5 MIN READ

By ALDWIN QUITASOL
www.nordis.net

BAGUIO CITY — The people cannot live without the natural resources and countless gifts the environment is providing them. Thus, they have all the reasons to defend and nurture it at all costs, as their forefathers have done, for their survival and for the future generations.

Members and convenors of the Amianan Salakniban (AS; “Defend the North”) further strengthened their resolve to guard the environment from developmental aggression and corporate greed amidst the continuous entry of large scale mining corporations, renewable energy projects and other developmental concessions favored by government officials through manipulating and maneuvering around government policies and laws. In a forum on August 11 at Teachers’ Camp in Baguio City, peasants, small-scale miners, church workers and human rights advocates as well as individuals, among other sectors, discussed the present situation and the experiences of the struggle to defend the land and resolves to further advance the fight.

Regional Development Center-Katinnulong Daguiti Umili iti Amianan, Inc.(RDC-Kaduami) Executive Director Roxanne Veridiano said that the people of the regions of the Cordillera, Ilocos, Cagayan Valley and other parts of Northern Luzon should be bonded by a strong manifest to unite against corporate greed that plunders the environmental resources of North Luzon. She said that because of seemingly unstoppable large-scale off-shore and on-shore mining activities that are being allowed by the government, the people saw the continuous environmental degradation affecting their sources of livelihood and making them vulnerable to disasters.

She said that mining plunder is found from ridge to reef; foreign-owned large-scale mining companies dig and scrape the mountains to get gold ore and disturb and destroy the seashores to collect magnetite or black sand, disregarding their effects to the environment and on the people. She said that these corporations are able to do so with impunity given the blessing of the laws and policies of the government.

Neoliberal mining policy, anti-people interventions

Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) Deputy Secretary General Santos Mero said that the mineral-rich agricultural lands, seashores and the sea itself and the territories of the Indigenous Peoples (IPs) of the Philippines are deemed for sale because of the open-house attitude of the government. He said that the passage of such anti-people laws like the Republic Act 7942, also known as the Philippine Mining Act (PMA) of 1995, revitalized the mining industry in favor of the large-scale mining corporations by allowing its liberalization.

He said that because of this law, the country’s patrimony is at stake as the government offers the foreign companies tax incentives and other privileges at the expense of the people. He said that the foreign investors were assured of 100% ownership and were given easement rights such as having the power to clear out their areas of operations of people that they see as obstructions, with impunity, and others like water rights and timber rights.

He added the issuance or approval of Financial and Technical Assistance Agreement (FTAA) applications to foreign corporations even with strong opposition for host communities.

According to Leon Dulce of the Center for Environmental Concerns (CEC) and the Kalikasan-Peoples Network for the Environment (Kalikasan-PNE), the present administration of Benigno Aquino III reinforced mining pro-plunder provisions of PMA 1995 through executive Order 79. The group said that this assured mining companies of ‘super profit’ while intensifying environmental destruction and massive displacement of communities.

AS secretariat member Sandra Ferwelo said that foreign mining companies enter the territories of the people easily through deception and manipulation. She cited the manipulations to Free, Prior and Informed Consents (FPIC) by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP), which caused confusion, disunity and disregard of IP rights over their ancestral territory.

She said that with the foreign mining corporations insisting on their entry into the peoples’ agricultural and ancestral lands comes militarization disguising as part of the government’s anti-insurgency campaign. She said that with this, human rights violations are committed by elements of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), wherein they target leaders and members of groups critical to large-scale mining.

Ferwelo said that countless community members and leaders, organizers and advocates fell victims to extra-judicial killings, illegal arrests and detentions, surveillance, intimidation and harassment and others.

Attack on the people’s traditional mining method

AS spokesperson Fernando Mangili said that while large-scale mining companies continue their mining plunder in North Luzon, the 500 year-old small-scale mining (SSM) activities of the people are being blamed for the pollution and denudation of the environment. He said that the traditional SSM has been practiced by the forefathers in Benguet, among other places, more than five centuries ago and exists until today. He said this kind of people’s activity employs manual and hard labor extraction of gold ores and the processing of gold with high regard to the environment. He said that traditional SSM only takes the needed minerals from the earth enough to sustain their survival.

It was during the entrance of large mining companies, he said, that the people learned new technologies that made their activities easier. These, he added, also taught the people to use chemicals and other harmful methods to get more gold as the competition gets tougher, while the large companies have all the capacities to extract more gold ores by operating over thousands of hectares of mineral lands. He also described some companies or groups claiming to be SSM but actually are using heavy machinery and extensive methods of gold extraction.

He lamented on the passage of laws designed to control the activities of SSM, such as the RA 7076 which requires the poor miners to form cooperatives; apply for “minahang Bayan”; apply for mineral processing permits and paying high fees among others. Mangili said that the small-scale miners are hardly coping up with this, yet they have to comply as they fear being issued cease and desist orders.

Mobilization for the environment and the future

Sherwin de Vera of AS and Defend Ilocos said that the Northern Luzon Ecosystem gives the people everything for their survival. He said it is the source of life, therefore it should be guarded from destructive projects like mining and other endeavors of corporate greed. He said the people have no other things to rely on but their strong and determined unity in ensuring that the environment will continue to exist for the next generations.

He reiterated the call to repeal PMA 1995 and change this oppressive law with People’s Mining Bill, which promotes a mining industry based on the principles of social justice, respect for people’s rights and welfare, environmental conservation, the defense of national sovereignty and patrimony, national industrialization, and agricultural modernization. # nordis.net