Mining your own business For quite some time now, some self-styled watchers of the environment are feeding us this rather sweeping claim against big mining companies: that our economy can actually do without them. The thing is, our heroic watchers do not bother to substantiate such a claim. On the contrary, the Aquino (Part II) administration states that, as a policy, it considers new investments in mining as vital to our economy. By Conrado Banal Philippine Daily Inquirer 7:57 pm | Sunday, July 14th, 2013 The administration policy in effect obliterates the very claim of our so-called watchers about this economically useless mining industry that is unable to help solve poverty in this country where about 40 million, and still counting, are considered “poor.” The big mining boys remain the only targets of our brave watchers—not the administration, not the small mining firms. Only the big mining companies—exclusively! While our professed watchers signify that they are only looking after the common good, it seems they are exercising selective minding of other people’s business in the name of the environment. Studies proved that small mining firms were the biggest violators of environmental laws, particularly in their use of mercury and other toxic materials to extract gold. The fact remains that the big mining boys spend hundreds of millions of pesos a year to take care of the communities in their mine sites, including their compliance with the safety nets imposed by the government. Openly attacking those guerilla-type small mining operations was held as dangerous. For one, they enjoyed the backing of well-armed syndicates, made up of foreign hit-and-run poachers and LGU officials with their private armies. To top it all, the avid watchers of our interests keep quiet about other environment issues, such as those concerning the businesses of the Lopez family, to which belongs the poster girl of the antimining movement, none other than celebrity Gina Lopez. In the town called Brooke’s Point in Palawan, for instance, indigenous people accused the outfit Bantay Kalikasan (under the ABS-CBN Foundation) of desecrating their tribal ground for the real estate project associated with Lopez. Her outfit cut down trees in the area called Sabsaban Falls and then put up cottages, reportedly for rent at P25,000 a day. Subsequently, the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD) claimed the outfit did not have the permit that the law required on any project in the Palawan forest. The DENR said it would investigate the whole thing. Nothing happened. Our stout-heart watchers did not even make a whisper in media about the complaints of the tribal people. Not even a mumble! It turned out that ABS-CBN Foundation had this fat multimillion peso contracts with the city government of Puerto Princesa, tying up the foundation’s media facilities in a campaign to promote Palawan as an eco-tourism place. The city actually forged the deal years ago during the time of Mayor Edward Hagedorn, and perhaps as an expected twist of the eco-tourism campaign, the group of Gina Lopez suddenly found themselves aligned with antimining groups in the province. Thus the Save Palawan Movement, started by former Mayor Hagedorn, went to bed with some radical groups, led by the Kalikasan-People’s Network for the Environment (PNE), which reinvented themselves as environment activist groups. Inspired by the inaction of the government—the DENR in particular—everybody just kept quite about the complaint of the lowly poor tribal groups in Brooke’s Point.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Jul 2013 09:05:05 +0000