THE hearing conducted by the Senate on the Socorro Bayanihan Services Inc. (SBSI) has revealed another facet of the problematic nature of land tenure instruments granted by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to community-based organizations.

In my October 19 column, I wrote that while the Special Use Agreement in Protected Areas (SAPA) intended to prioritize Indigenous peoples and tenured migrants, it ended up providing a structural bias in favor of business interests, government-owned and -controlled corporations and local government units. This is because of the fact that in order to qualify for SAPA, an applicant has to show financial assets, including those that can be held as collateral by banks. These are things that would be rarely held by tenured migrants or by Indigenous peoples.