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From a distance they looked like children playing sand castles on
the beach but close up it was no fun, the children were working,
some only toddlers imitating their parents and elder siblings
filling little buckets with the pitch black sand, and filling the
sacks and wheelbarrows. The black sand is in fact chromite and with
other minerals its value has risen almost as quickly as that of rice
and corn.
Environmentalists say the villagers will do
little harm to the environment but they point to the mighty menace
of the massive mechanical diggers, backhoes and bulldozers that
plough and gouge the hills and mountainsides for minerals along
the Zambales coast, just 200 kilometers northwest of the capital
Manila. The people of Palauig are battling to stop the mining of
C-Square mining company to save Mount Tapulao, an environmentally
protected area with unique wildlife.
The insatiable appetite of China is always
grumbling and demanding to be fed more and more minerals. This
greedy Asian giant is paying higher and higher prices to appease its
addiction. The international mining companies have rushed to feed
the monster and they never cease to dig, load, haul and ship as fast
as they can to supply the smoke belching smelters of China. There is
no processing or refining in the Philippines and raw ore is exported
from the mountains to the waiting ships with government approval.
There are few jobs for the locals who are the rightful heirs to the
natural resources of their land. If there was responsible controlled
mining with community participation there would be prosperity and
the just proceeds could build schools and provide higher education,
health and nutrition centers. But the people get nothing from the
exploitation of their natural resources.
If the wealth is justly managed and shared to
benefit the dwellers, tillers and indigenous people with ancestral
rights to the land, it would lift them out of poverty. Many of the
companies operate illegally and they can bribe officials to look the
other way. The cost to the Filipino people is poverty, unemployment
and greater environmental destruction, the loss of ancestral land,
habitat and wild species. The bishops of the Philippines blame
irresponsible mining for deforestation, landslides and floods that
wash away villages and cover the rice fields with sand and silt when
the typhoons lash the islands.
Almost the entire archipelago was thrown open to
exploitation by the Philippine government officials, members of
Congress and the Chamber of Mining a few yeas ago when they
pressured the Supreme Court of the Philippines to declare
unconstitutional a 1995 law that strictly controlled mining and set
standards that protected the environment and the rights of the
people to benefit from the development of their natural resources.
All those legal protections are now gone and the
nation is experiencing growing social unrest as the population in
the mining areas are protesting injustice and exploitation. The
damage to the mountains, rivers and environment and the lives of the
people, caused by this ecological exploitation, aided and betted by
the wealthy elite, is beyond calculation.
Villagers are revolting and struggling to stop
the destruction of their villages and environment in Nueva Vizcaya
province, six hours north of Manila where a huge government backed
mining operation is being challenged. The People of Didipio, a
remote village, set up roadblocks to stop the Australian mining
giant Oceana Gold from open pit mining and constructing tailing dams
on their ancestral land. They are brave and determined people.
Governor Luisa Lloren Cuaresma backed them and
issued a stop order to Oceana Gold but the national government
overturned it and backed the mining company over the people. The
wealthy elite are behind the destructive mining and colonial style
exploitation and there is nothing at present to stop them and help
the people besides the voices of the Church and civil society
campaigners. The only solution is to rewrite and reinstate the 1995
law that protects the people and battle corruption on all levels.
That’s no easy task in a country where many of elite are ardent
churchgoing Catholics and pious hypocrites.
preda@info.com.ph
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