Never mind that the mining industry is raising the specter of lost investments and revenues and massive unemployment if the government continues to look at the sector as something that the country can do without.
President Rodrigo Duterte has to make a choice between mining as a revenue generator and mining as a serious threat to people and the environment.
At this point in time, Mother Earth and the Pinoys are winning; mining could be on its way out of the country’s landscape.
The government has suspended the operation of dozens of large local and multi-national mining companies for serious reasons among which is non-compliance with requirements to replant trees in mining sites ravaged by unregulated and irresponsible mining.
The President wants to stop the mining companies from further committing this sin against people, nature and the environment —- a callous practice by the companies.
President Duterte has issued a verbal order that should give the mining companies a big headache.
Short of ordering them to do a miracle, President Duterte wants trees —- as tall as he is — standing in the devastated mining concessions —- in six months.
Of course this is impossible to do, but we believe that the President can do hell and order the closure of the mining companies if he could not see the trees in six months.
President Duterte may have lost a jewel in former Environment Secretary Gina Lopez, whose confirmation was crushed by Congress due to a strong lobby by the mining sector for hounding mining companies violating environmental laws and conditions of re-greening imposed by government permits.
For Lopez, responsible mining, the mantra of the mining industry that mining can balance economic development with environmental protection, in actuality is a myth.
Bald and denuded mountains without any vegetation in the mining concessions are graphic evidence of how irresponsible mining wrought havoc on nature.
If Lopez were still in command of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources today, there would have been no need for President Duterte to warn the mining companies because the rapists of our environment would already have been closed down by the DENR secretary. Environmental protection is on top of the agenda of Lopez who does not give a hoot about mining and the income it gives to government.
Her proposal that government programs including tourism can be alternative employment generators and revenue-earners larger than mining if mining is outlawed has not been tested due to the unceremonious rejection of her confirmation as DENR secretary by Congress, many of whose members have interests in large-scale mining. Adding to Lopez’s woes is the fact that there are people in the President’s Cabinet who are involved in mining.
With President Duterte’s strong-arm approach against errant mining companies, and his now clear agenda against mining, Lopez’s idea should see the light in the future. If we were the President, we will have Lopez back in the saddle at the DENR.
The closure of irresponsible mining companies as vowed by President Duterte is a sword hanging on the environmental rapists.
After all, there is no way that the trees they would plant today would grow above the President’s line of sight in six months. Except if the mining companies have God on their side or if they could still bribe environment officials as they did in the past to close their eyes on the violations.
We understand why President Duterte hates mining.
He has first-hand knowledge of the evils that mining inflicts on the environment, people and peace and order.
He was the chairman of the Davao Region peace and order council during his early days as Davao City Mayor and had come face-to-face with these evils as a spin-off from the gold rush in the 80s and 90s in Diwalwal, Monkayo in Compostela Valley.
The turf wars between large-scale and small-scale miners in the 739-hectare People’s Mining Area in gold-rich Diwalwal, at the tail-end of Mindanao’s “Mining Corridor” that starts in the Agusan and Surigao provinces, was a story of greed and violence and deaths.
Outside of the mine tunnels, unregulated plants processing ores into gold spew out deadly mercury and cyanide to pollute rivers and cause disease.
The economic side of the Diwalwal gold rush was one-sided: while mine owners laughed their way to the banks, the mine workers got pittance, just enough to survive, with mining malpractices and lack of safety measures constantly threatening to bury them in the cave-ins and landslides.
In the underground bowels of Paquibato and Marilog districts in the uplands of Davao City’s 244,000 hectares are rich deposits of gold and other metals.
Foreign and local companies wanted to mine the precious metals but their greed never went beyond their evil intentions that were immediately shot down by the Davao City local government and its officials from President Duterte, when he was mayor and vice mayor, to Sara Duterte, as the mayor today and when she was the vice mayor, and former vice mayor Paolo Duterte.
To totally stop the entry of mining companies, the Davao City government through a resolution of the Davao City Council declared the city as “mining-free.”
With government agencies tasked with issuing permits flooded with mining exploration applications, during his time then Mayor Duterte had at one point been accommodating by laying down conditions for him to allow mining: modern technology that reduces to the barest minimum risk to people and environment and statutes that would ensure the mine workers would financially benefit under a revenue-sharing agreement with the companies.
Until such conditions are met, Davao City is mining-free.
But Duterte also bared his reason why he is vehemently against mining which finally drove away the mining companies.
Davao City’s mineral resources, according to him, should be conserved as a “piggy bank” for future generations of Dabawenyos.
The promised revenues for the local government from mining was the least that Davao City needed.
Davao City was already an economically viable corporate entity able to respond to public services with its large annual revenue. As a premier city in Mindanao, it was experiencing a surge in investments that could ensure a highly functional local government unit. The city does not need the violence, the pollution and the social unrest that mining brings.
President Duterte may kill the mining industry but he should be supported for saving people and the environment.
