science Advisor for the Campaign for Nature, a global expert in the UN Convention for Biodiversity, which was first launched at the Rio Earth Summit in1992.
CS’s project in Palawan, titled CLEOPATRA’S NEEDLE CRITICAL HABITAT (CNCH) garnered support from local and national governments and international and commercial bodies, which allowed them to get to where they are now.
The significance of winning the protection of ‘Cleopatra’s Needle’ in 2016[1], as a critical habitat cannot be underestimated. It is the Philippines’ biggest critical habitat and the ancestral domain of the disappearing Batak tribes in the island. It is home to 61 Palawan animal and plant species found nowhere else in the world, and 31 globally threatened species.
“We are guarding our forests and land because it is the source of our livelihood and key to our survival. We the Bataks live in the forest. And we have a tradition that we move from one part of the forest to another. It is part of our…
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