Whose Development? Bukidnon Airport Displaces Lumad Families, Raises Serious Questions on FPIC

Development is often presented as a promise. Better commuting and faster transportation, more tourists and visitors, more businesses and investments, and more opportunities for the people. But when that promise comes at the expense of Indigenous peoples losing their ancestral lands and livelihoods, we have to ask: Who exactly is this progress for?

The construction of Bukidnon's first airport in Don Carlos is expected to bring economic growth to the province. Yet behind these promises are Lumad families who have been displaced from the land that once sustained them. According to GMA News, around 113 families from the Kirintëkën-Ilantungën Mënuvu tribe now live at a relocation site in Barangay Maray-Maray, where concerns over basic services and livelihood remain.

Before their relocation, these families depended on farming, growing corn, cassava, sweet potatoes, and fruit-bearing trees. These were not simply crops they could leave behind and replace somewhere else. They were resources they had cultivated and cared for over generations. Their land was where they worked, gathered food, and built their lives. Losing it meant losing not only their source of livelihood but also a part of the life and community they had known. This is the real cost of a development project that prioritizes infrastructure and economic interests over the rights and welfare of Indigenous communities.

Beyond displacement, serious questions remain about the project's compliance with the Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) process.

FPIC is an inherent right of Indigenous peoples worldwide, rooted in their right to self-determination and to decide on matters affecting their lands, territories, and communities. The IPRA is supposed to provide a legal mechanism for upholding this right. Yet, after 29 years, IPRA and the agency it created, the NCIP, have repeatedly failed to safeguard this right. Worse, the NCIP's implementation revision of the guidelines this year will worsen the manipulation of consent processes and the legitimization of projects that violate Indigenous Peoples' rights and dispossess them of their ancestral lands.

The NCIP provincial office confirmed that the airport project is located within an ancestral domain. Meanwhile, the Department of Transportation (DOTr) acknowledged that an earlier FPIC application did not materialize and that a new application had to be filed after the original documents could no longer be found. Representatives of the affected community have also raised concerns about whether the required process was completed and whether a Certificate of Precondition was secured.

If the project is within an ancestral domain, what happened to the process meant to protect the people who call that land home? How could a project affecting an ancestral domain proceed amid these unresolved questions? What has the NCIP done to ensure that the rights of the affected communities are upheld?

FPIC is not merely a document to be signed and filed away to satisfy bureaucratic requirements. Neither can it be reduced to a procedural hurdle that corporations and government agencies must overcome before proceeding with their projects. It is an expression of Indigenous Peoples' inherent right to determine what happens to their ancestral lands and how decisions affecting their communities are made. No development project, no matter how much economic growth it promises, can justify circumventing this right.

KATRIBU demands accountability from the NCIP, DOTr, and concerned local government units. We call on these agencies to publicly clarify the status of the FPIC process and the project's Certificate of Precondition, investigate possible procedural violations, and address the complaints raised by the affected Indigenous communities. We demand an immediate halt to construction while these complaints and questions surrounding the project's compliance with FPIC remain unresolved. The rights, basic needs, and livelihoods of the displaced families must be addressed, and they must have a meaningful say in decisions concerning their ancestral lands, relocation, and future.

The displacement of these 113 families must not be dismissed as an unfortunate consequence of development. It is a consequence of a development model that treats ancestral lands as economic assets to be exploited and Indigenous communities as obstacles to infrastructure expansion and investment. The same logic is evident in projects such as Pax Silica, where promises of modernization, technological advancement, and economic growth are used to justify further encroachment into Indigenous territories.

We cannot keep celebrating development without asking who is being displaced, dispossessed, and left behind. An airport may open new routes, bring in businesses, and make a province more accessible, but these benefits mean little when Indigenous families lose their homes, livelihoods, and ancestral lands in the process.

We reject development that advances by dispossessing Indigenous peoples. Ancestral lands are not sacrifice zones for infrastructure, corporate interests, or the government's economic agenda.

Reference: Funa-ay Claver, Secretary-General, KATRIBU