Pitfalls and Pipelines - Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links

Introduction
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The final chapter of the section, Chapter 2.8, reviews the
importance of the concept of free, prior and informed consent
(FPIC) to indigenous peoples in relation to the extractive industries.
It summarizes where FPIC has appeared in earlier
chapters, before considering other relevant issues and general
observations in considering that the correct implementation
of FPIC needs to be the starting point for all relationships
between indigenous peoples, the state and extractive industry
companies.
In terms of the overall book, we are grateful to all of those
who produced expert papers and case studies. The case studies
are primarily drawn from the 2009 Manila Conference, but
include other inputs if they seemed more relevant. Also, not
all of the indigenous participants to that meeting presented
papers, so this book also seeks to synthesize much of the information
that was shared by different participants in panels
or plenary sessions. We realize that the methodology used in
putting this together may mean that some of the individual
voices from the conference have been lost. We hope that by
synthesizing, we have in general made their voices stronger.
But of course any editorial statement summarizing points may
not represent all voices from the conference, and any errors
in transcription or opinion are, of course, down to the editor
alone.
Historical Context to the Book
Indigenous peoples’ territories in almost all parts of the
world are richly endowed with minerals, oil and gas. This endowment,
however, has become a curse to many indigenous
peoples because this has attracted and continues to attract
extractive industry corporations to their territories. The activities
of these corporations have led to the worst forms of
environmental degradation, human rights violations and
land dispossession. Environmental degradation comes in the
form of erosion of biological diversity, pollution of soil, air and
water, and destruction of whole ecological systems, and other