In three days, President-elect Rodrigo Duterte will formally assume the leadership of the Filipino nation. True to his campaign mantra, change has come. It started happening as early as after his electoral victory. Some cities and municipalities have enforced curfews for minors and some 58 suspected drug pushers have been slain since the May 9 election.
For those who love our nature-blessed country and the environmental advocates, the best and most promising change began with the selection by the President-elect of Gina Lopez of the ABS-CBN Lingkod Kapamilya Foundation, to head the Environment Department. Citizens of the many provinces she has been helping—which includes the municipality of Lobo, Batangas—cheered and celebrated. She is not without detractors, however. An opinion writer has even called her a broken record for her repeated campaign against destructive mining.
Some mining giants silently reacted with horror. One even said that mining is not the problem—poverty is. But this statement begs questions. If mining were supposed to be a good industry, shouldn’t it be part of the solution to end poverty? Why lump mining along with poverty? Could it be because the poorest communities and places in the country are those with mining operations? Look at Samar, one of our poorest provinces. A former House representative and Supreme Court justice said that if you want to see for yourself if there is such a thing as responsible mining, go to Samar. What used to be fertile grounds with good vegetation, he said, is now a barren desert. Nothing grows on the soil; the river is murky and dead; the sea and what used to be beaches are swathes of poisoned water and sands.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record myself, I repeat this. No matter how much minerals there are beneath the ground, it is no excuse to extract them if it means poisoning the water, the soil, the air and taking away from animals, birds, and all living things their habitat. Extracting the wealth beneath the ground will never justify impoverishing communities while enriching only the mining companies, most of which are owned by foreign nationals.
Papers on the hazards of mining, especially open-pit mining, say that when rocks which have lain unexposed for geological eras are crushed, they release radioactive elements, asbestos-like minerals, and metallic dust. During the separation of the minerals from the rocks, toxic and radioactive tailings are produced. This which can leak into the bedrock, contaminating not only the soil but the water.
We now ask, how much is the mining industry contributing to the Philippine economy, anyway? According to the Mines and Geosciences Bureau chief in a recent radio interview, mining contributes less than one per cent. According to research done by Ibon Foundation, in a period spanning 20 years beginning 1995, the mining industry has contributed a mere three percent of its entire income to the Philippine economy. Yet, the damage caused by mining—destroying entire villages, displacing people, and killing all terrestrial life including—is not only way more costly than what the industry contributed but irreparable, too.
Mining may be justified in countries with huge tracts of unpopulated lands like Australia and Canada. Yet, Canadian and Australian firms operate mining projects outside their own territories. Why? In a report, titled The Impact of Canadian Mining in Latin America and Canada’s responsibility, states that Canadian firms are exploiting weak legal systems in Latin American countries. These mining firms fail to respect indigenous peoples’ rights, international human rights and social responsibility principles, including the supposedly “protected” areas.
Does the strong presence of mining firms in our country—owned in reality by foreign nationals—indicate that our legal systems are weak, making our country attractive to mining? I pray that under the leadership of incoming President Duterte change will happen, too in the mining industry. Our lawmakers must seriously revisit the Philippine Mining Act of 1995 and not be cowed by the pressure of the powerful and moneyed mining giants.
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