Mining pulling the wool over eyes of public

HONG KONG (mabuhay) : An advertising campaign launched by the Chamber of Mines and the Chamber of Commerce and industry in response to a leaked document from the office of the president of The Philippines, Noynoy Aquino, threatening to clean up the industry, has prompted a detailed a detailed response from Mining Watch Canada, indigenous Peoples Links and the united Kingdom-based working group on mining in the Philippines.

In join statement released on February 13, the three groups call the mining industry campaign recycled alarmist rhetoric and inaccurate.

“The Industry Claim it is for responsible mining and yet, when measures are proposed that would insure responsible mining, the cries go up that they are unfair and uncompetitive,” the statement says.
The international coalition also claims that the advertising campaign of the industry is inaccurate and misleading.

The Chamber of Mines claims, “There is a proposal to increase taxes on the extractive industries. . . . large scale miners fell it will make the country uncompetitive in the race to get top grade mining investors,”

The statement countries that in many countries, governments receive, or are negotiating to receive, far greater result from mining than Malacañang or the congress in Quezon City demand.

“The Philippines stands out in global comparison for having extremely low taxes and royalties from mining,” the coalition statement notes.

The statement also points to new articles accusing the body responsible for the issuing of mining Department of the Environment and natural Resources, as being full of environmentalist! (Philippines daily inquirer, February 9).

While it is complaining of bias or bias in what I thinks is the wrong direction, but it does not make it clear why a department responsible for the environment should not be full of environmentalists.

“It is absurd to criticize [the department as an environmentalist] as an environmentalist anti-mining body,” the statement says. “This is essentially separating the authority responsible for monitoring and enforcement of environmental law and making it independent form the authority that issues mining licenses.”

The mining industry is also claiming that the introduction of Total Economic Valuation (evaluation of the total, all things considered, cost or benefits of a mining project) mooted in the leaked presidential office document, is a bad idea, as other countries do not have it.

The statement counters, “This is not true. In fact, the Canadian government has developed a similar tool to evaluate the value of ecological goods and service of Canada’s ecosystem in order to provide the government with the necessary balance information in its decision-making process with the true cost of development conservation.”

The United Nation also acknowledges that for sustainable development these costs must be taken into consideration.

“Conducting these analyses in The Philippines would expose the true cost to the Filipino people of the current and planned mining operations across large expanses of their valuable and boi-diverse natural resource-rich archipelago,” the statement says.

It is also derisive of the claims made by the Philippine mining industry in its media campaign, especially its claims of economic benefits to the people.

“These are complete fiction,” the coalition says, “when considered in the Philippine context.”

The statement points out that mining is the only economic sector in the country within which the poverty incidence has risen in the last decade and is also the sector with the most devastating environmental footprint (Multidimensional Poverty in the Philippines; New measures , evidence and policy implications, by Arsenio M. Baliscan, 8 October 2011 )

The states adds, “the current legislative framework results in minimal actual return t the Philippine economy, given that it is based principally on raw material export, excessively generous tax incentives and a policy which provides for effective transfer of ownership of mineral resource to 1000 per cent foreign-owned corporations, which are allowed to repatriate their profits.”

The statement also points t the human coast, such as the huge loss of life and livelihood following Typhoon Sendong, as well as pointing out that environmental damage from mining been discovered a long way from where the activity is actually taking place.

It adds that the proposed scale of mining in the country would also totally negate plans by the department of agriculture to make the Philippine food self-sufficient in rice by 2013, as open cut mining on ample clan water space with useable soil for the corps to be cultivated.