Haribon defends proposed anti-mining policy

Alex Magno tells us in his September 11 column that we should be concerned about potential mining investors turning their sights away from the country and to Afghanistan. We are talking about billions of dollars, yes, but where does the bulk of the money really go? Not to us. The Arroyo administration’s mineral policy, which continues to be followed in the absence of President Benigno Aquino 3rd’s definitive stand, allows purely foreign-owned and-controlled companies to own our land and minerals. Most of the profit goes to them, but the policy even gives them much more of the share through all sorts of incentives.

But foreign profit is maximized without significant benefits to national development. Government officials will be participating in this year’s mining convention, which came to a close only yesterday, but their continued pandering to foreign interests cannot hide the fact that mining has not contributed more than 2 percent to our gross domestic product since 1974, and not more than 1 percent to employment from 2006 to 2008.

We get too little in return for the exploitation of our mineral resources, and yet we also have to pay for it so many times over. The reason why communities, local governments, church groups and environmentalists oppose mining as it is practiced today is because the environmental and social costs far outweigh the opportunities the industry has to offer. Mining continues to strip our land and forests, poison our water, and threaten other livelihoods such as agriculture and fisheries. It also continues to displace farms and communities, undermine both human rights and local autonomy and even threaten the lives of people who have chosen to fight back.

This double exploitation is enshrined in the 1995 Mining Act, former President Gloria Arroyo’s Executive Order 270-A that calls for the aggressive promotion of large-scale mining, and the National Minerals Action Plan, which is why Haribon and its fellow member organizations in Alyansa Tigil Mina (ATM) calls for the scrapping of all three. But the alliance hopes to take a step further by connecting these policies to the global corporate trend of unsustainable and unjust extraction, production, and consumption.

ATM recommends that the new Medium-Term Philippine Development Plan drop the revitalization of the mining industry in favor of agricultural development, as government data itself shows that agriculture will bring in more jobs and benefits to the people, plus more profit for the government. Agro-forestry, ecotourism and watershed development, including fisheries resource development are all feasible alternatives to large-scale mining.

Artisanal and indigenous community-based small-scale mining is a potential alternative, because it has not permanently harmed the environment and also because the minerals derived are used to produce goods/materials necessary for everyday use. Their kind of mining technology can be further improved with the assurance that they will also benefit from the proper management of their lands and resources.

In fact, to say that large-scale mining in the Philippines has no monopoly on “proper mining” is an understatement. Despite the best mining technology available with big capital, open pit mining, the most destructive and least expensive type, is still the most-employed method in the country. Lafayette’s Rapu-Rapu project, touted as the flagship for foreign mining, had two separate tailing spills that resulted to fish kills. Mining companies have failed to rehabilitate at least three abandoned and inactive mines; only the Philippine Pyrite mine in Western Samar is currently undergoing rehabilitation.

As our priority should be the conservation of minerals for future generations, we call for the Philippines to only be open for mining after establishing that mining is the best and most economically beneficial use of the land. And if we must extract the minerals, we should do so only according to our needs, based on a sound economic framework and ensure that our agro-industrialization should entail the establishment of downstream industries and the charting of natural resource management and economic development plans that are consistent with Philippine Agenda 21. We must enable ourselves to process our own minerals if we are to exact the most profit from them.

The new minerals policy must also provide environmental and socioeconomic safeguards to local communities affected by mining. Human rights, indigenous peoples’ ownership over resources in ancestral domains, and local government authority must be respected and upheld.

And to pave the way for the equitable sharing of benefits, the provision allowing for 100 percent foreign ownership must be withdrawn, while corporate transparency and accountability must be implemented.

We can do better than promote and protect foreign interests—we can promote and protect our own.

For more information contact Blas R. Tabaranza Jr., Tel. nos. (632) 434-4642, (632)911-6089; e-mail: director@haribon.org.ph