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Monday, August 07, 2006
Sanchez: Chamber of Commerce, civil society style
By Benedicto Sanchez
Nature Speaks
QUEZON CITY -- Just attended meeting of the Task Force-NTFP meeting in Villa Cristina, a mountain resort in Antipolo. The meeting's main agenda was to chart the network's organizational development and strategic plans for the coming three years. Partners all over the Philippines, from northern Luzon, Palawan, Mindoro, Negros Occidental, and Bukidnon in Mindanao, attended the three-day,once-a-year meeting.
All who attended are involved with various aspects of sustainable mountain development work-from forest conservation, land tenure instruments of indigenous peoples and settler communities, resource use of non-timber forest products, natural resource use policies. Some work for NGOs assisting tenured settlers under DENR's community based forest management programs, some as members of people's organizations of the Higaonons, Mangyans, and Ikalahan tribes.
Pretty standard civil society formations, many of which get their funding from overseas grants of foreign development civil society organizations. So how come I had a bizarre feeling that I didn't go to a meeting of non-profit organizations? Seems to feel more like attending a small town chamber of commerce, with everyone-as in, everyone-talking of business plans, target profits for the next three years, product quality control systems, and certification labels based on good manufacturing practices.
On the side, the meeting was a good social event for clinching of deals between provincial suppliers and buyers. During plenary sessions, buyers and producers provided market feedbacks.
In fact, our main facilitator was Dr. Juan Kanapi, a professor at the Asian Institute of Management and an OD expert. He organized and headed in the late '70s Ateneo University's Office for Social Concern and Involvement and teaches human behavior in organizations and human resource management at the AIM.
But that shouldn't come as a surprise that non-profit service organizations should learn to be entrepreneurs as well. Once isolated mountain communities are morphing into commodity economies. They now produce not for their subsistence but for the market.
In other words, where once, tribal communities harvest rattan for their own baskets, abaca for their traditional costumes, leaves and roots for their medicines, and fruits and wild honey for food, they now produce these crafts and other sundry items for consumers in highly urbanized, often lowland, cities.
But having no means to transport these goods to their end consumers, they are forced to sell these forest products wholesale to traders, or what Negrenses call "compradors," in their raw form, and at bargain prices. Natural resources and native crafts which often form an important part in the spiritual life of indigenous peoples are often reduced to one uniform trait: as commodities, to be sold and bought.
To earn more, mountain communities are forced to harvest more, which rapidly depletes forest resources which cannot regenerate and reproduce fast enough to meet the supply needs of the market.
Worse, people from these communities who have experienced the comforts and conveniences of videokes, four-wheel transports and other technological wonders of modern technology realize they cannot enjoy them unless they have goods to sell. The opportunists in their midst sell portions of their ancestral domain to outsiders, despite expressed prohibitions from their customary laws since time immemorial.
For many of those who have studied, worked and lived in the urban areas, the only thing that made sense, the only thing that has value among human beings and between human beings and their natural resource is the one that can produce cash payment. Other relationships, even family and spiritual ties, become tenuous.
The meeting tackled issues on rural brain drain, where the education youth who opts to live and work in the cities instead of going back to their communities. In the cities, they can find work to earn money. Of course, unlike in the countryside, they have to buy almost everything to meet their needs.
It is for that reason that civil society organizations are developing fair trade programs, and linking community production to address market demands in the cities. They realize that indigenous communities have to learn to swim in the sea of the market economy. Or their culture and values sink and die as the old generation passes away.
Comments are most welcome. Please send email to bqsanc@yahoo.com.(r)
(August 7, 2006 issue)
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