THE fullpage ad paid for by the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines was headlined “Responsible mining boosts the economy.”

We think some of the more than 200 persons and heads of institutions who lent their names to the ad were only supporting the call to “Support the growth of responsible mining under the Philippine Mining Act of 1995!” We don’t think all of those LGUs and community leaders are really happy with the mining industry as it exists in the Philippines today.

The CoMP ad claimed that responsible mining attracts investments, generates employment, improves the quality of life and protects the environment. These claims were disputed a few days later by a solidarity of environmental protection associations, defenders of the rights and well-being of indigenous peoples, the social action arm of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, and such groups as Haribon and Alyansa Tigil Mina.

The anti-mining ad gave peso and centavo figures and other statistics to show that:
• the large mining corporations’ investments in our country constitute a very small fraction of the total.
• that large-scale mining generates very little employment compared to the massive demand for new jobs.
• that the government revenues generated are so small and in fact less than the cost of the environmental damage and loss of livelihood they cause.
• that far from universally improving the quality of life of the host communities, they deprive indigenous people of their homes and cultural environment.

The fact is that very little or no “responsible” mining exists in our country. And that, in reality, no matter how hard they try, all over the world, the mining industry people simply cannot guarantee total harmlessness—without making the industry prohibitive and unprofitable.

Gov’t now seek more revenues from mining
In any case, the government is now persuaded that it gets so little from the mining industry, while it has to continue spending on the efforts to resurrect rivers, mountains and communities that have been killed by mining projects.

Now in circulation is the draft of a new executive order (EO) to introduce reforms in the Philippine mining sector.

Some of the main points are: 1) Strict enforcement of existing laws and regulations. (2) Curtailment or even removal of local government units’ role in the regulation of mining projects. (3) Competitive bidding for mining areas. (4) Raising government revenues from mining operations.

The mining companies correctly fear that they have to pay higher taxes and share more of their huge profits with the central government.

The new E.O. is obviously aimed at amending the extant Philippine Mining Act of 1995, which the Chamber of Mines considers a good law.

The Department of Finance (DOF) will review all existing mining contracts. Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima last week told reporters that his department will work to get a fairer share of revenues from mining.

ATM’s no-go zone proposals
In her piece titled “Go or No-Go?” our environmental-protection expert Anabelle Plantilla (who is the executive director of Haribon), recently wrote:

“With Malacañang poised to issue its mining policy, it should strongly consider a paper on a no-go zone policy commissioned by Alyansa Tigil Mina (ATM) to provide an objective framework for the extraction of mineral and other natural resources. The paper presents four major areas for consideration in deciding whether an area may be considered a No-Go Zone or a Go-Zone, which are: irreversibility of the effects on fragile ecosystems, increasing the threat to life through depletion of water and food resources, increasing the magnitude and exposure of poor communities to disaster risk and human rights violations and conflict zones.”

She added: “The Philippines has been identified as one of only 17 megadiverse countries and is regarded as the third most bio diverse country within South and Southeast Asia. Globally, it is ranked 5th in terms of the number of plant species, and hosts 5 percent of the total of the world’s plants. It is ranked 4th in terms of bird endemism, and hosts more than 3,000 species of fishes where 121 are endemic and 76 are threatened species. Our forests are rapidly decreasing and degrading at an alarming speed with the conservative forest cover estimate placed at 21.7 percent. It is important to note that it is not sufficient to merely quantify forest cover but the quality of the forests need to be understood. By the changing of the quality of forests – which includes the types of trees grown and how these are managed and cared for — their capability to continue to serve as the natural habitat of the rich biodiversity also diminishes, and their capacity to be able to support agriculture and human settlements also changes.

“The aggressive promotion of mining under the government’s Mining Revitalization Program has fast tracked the approval of mineral exploration to the point that it is possible for a mining company to start exploration within a year, while protected landscapes would need to suffer the slow grind of lawmaking before a proclamation may be handed out to declare the biodiversity area as protected.”

Let’s process our minerals ourselves
Apart from making sure that mining truly delivers huge revenues to the government and that no mining project causes environmental damage as Ms. Plantilla warns, there is something else the government must include in its new mining policy and programs.

It must work to develop our country’s capability to process our mineral resources. We must stop being a mere source of extracted raw minerals.