Industry cheers drown out anti-mining protests
SPECIAL REPORT
By Daxim Lucas
Inquirer
Last updated 03:37am (Mla time) 06/12/2007
(Second of two parts)
MANILA, Philippines -- Mount Canatuan in Siocon town, in the southern province of Zamboanga del Norte, is sacred to the Subanon tribe that inhabits the area.
According to legend, it was on this mountain where an ancient chieftain named Apu Manglang made a covenant with a deity named Apu Sanag to save the community from being ravaged by a disease.
Documents provided by anti-mining group Alyansa Tigil Mina (ATM) – the Stop Mining Alliance -- also described the mountain as the Subanon's venue for its "boklog," the tribe's highest thanksgiving ritual, held every seven years.
In the 1990s, small-scale miners searching for gold moved into the area, acquiring a government permit to prospect for precious metals.
This right was eventually transferred to Canadian firm TVI Resource Development (Philippines) Inc., which started large-scale mining activities for gold and silver in late 2004.
Tribal chieftain Jose Anoy said the Subanon people were never consulted and that they never agreed to the mining activities which have defaced their sacred mountain.
"I speak as a 'timuay' [tribal chief] of our people when I say we, the people of Mount Canatuan, never gave our consent to their operations according to our practices," Anoy said in a press conference that shadowed last week's Seventh Asia-Pacific Mining Conference.
Familiar refrain
Anoy's complaint is a familiar refrain in a mineral-rich archipelago, where almost every mining site is covered by ancestral domain claims of tribal groups or indigenous people.
According to ATM national coordinator Jaybee Garganera, a 1998 study found that 53 percent of all ancestral domains nationwide were affected by mineral product sharing agreements (MPSAs) or mining permits issued by the government.
"We are talking about 2.5 million hectares directly affected," he said, adding that the MPSAs also covered 61 percent of forests declared by the government as protected areas or 'no-go' zones."
"If you mine those areas, our country's forest cover will drop to below 10 percent, from the 19-percent when the study was made almost a decade ago," Garganera said.
For all the group's noisy protests, however, their message reached only the fringes of last week's mining summit, where participants were in a congratulatory mood about the industry's nascent recovery and excited about the demand that the powerhouse Chinese and Indian economies are creating.
To some degree, the anti-mining groups have themselves to blame, especially after some overzealous members overplayed their pro-environment hand in the Rapu-Rapu Island mining accident in 2005.
In one incident, anti-mining groups presented as evidence fish allegedly poisoned by mercury that was leaked into the sea from the mines, even though no mercury was used in the mining firm's operations. The discovery helped debunk criticism against the mine's operator -- Australian firm Lafayette -- and eventually paved the way for its reopening, and gave a black eye to anti-mining groups.
ATM's Garganera admits that there are differences of opinion on the mode of opposing mining within their broad coalition, some of which are hard line and extreme.
"We are not against mining per se," he said, explaining that his group's main concern covered mining firms that were unscrupulous in their dealings with local inhabitants and unconcerned about their environmental impact.
"What we're against is the aggressive promotion of large-scale mining."
China and India
At the mining summit, the criticism was drowned out by figures showing how ASEAN countries stood to benefit from China's ongoing and India's nascent economic booms.
In a presentation, Citigroup's Asia-Pacific head of metals and mining Alexander Molyneux said the consumption of base metals and bulk commodities in both countries were expected to rise dramatically as their economies grew.
By 2030, Molyneux said, China will be the world's second largest economy and India, the fourth largest. "Together, they would account for a combined 18-22 percent of total world GDP [gross domestic product]," he said.
This bodes well for Indonesia and the Philippines, which are ASEAN's richest countries in mineral resources, he said. This, he added, was despite the strong anti-mining lobbies in both countries.
In absolute amounts, this could mean up to $6.5 billion in fresh equity investments for the country over the next four years, excluding the income that would be generated from the extracted minerals themselves.
Chamber of Mines of the Philippines president Benjamin Philip Romualdez was unfazed by the anti-mining groups, which continue to hold "as I-told-you-so" examples of events that date back to 1996 when an environmentally destructive accident forced the closure of Marcopper Mining Corp. in Marinduque Island.
"We have to move forward," Romualdez said, adding that enough safeguards were in place to protect the interests of all stakeholders.
"When one airplane crashed, you don't stop the entire
airline industry from flying." With INQUIRER.net
