Environmental degradation and concern is a worldwide phenomenon that has caught the attention of people across the globe. In the Philippines, many organizations and individuals have created movements and activities that try to respond to various environmental issues.

Most Indigenous Peoples in southern Philippines live in the upland areas, far from the basic services of the government. Their isolation often situates them in a paradox: that of living in a resource-abundant area but in conditions far below the general standard of living. They have the greenest forest and cleanest water, yet they do not have access to potable water and electricity. The Indigenous Peoples then are caught in the dilemma of striking a balance in responding to their economic needs while serving as environmental stewards for broader society. For how can they talk and work toward forest protection when they can barely survive a day?

Philippine history and society pushed Indigenous Peoples in remote forested areas and have asked them to give up most of the flat fertile lands of their gaup or ancestral domain. Marginalization of Indigenous Peoples at the local level continues to take place. This is still so much evident in Mindanao's Indigenous Peoples or lumad. Sadly, the lack of options and further education of many of their elders have brought them to situations and decisions where they sell their lands to migrants in exchange for goods. This unsustainable economic practice is slowly threatening the loss of their land. The lack of livelihood options and economic capabilities leave them with no choice. Indigenous communities in the Upper Pulangi Valley in northern Mindanao, Philippines are faced with this reality.

With support from Misean Cara and the Irish Jesuit Mission Office, ESSC is undertaking a project that aims to assist upland forest communities in Upper Pulangi, Bukidnon in managing their ancestral domain - or in the Pulangiyen language, their gaup.

This ESSC project is aptly termed GAUP or Generating Advancement for Upland People and intends to create systems of advancing productivity in the Pulangiyen community while sustaining the local environment and its resources. GAUP seeks to achieve the following:

1. Develop models of production based on abaca and coffee
2. Strengthen systems that ensure sustainability of water-based ecological services to the community
3. Rationalize a system of handicraft production and marketing
4. Secure the integrity of he community's ancestral domain, and
5. Strengthen the capability and accountability of local institutions in relation to their role and impact in the management of the ancestral domain

GAUP will be undertaken in three key areas in the Upper Pulangi: Barangay Busdi, and two of its Sitios Nabawang and Bendum. Busdi is one the major upper tributaries of the Pulangi River in Malaybalay, Bukidnon. ESSC has an established relation with Bendum and Nabawang through its continuous engagements in these areas.

Migrant settlers now dominate Busdi's population at 54%. Most of the purely Indigenous Peoples of Busdi, the Pulangiyen, live in the communities of Nabawang and Bendum. They are the same Pulangiyen who do not have a stable source of income and so when faced with extreme hunger or emergency health needs, resort to selling their lands to migrants. The work for environmental stewardship will never be at the forefront for them as the pressure of basic needs have to be met first.

The people of Bendum are trying their best to strike a balance between forest protection and survival, but it is a struggle. The GAUP project seeks to provide them with the crucial starting points.