The National Democratic Front-Cagayan Valley strongly condemns the continuing imperialist and bureaucrat-capitalist plunder of our natural resources amidst devastating effects of severe drought and climate crisis on farmers, fisherfolk and toiling masses in Cagayan Valley. We denounce the sheer corruption of the US-Marcos Jr regime which engenders its utter neglect on the people’s welfare during these worst times.

In the midst of continuous droughts, farmers and fisherfolk in Cagayan Valley, are plunged into extreme levels of despair, deeper hollows of debt and poverty as prices of oil and all basic necessities incessantly surge.

Water level in Magat River, the prime source of irrigation in the region, and Northern Luzon’s largest water reservoir, is continuously declining and is now close to its critical elevation of 160 meters. The low water level is severely reducing irrigation supply to over 184,000 hectares of riceland, 93,000 hectares of cornland and about 67,000 hectares covering other high-value crops in Region 2. As early as April this year, Cagayan province had reported a ₱10 billion loss in agriculture. In Isabela, damage assessments on corn crops indicated over 40% since February.

As El Niño rapidly dissipates water and oxygen level, losses in the Magat Dam area was reportedly swelled to ₱1 million. In San Ramon, Isabela only, more than 1,400 fishermen and fish cage operators lost a large chunk of their livelihood in a massive fish kill.

Decades-long and rampant large-scale logging and mining in the Sierra Madre mountain range had greatly deforested and harmed its ability to sustain its natural water reservoir. Likewise, quarrying of the riverbeds and riverbanks in the surrounding Magat watershed area as well as other destructive projects such as big dam projects have further degraded the area’s natural ecosystem.

Since the 1950s, big logging in Cagayan Valley had hugely enriched the big bourgeois compradors, landlords, local bureaucrat capitalists and their foreign capitalist cohorts. Their insatiable greed had massively stripped off the forests of Sierra Madre and depleted its watershed.

Neoliberal dictates by imperialist US had driven the serious devastation of our natural resources and environment. Beginning late 1990s to 2000s, sham reforestation programs such as the National Greening Program which promoted planting of water-depleting trees for business further ravaged the watershed of Sierra Madre. Furthermore, the Mining Act of 1995 had further exposed the mountains of Cagayan Valley for the plunder of big mining companies that intensified the destruction of the watershed in the region.

Liberalization on agriculture had further drove big bourgeois compradors and landlords in Cagayan Valley to grab and deforest valleys and farmers’ land on frontiers for expansive hybrid production of palay, corn and cassava. Hybrid production that require voluminous input of water, fertilizers and pesticides add up to the speedy degeneration of our water resources.

To reinforce the hybrid production for export and big business, the Magat River Multi-Purpose Dam Project in Isabela and the Cagayan Integrated Agricultural Development Project in Cagayan were built by the reactionary government and funded by US and Japan. These projects, managed by the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) , however did not provide genuine and sufficient irrigation service as wide swathes of farmlands in the region remain unirrigated.

Now, the people of Cagayan Valley suffer from the impact of climate disasters such as droughts, typhoons and floods caused by the wholesale degradation of our natural resources and environment. The imperialist voracity for superprofits, in collusion of bureaucrat capitalist Marcos regime which uses these projects as milking cows for corruption, is the supreme culprit of this catastrophe.

The seething effects of drought exacerbates the farmers’ and impoverished masses’ basic problems on landlessness, usury and other feudal and semi-feudal exploitation.

In the face of this, NDF-CV calls on the people of Cagayan Valley to further advance the people’s democratic revolution to topple imperialism, bureaucrat capitalism and feudalism that bred and perpetuates this severe climate crisis.

We must advance the militant mass movement against indiscriminate plunder and environmental destruction of monopoly capitalists, big bourgeious compradors and landlords. We must intensify our struggle against the corruption of the Marcos regime which opens our natural wealth wider for the pillage of large-scale mining and dredging, bogus reforestation projects and HYV production for big business.

We must reverberate our demands to the reactionary state for immediate and sufficient assistance and comprehensive reparations on the environment, as well as more significant support on agriculture such as irrigation and production subsidy. The billions of pesos stashed by these corrupt government officials from the people’s coffers should be returned and serve the needs of the farmers’, fisherfolks’ and all impoverished people.

Let us build and strengthen people’s barricades against large-scale mining, dredging, logging and false reforestation. Let us build the people’s organizations that would enhance their disaster preparedness and undertake massive campaigns on rehabilitating Sierra Madre, the Magat river and other natural resources of Cagayan Valley.

At the core of these campaigns, we must advance the agrarian revolution that comprehensively addresses the basic problem of land and would decisively stop the plunder of our natural resources.

Only by fostering our revolutionary power could we recapture and protect our land and natural resources. Through our people’s democratic revolution that we could generate a genuine agrarian reform and national industrialization that would ensure the protection of our land and natural wealth, save our people from chronic crisis and calamities and bring a prosperous and convenient life for them.