Chico River Pump Irrigation Project (CRPIP)

Project Structure

*No diagram and actual defined project structure listed in case study

The project may cause environmental damage, including widespread flooding, threatening the region’s rich biodiversity. According to La Viña and Reyes, the CRPIP is “development aggression at its worst … bad for nature and our people, and will result in social conflict and fuel an already intensifying insurgency in both the Sierra Madre and the Cordillera.”

The concerns raised by the affected indigenous peoples were mostly about violations of the consultation process. Republic Act No. 8371, also called the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act of 1997 (IPRA), recognizes the right to self-determination of the indigenous cultural communities (ICCs) and indigenous peoples. The law also provides mechanisms for the protection of their ancestral domains and the resources present therein. The affected communities must be consulted and must give their free and informed consent before projects such as CRPIP can move forward. The fact that the CRPIP construction was started ahead of the completion of the consultation process is uncontroverted.

On April 4, 2019, a group of legislators in the House of Representatives—known as the Makabayan (nationalistic) bloc—filed a petition before the Supreme Court, asking it to stop the CRPIP loan agreement with China. One of the key issues cited by the petitioners is the selection of China CAMC Engineering Co. Ltd. (CAMCE) as the project contractor. CAMCE was allegedly illegally pre-selected from among three contractors of good standing. Another issue raised in the petition was the strict confidentiality clauses in the loan agreement. The petitioners consider this specific provision a violation of the “constitutional right of the Filipino people to information on foreign loans obtained or guaranteed by the government and is considered inimical to the national interest.” There is also an express provision in the loan agreement waiving the usual arbitration rules along with the Philippines’ right of sovereign immunity.

To capture different practices, quality and level of transparency, researchers are asked to answer six related questions for each data point. 1 point is assigned for each question to which the answer is “yes.” Each data point therefore has a total score between 0 and 6, where “0” means no information was publicly available at the time of research (not transparent) and “6” means full transparency.