IN THE industrialist's parlance, Davao City is turning into a ''growth node'' and looking it with the building boom it is experiencing.

The message it seems to be conveying is: ''Look out, Cebu, here I come!''

But there is one group, inevitably a non-governmental organization, that is looking at these developments in a circumspect fashion but is doing its own bit in promoting an ecotourist thrust through ''Biyaheng Pinoy.''

The 10-year-old Initiatives for International Dialogue (IID) recently sponsored the Mt. Apo Centennial Climb not only to extol the wonders of the Philippines' highest mountain but also to commemorate and celebrate the Centennial and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Huh?

''Mindanao has been disenfranchised in the celebration of the Centennial,'' IDD executive director Augusto Miclat explains. ''When you think about it, the lumads and Moros were the ones who resisted and continue to resist colonization and its contemporary expressions like imperialism and globalization.''

The recent 3-day trek to Mt. Apo gathered participants from Burma, East Timor, Sri Lanka, Japan and Ireland, all peace activists and advocates who struggled upward and down with Filipino lumads and settlers, especially those affected by the establishment of a geothermal plant of the Philippine National Oil Co.

Reaching the mountain's peak was a symbolic expression of solidarity with the lumads and Muslims.

The Burmese trekkers were part of their country's pro-democracy movement; the East Timorese, a woman leader of a student movement; the Japanese, young professionals who are members of a peace club called No More Hiroshimas; and the Sri Lankans, musicians/performers who travel their land preaching peace and justice.

Miclat describes IID's venture into ecotourism as ''alternative cum solidarity tourism just like the development education program before.''

''We want to develop some sort of an engagement with the mass tourism policy of the government so people in the communities become participants and stakeholders in tourism projects,'' he says.

''The environmental consideration and its protection is an end goal. The benefits of the program should redound to the community.''

In IID's ''Biyaheng Pinoy'' program, the tourist goes to the community where the members themselves take care of the program, show the place, its people, their stories and dreams.

Miclat says this is like an exposure program, but without the political agenda of conscience-pricking Smokey Mountain tours.

The program is being piloted in Samal Island, off Davao City, where the government has a master plan of development tied up with a casino.

Miclat discloses that the casino resort is owned by a Malaysian company, the same one building the Bakun Dam in Sarawak, Malaysia, which is touted to be the biggest in Southeast Asia and which has deforested the area and displaced thousands of indigenous people.

Building of the dam, he says, has been stalled because of the incessant campaign against it by citizens and the international community.

Miclat says communities in Samal have also been displaced.