A major setback

"We face a bleak future if we can’t get our act together."

The recent move by President Duterte to resurrect mining after being dormant for several years is a disappointment. It is a major setback in our battle to protect our degraded environment. 

We are one of the most vulnerable countries when it comes to climate change and global warming. Thus, reopening the mining industry will only exacerbate our vulnerabilities. For starters, our country is already one of the most mineralized countries in the world. We have been mining for gold since the Spanish colonial period. Mining activity increased dramatically when the Americans took over.

We used to be one of the largest gold producers in the world. Today, we are not even near the Top 25. Ever since we started mining in earnest at the start of the 20th century, I do not know of any mining company that fully rehabilitated its concession area after all the minerals have been extracted. Kennon Road is a good example. The mountainsides along the road are all extensively tunneled. This is the reason why the mountains cannot hold water to keep the mountain slopes firm; they cannot prevent frequent slides when there are heavy downpours. 

Marinduque is another example. The Canadian-owned Marcopper simply packed up and left when the dam containing all the chemicals used for mining burst, leaving the Boac and Makalupnit rivers practically dead. The rivers were never rehabilitated and remain polluted to this day. Fishing in Calancan Bay where the two rivers discharge has all but disappeared. Multiply that with all the mined areas in the country and one can imagine how bad mining has been for our environment. 

The government should not be taken by promises of responsible mining because there is no such thing. It is a myth. Yet, the government now appears to have once again surrendered to foreign mining interests that have partnered with their local counterparts to allow them to resume mining operations with grave consequences to our environment. We will be allowing these companies to export all the ores which will destroy and deplete our mountains. 

There is also no such thing as a restored mountain. Once the mountain is leveled or degraded due to mining, it is gone forever. All that our officials should do is to take a helicopter ride in Benguet to see what mining has done to the mountains near Baguio City. It should be very clear by now that the primary beneficiaries of any mining operation would be the foreign investors. The residual benefit that will accrue to the country is actually small. Is P25 billion to P50 billion of revenue a year really worth it, considering the destruction that mining will do to our environment? We should not be in such a hurry to extract all our remaining minerals and leave nothing for future generations of Filipinos. 

Most developed countries try to preserve their environment for the future. These countries instead go to poorer countries in Africa and Asia to do their mining. In the process, they damage the environment of those countries. Because of the kind of minerals that we have, it is going to be very difficult to extract these minerals without seriously damaging our environment. 

Indeed, we are already actually experiencing the effects of climate change and global warming in real time. Think of Typhoon Yolanda that killed about 10,00 people in 2013. There is a renewed effort to strengthen the Paris Accord after four years of hiatus when the United States withdrew from the agreement in 2016. More ambitious goals are being set to reduce carbon emissions to mitigate temperature rise. The mission is to accelerate the move away from fossil energy to renewable energy. For our part, we have set our own ambitious goals to reduce our carbon emissions but this cannot be achieved if we continue to build coal fired power plants. 

In one study done, a sea level rise of one meter will threaten 25 cities in Asia. Seven of those 25 cities are in the Philippines. This is not to mention what the one-meter rise will do to our coastlines where most of our people live. The objective is to prevent between two to three degrees Celsius rise in global temperature by the end of this century. Failure to do so will have dire consequences for all countries, most especially countries like the Philippines.  One consequence is that the size of the country will shrink considerably. If that happens, where will the people go and live given that our population is still growing rapidly? Up in the mountains that have already been damaged and denuded due to mining?

We face a bleak future if we can’t get our act together by making difficult but necessary decisions to protect our country’s future. The President should reconsider his decision.