BAGUIO CITY — Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR), already acknowledged by economists for its fast growing regional economy, is somehow bothered by binders that dampen or even challenge its otherwise smooth development road potential.
Such picture has been caught in a timeframe by the Cordillera Administrative Region’s Regional Spatial Development Framework (RSDF) 2019-2049, and released by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA-CAR).
CAR’s RSDF, approved by CAR’s Regional Development Council, is highly important as it clears the way for the operation of the Luzon Spatial Development Framework (LSDF), which ministers as “a long-term development blueprint of the eight regions of Luzon, NEDA-CAR explained in the RSDF preface.
NEDA-CAR’s 54-pages RSDF report to the people of CAR serves as a guiding document in future planning and implementation of human settlement, production and service delivery systems.
CAR’s RSDF helps the National Physical Framework Plan (NPFP) in its objective to integrate sectoral and regional socio-economic and physical framework plans and provides direction for formulating policies on urban and infra development, environment and resource protection and disaster mitigation.
Six deterrents have been identified by the NEDA-CAR report being contributory to bumping off CAR’s growth strides. These are limited land use for development, environmental degradation, inequitable distribution of economic opportunities and access to social services, poor physical and virtual connectivity, and vulnerability of the region to natural disasters and complexity of three territorial domains which are the private, public and ancestral.
In limited land use for development, CAR, by topography, is physically a mighty wedge of land of rugged inclines and slants with high elevations which can delight tourists, environmentalists and nature lovers, but, to a large extent, limit land production and settlement expansion.
“Almost 85 percent of lands in CAR are classified as forest and only 15 per cent alienable and disposable,” CAR’s RSDF pointed out.
Section 15 of Presidential Decree (PD) 705 (Revised Forestry Code) excludes lands 18 per cent and above in slope as alienable and disposable and lands, forestlands 50 per cent and above in slope as grazing lands, technically limiting areas for expansion given PD 705 provisions.
However, on the bright side of it, conservationists and environmentalists in CAR hail PD 705 as the strong teeth in helping keep intact whatever remains of CAR’s forest lands and cover.
Still, despite PD 705 provisions, growing population, changing lifestyle and increasing good business prospects have bulldozed their way to land conversion, CAR’s RSDF pointed out.
Such activities are noticeable in ways production areas have been transformed into human settlements to cater to infrastructures like schools, hospitals, tourist sites and lodging areas, forcing agricultural activities to encroach on steep slopes, resulting to environmental damage and erosion woes.
Human activities have also impinged gravely on environmentally critical areas like parks, protected areas, watersheds and other government lands.
In environmental degradation, land conversion activities or simply land use have contributed to natural areas or ecosystems disturbed or totally destroyed, further shrinking whatever is left of forest cover and menacing whatever is left of wildlife species, NEDA-CAR report said.
These include road construction or widening, encroachment of residential of commercial structures into rice fields and migration even to flood-prone areas.
Due to congestion in urban places, ramifications include, but not limited to, pollution, deterioration of land, air and water, housing shortage and increase in informal settlers, NEDA-CAR explained.
Several land conversion practices have also lent negative jolts to natural resource quality like surface and groundwater yield becoming irregular, reduced and even contaminated.
Inequitable distribution of economic opportunities and access to social services like education and facilities rear their ugly heads in other provinces in CAR trying to catch up or lag behind in development.
In such case, Baguio-Benguet area hardly feels this problem since region-wide, it is still considered the most developed where here is found most concentration of economic opportunities.
“The spatial inequity of economic opportunities in the region results from low agglomeration economies of many CAR communities and the concomitant higher cost of investments. Consequently, distribution of social service facilities like health and education is also concentrated in more developed areas with bigger population, resulting to many disadvantaged communities in the hinterlands,” CAR’s RSDF said.
As to poor physical and virtual connectivity, notwithstanding significant road construction and rehabilitation, CAR continues to suffer, having the poorest road network, country-wide, the NEDA-CAR report noted.
Aggravating said affair is “the challenge of a lack of complete and up-to-date information on the status of municipal/city/barangay roads which make it difficult to identify which road sections are feasible for construction. This lack of information leads to either duplication of road projects by different agencies, or worse, non-identification of important road links,” the NEDA-CAR report stressed.
It happens too, that up to the present, there is still no air commercial flight service in CAR that could link up passengers to other regions like Manila as the only local airport located at Loakan, Baguio City, ceased operation a long ago.
Vulnerability of CAR to natural disaster is a classic case of how significant it is to developing a smart disaster-resistant and climate change approach adaptable for infrastructure facilities that will include the roads, irrigation facilities, water supply systems, power and communication systems and buildings.
Such smart climate approaches, the NEDA-CAR report explained, should encompass land disturbance, erosion, flooding, all accompanied by mitigation measures, including the improvement of human resilience natural disasters.
The last constraint, complexity of three territorial domains which are the public, private and ancestral, these are now being seriously addressed by CAR development planners but it will take time for the constraint to be fully resolved, even with the enactment of Republic Act No. 8371, otherwise known as Indigenous People’s Rights Act of 1997.
CAR is considered at the heart of ancestral domain, delineation of ancestral domain boundaries which might imbricate established boundaries of local government units, needs for a fine balance of judicious approach, particularly, when issues arise regarding policies and policy interpretations, resulting to problems in actual land utilization, NEDA-CAR emphasized.
An example cited by the NEDA-CAR report are ancestral domain concerns that need to be included in planning include forest reservations within ancestral domains and their link to the Ancestral Domain Sustainable Development and Protection Plans (ADSDPPs) with national, regional and local plans.
CAR’s RSDF was crafted by the Regional Land Use Committee (RLUC) to articulate and advocate for the specific needs of CAR to “implement its desired long-term spatial strategy as contained in the Cordillera Regional Development Plan 2017-2022, according to the desired hierarchy of settlements.”
It adopts what is called the “North and South Cluster Plus” regional spatial strategy.
It constitutes establishment of two primary or regional growth centers located in the southern or northern portions of CAR and, designation of secondary and tertiary growth centers region-wide.
CAR’s regional spatial strategy walks in tandem with the National Spatial Strategy adopted for the Luzon Spatial Development Framework 2014-2045 that focuses on concentration, connectivity and vulnerability reduction as efforts towards addressing the binders or challenges and doing away with its growth snags.
CAR’s spatial development framework is vested on the regional goals of social and human development, sustained economic growth, cultural integrity and cultural identity, regional integration and regional autonomy.
It has three objectives, which are:
– Rationalization of the development of settlements to ensure sustainable urban growth;
– Linking of identified regional, provincial, and inter-province growth centers to each other, to neighboring regions, and to other strategic growth centers, and;
– Enhancement of disaster-resilience and preparedness of the identified regional, provincial and local growth centers.
