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Environmental Defenders Score Big SC Ruling for Tañon Strait Cetaceans

Posted on May 14, 2015

Foundation for the Philippine Environment (FPE) Chair and CEO Atty. Rose Liza E. Osorio, together with fellow environmental lawyers, Atty. Gloria Estenzo-Ramos (Oceana vice president) and Atty. Benjamin Cabrido, Jr., recently earned a critical Supreme Court (SC) ruling on behalf of the dolphins and other resident cetaceans of Tañon Strait, thus protecting them and their natural habitat from further “oil exploration, development, and exploitation of petroleum resources” by Japan Petroleum Exploration Co. Ltd. (JAPEX).

On April 21, 2015, the high court made a decision on the case labeled Resident Marine Mammals of the Protected Seascape Tañon Strait et al. v. Secretary Angelo Reyes et al., ruling in favor of the former. The SC declared unconstitutional the oil exploration operations on the Strait, a rich cetacean habitat located between the islands of Cebu and Negros. As a result, the service contract that the Department of Energy (DOE), then under the leadership of Sec. Reyes, awarded to JAPEX in late 2004 was nullified.

Spinner dolphins (Stenella longirostris) are among the cetaceans that make Tañon Strait a rich biodiversity center. (Steve de Neef)

According to Cabrido, exploratory drilling operations conducted by JAPEX in late 2007 until early 2008 displaced dolphins and other marine species in the area, causing them to move away from their natural territory. Drilling operations also damaged the protected seascape and likewise displaced and affected the livelihood resource of over 40,000 local fisherfolk.

This decision marks “the first time that marine mammals won a court case in the Philippines,” he says further. When the case was first filed in December 2007, the lawyer was mocked for being filed on behalf of “toothed whales, dolphins, porpoises, and other cetacean species.”

Estenzo-Ramos noted that the development is a “landmark ruling which should prevent any project which destroys the ecological integrity especially of a protected seascape."

The Supreme Court also ruled that the contract is in violation of the National Integrated Protected Areas System (NIPAS) Act of 1992 (Republic Act No. 7586), which protects critical natural habitats such as Tañon Strait from resource exploitation.

In 2007, one of the pioneer actions in the campaign against the operations of JAPEX in the Tañon Strait protected seascape was the project, “Urgent Environmental Legal Action Against Oil Exploration in the Visayas”, an initiative of the Central Visayas Fisherfolk Development Center (FIDEC) funded through small grant awarded by FPE.

Read more about this story on FPE’s Impact Stories, Rappler.com, GMA News Online, and the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

(FPE thanks Steve de Neef for allowing the use of his photo in this article.)