if it destroys the environment, it serves only corporate greed,
Then it is not the kind of development the lumads need and want,
It is what they will fight against till their last breath. "
The Bagobo - Tagabawa lumads, ancestral inhabitants of Sitio Tudaya in Sta. Cruz, Davao Del Sur are threatened to be displaced by the upcoming construction of a hydro-power plant.
A capitalist investment is not for public good, only for profit
The implementation of the P4.3 billion project of the Hydro Electric Development Corporation HEDCOR, Inc) owned by the Aboitiz Equity Ventures (AEV) started on March 2007 and is targeted for completion on 2009.
It is AEV’s largest power investment; and the worst nightmare that has ever dawned for the Bagobos living in the ten communities within Sitio Tudaya--- Balabag, Lower Pogpog, Sentro Pogpog, Mainit, Kolan, Tumpis, Mabuliyu, Baruring, Garuk and Katalelan.
The company plans to tap the Tudaya Falls, the highest in Mt. Apo Natural Park, and the Sibulan River for the water and energy supply for the said hydro power plant.
Tudaya is a sacred ground
But the Tudaya waterfalls is part of the Bagobo’s ancestral lands. Their forefathers have tended it for hundreds of years, only to lose it to a corporation’s ambition for huge profits.
It is a most sacred ground; the home of their gods. It is where they celebrate their religious and cultural life as a people; only to awake one day to find the fishes dead and Mt. Apo overtaken by cemented roads, bulldozers and drilled with holes.
Who will bear the environmental consequences?
The village is located in an environmentally critical area. Mt. Apo is in fact declared as a government protected area, allegedly for the protection of the flora and fauna within it. Hence, the construction of a hydro-power plant, privately-owned at that, is a big contradiction to the whole essence of environmental protection that the government projects.
“This is a land given to us and I hope it will remain as sacred as it is.
If they will really insist on it, let them face the gods.”
The hydro-power plant will affect the flow of the waterfall because of the construction of a small overflow dam just a kilometer away from the falls. Rivers and the waterfalls will be altered, affecting the livelihood of the lumads who depend on the rivers for food.
Inundation and flashfloods when leakages happen puts the whole Sitio Tudaya in grave danger.
Apo Adoc and the members of his community denounce the free prior and informed consent (FPIC) allegedly acquired by HEDCOR. He said that all the consultations were done outside their village which is a disrespectful to their people.
“HEDCOR and some people who are NOT residents here insisted on the project. It was approved with the supposed assurance that we will not be affected by it. But we will be affected by it.”
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