CPA Mining
Campaign Thrust
The Cordillera Region remains a major
target of local and multinational mining companies for the extraction
of its rich mineral resources, mainly gold and copper. Sixty-four
Applications for Production Sharing Agreement (APSA) covering 86,033.3575
hectares, and ten Application for Financial or Technical Assistance
Agreement (AFTA) covering 879,886.95 hectares, Exploration Permit
Applications (EXPAs) with 283,285.7237
hectares, and 5 industrial permit (IP) applications with 55.07 hectares
are being processed by the Mines and Geosciences Bureau in the Cordillera
region.
Thus, all pending mining applications cover a total
land area of 1,234.005 hectares. Nine APSAs
covering 21,054 hectares, four EXPAs covering 11,067.587 hectares
and 4 industrial permit have been approved in the region. These
are in addition to the ongoing mining operations of Lepanto
Consolidated Mining Corporation and Philex
Mining Company.
The processing of large mining applications has
been proceeding very slowly in our region as well as nationally.
Large-scale mining has not been able to attract as much foreign
investment as the government had hoped it would since the term of
President Ramos. Both the government and the Philippine Chamber
of Mines blame the situation on people’s protest, and on certain
provisions of laws that the people have used to protect their resources
and defend
their rights against large mining.
Thus, the government and the Chamber of Mines have
embarked on a campaign to:
• improve the image of large mining in the
country and neutralize the protest against it, or at least discredit
this protest;
• get rid of the legal impediments to faster
expansion and intensification of the industry.
In their image-building efforts, however, government
and the Chamber of Mines have found it difficult to contend with
the continuing spread of information regarding the adverse impact
of large mining, as illustrated by both (a) stories that have recently
come out in the mass media on the persistence of the problems that
were generated by the massive spillage of tailings into Marinduque’s
Boac river from 1995 to 1996; (b) the data regarding the
damage that Lepanto has continually been
inflicting on the Abra river valley and
watershed since the company started operating in 1936.
In addition are news stories that have appeared
from time to time associating the exploration, start-up, or operation
of large mines with military and para-military
violence inflicted on protesting communities.
These include the continuing plight of workers in what is supposedly
the country’s highest-paying mining company, Lepanto.
Globally, the mining industry has been striving
to improve its image because, worldwide, it has been meeting up
with resistance from communities occupying mineral-rich areas and
because its bad record has been driving away potential as well as
existing stockholders. Stockholders either have become too worried
about the future of their investments or have been successfully
reached by a growing First World movement
for what civil society believers call moral investment.
The global industry campaign started a few years
back. Its aim is to significantly influence public opinion that
large mining can be socially responsible and environmentally sustainable.
This rhetoric has then shaped the draft
National Minerals Policy (NMP) mainly influenced by chamber of mines
of foreign countries leading the drive
for liberalization of national mining industries.
However, the NMP, as formulated in December 2002,
is not just an image-building instrument. It also
aims to harmonize Philippine natural resource laws in favor
of the Mining Act of 1995. Its authors hope to do away with legal
requirements on large mining development, which are provided for
in other laws – specifically, the provisions on Free
and Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) in
the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA); the provisions
on ancestral land and ancestral domain in both the IPRA and the
National Integrated Protected Areas System or NIPAS Act; the provisions
for environmental protection in the Forestry Code, the Fisheries
Code, and the Environmental Impact Assessment System; and provisions
on both environmental protection and community consent in the Local
Government Code.
With the broad nationwide campaign to scrap the
Philippine Mining Act of 1995 (Republic Act 7942) for almost a decade
now and the persistent protests against the NMP, President Gloria
Macapagal Arroyo was frustrated in her
plan to sign the policy before 2003 ends. After almost a decade
of a broad nationwide campaign to scrap the Mining Act of 1995 and
the filing of a petition on the unconstitutionality of the said
law, the Supreme Court declared as unconstitutional some of its
major provisions on January 29, 2004. It ruled as unconstitutional
and void the main instrument of foreign capitalist access to large
mineral deposits in the Philippines
– the Financial or Technical Assistance Agreement
(FTAA), which allows 100 % ownership, operation and management
of mining activities under this form of agreement.
The Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA), concerned
national and regional organizations, institutions and advocates
welcomed the SC decision and commended the SC justices who gave
consideration on the merit of the petition. The SC ruling already
put into question the constitutionality of the whole Mining Act.
This was partly a victory in our quest for indigenous peoples’
rights, national sovereignty, social justice and environment protection.
But by limiting its decision to the matter of FTAAs
and by not junking the whole law as unconstitutional, the SC left
a loophole open to foreign exploiters by entering into partnership
with Filipino companies and still be able to do their joint
quest for profit through large scale
mining operations under the Mineral Production Sharing Agreement
(MPSA). This kind of partnerships can be seen in the Philex-Anglo
American cooperation and in
the Lepanto Consolidated Mining Company's
links with Rio Tinto executives.
Against this backdrop, CPA remains committed to
pursue and heighten its campaign against large-scale mining to uphold the rights and livelihood of affected
communities, the protection of the environment, and for sustainable
use of the people's resources for their own development and progress.
CPA shall continue to strengthen
the capacity and vigilance of affected communities and heighten
its information and awareness, advocacy and lobby work at the national
and international levels. This campaign hopes to prevent additional
mining operations in the region, while sustaining protests and other
activities to stop the expansion of Lepanto
Mining, gain compensation of affected communities and rehabilitation
of mined out areas and polluted rivers such as the Agno
river and the Abra river by
toxic mine tailings. #
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