G.R. No. 223808 , April 26, 2023
Heirs of Aida Pineda, represented by Ella Pineda Torcedo, Petitioners, vs. Office of the President, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and any/all their subordinate, agents, and all other persons acting on its behalf, and Heirs of Teofilo Pilando, Sr., Respondents.

FACTS

In 1991, Aida Pineda filed an application for an ancestral land claim over a 49,645-square-meter land in Baguio City pursuant to DENR Special Order No. 31, s. 1990, which created a Special Task Force to process such claims in the Cordillera Administrative Region. The land surveyed was indicated as a portion of Lot No. 1, PSU-223647, surveyed for Teofilo Pilando. On June 24, 1993, the DENR, upon the Special Task Force’s recommendation, issued four Certificates of Ancestral Land Claim (CALCs) in favor of Pineda, covering 61,673 square meters in Loakan, Baguio City.
On August 22, 1996, the Heirs of Teofilo Pilando, Sr. filed a Petition for Annulment of the CALCs before the DENR. They claimed a prior right tracing back to Teofilo Pilando, Sr., a Kankanaey tribe member, who purchased the land from Talin Simsim of the Ibaloi tribe in 1956/1957, introduced improvements, caused its survey (approved by the Bureau of Lands in 1966), and declared it for tax purposes since 1967. They argued that over 30 years of possession converted the land to private property.
The DENR, in a Decision dated February 27, 2007, ordered the recall of Pineda’s CALCs and the segregation of the Pilando claim, finding that the Heirs of Pilando established a prior right as long-time occupants and that the Special Task Force’s actions were merely anticipatory and not binding, especially since the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA) of 1997 later excluded Baguio City from its operation. The Office of the President affirmed this Decision on March 30, 2011, ruling that the 1993 CALC issuance had no legal basis before IPRA’s passage and that the Heirs of Pilando had acquired a right to a government grant through open, continuous, exclusive, and notorious possession. The Court of Appeals subsequently affirmed these rulings. The Heirs of Pineda then filed the present Petition.

ISSUE

Whether or not the Court of Appeals erred in affirming the decisions of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Office of the President recalling the Certificates of Ancestral Land Claim issued in favor of petitioners.

RULING

The Petition is denied. The Court of Appeals did not err. Republic Act No. 8371 or the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA) expressly excludes the City of Baguio from its application under Section 78, providing that the city shall remain governed by its own Charter. While Section 78 recognizes that prior land rights and titles validly acquired through any judicial, administrative, or other processes before IPRA’s effectivity shall remain valid, a Certificate of Ancestral Land Claim, by itself, does not qualify as such a valid prior land right and title over ancestral land. The CALCs issued to Pineda in 1993 were provisional and did not attain permanency, as the issuing Special Task Force had no authority to issue titles. The Heirs of Pilando, on the other hand, established a prior right through their and their predecessor’s open, continuous, exclusive, and notorious possession and occupation of the land in the concept of an owner since the 1950s, which could ripen into a government grant. Therefore, the recall of the CALCs was proper.