If he did it in Davao City, the Philippines under President Duterte should also be mining-free.
Rody dumps Aquino’s EO:
No to mining in Davao City
BY ROGERM. BALANZA
Vice Mayor Rodrigo Duterte has closed all doors for mining ventures in Davao City and slammed an Executive Order on mining policy issued by President Benigno Aquino that could stop local government units from passing legislation banning mining.
Duterte has publicly said that he is against mining in Davao City.
We will never craft a law tailored to the wish of the national government, said Vice Mayor Duterte in the Ato ni Bay television program on Tuesday.
Duterte was referring to a provision in Executive Order No. 79 which stipulates that national laws on mining should be over and above local legislation.
Under EO 79, the government can grant mining rights and mining tenements over areas with known and verified mineral resources and reserves, including state-owned land.
When implemented, EO 79 could open up Davao City’s farflung districts of Marilog and Paquibato which have known mineral reserves to mining ventures.
The EO has given authority to government agencies like the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and the Department of Tourism (DOT) to identify areas where mining operations can be permitted.
A company, Mambusao Mining Corporation, has a pending application with the DENR to explore gold and copper in over 15,000 hectares of ancestral domain lands in Marilog. Several other companies have applications to explore in Marilog and Paquibato.
Duterte reiterated anew his position on mining, in the Ato ni Bay program hosted by radio journalist Leo Villareal aired every Tuesday on cable television.
Duterte and daughter Mayor Sara Duterte are both against mining in Davao City.
The vice mayor earlier said he would shoot down any application for endorsement for a mining project raised to the Davao City Council where he is the presiding offficer.
He said the city’s mineral resources are for the future Dabawenyos, and should be allowed only if there is already a perfect mining technology that would totally prevent risk to environment and people.
For her part, Mmayor Duterte said mining would not only put at risk people and environment but also the city’s peae and order. She noted that areas with mining operations are hobbled with social unrest and shaky peace and order.
The position against mining of the two city officials is backed by a pending bill in Congress authored by Davao City Second District Congressman Isidro Ungab.
The Ungab Bill would declare the entire Davao City as a “No Mining Zone.”
In a privilege speech at the Davao City Council on Tuesday, city councilor Karlo Bello proposed a resolution urging a study on EO 79 and its potential impact on the city.
Bello’s piece triggered an extensive discussion by the 27-member legislative council and Vice Mayor Duterte, who reiterated his strong opposition to any mining venture.
House Deputy Speaker and Quezon Rep. Lorenzo “Erin” Tanada III said Executive Order No. 79 recently signed by President Benigno S. Aquino III, coupled with a new mining law, will address the concerns of the mining industry.
Tanada, author of House Bill No. 206 or the “Alternative Minerals Management Bill,” said that EO 79 on mining has sparked renewed interest in the industry, and coupled with his proposed measure, “the concerns of the mining industry will be fully addressed.”
“If we pair EO 79 with the House Bill 206, we have the mining industry striking it’s first gold,” he stressed.
Tanada said mining has been such a problematic industry for so long as it implicates issues in areas of governance, economic policy and environmental sustainability.
Despite the implementation of the EO, he said it is still important to enact a new mining law “because many of the industry’s problems can be traced back to the Mining Act of 1995 — in the endless tax holidays of mining companies, in the lack of safeguards against irresponsible contractors, and the rent-seeking system of applying for mining permits.”
“The real problem of mining is the faulty premise in the Mining Act that the industry creates revenues and jobs — which it doesn’t — and therefore its needs trump the interests of the community being mined,” he noted.
Tanada said mining “implicates issues in areas of governance, economic policy, and environmental sustainability. Naturally, the scope of a law to fix those glitches is broad and requires a lengthy process of consideration and debate.”
As such, he said it is still important to enact a new law on mining.
Tanada cited figures from 2000-2009 which stated the industry’s job-creation at a negligible 0.376 percent while its revenue effort averaged around half the national figure at 7.8 percent.
Though effective, he averred that the EO is “not a substitute for a new mining law.”
“Because of the inherent limitation of an executive order, it can only prescribe rules for the execution of a law, it cannot change the law. What the Executive has given us here is a starting push, but it cannot do our work for us. Legislation is Congress’ work and beyond even the President’s powers,” he noted.
Tanada, however, stressed that the EO, though limited, “was a success of the campaign for mining reforms because it accepted the fundamental position of the advocates that some drastic change has to be made to the industry.” (PNA)
Manila (Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN) – Philippine President Benigno Aquino III is set to announce his administration¿s new mining policy today but the Catholic Bishops¿ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has already started a signature campaign calling for a moratorium on its implementation.
The CBCP started gathering signatures from its members over the weekend to also push for the urgent passage of an alternative mining law even as the Philippine Palace appealed to all to ¿hold off any comment¿ until the new mining policy is released and digested.
The Palace said President Benigno Aquino¿s newly signed executive order (EO) spelling out his administration¿s mining policy would be released today.
THE DURIAN POST 