Editorial: So much fuss by the uninvited

Monday, January 30, 2012

THERE are gatherings and there are gatherings. There are conferences to gather the forces, and there are meetings to share information and ideas. And there are even plenums. But in all these gatherings, the organizer chooses what group of people to gather and send out invitations for such.

Thus, we wonder what the fuss was all about when Ateneo de Davao University organized the International Conference on Mining in Mindanao and did not invite anyone from the mining industry. In the first place, it wasn’t an international conference of the mining industry nor an international conference by miners, or for miners. It was a conference on mining.

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Now, if the gathering chose to gather those opposed to the industry so that participants can share experiences and even cheer each other on, there is nothing wrong with that. They’re not using government money anyway, much less money from the mining industry.

If the Chamber of Mines in the Philippines recall, just very recently the Ateneo de Manila University held a similar summit where they were invited, and they accepted. But on the day of the summit, they opted not to attend and instead came out with a full page advertisement lambasting the ADMU School of Governance (ASOG) for a policy paper, which were all based on government figures and reports anyway. Now, the Ateneo de Davao holds a similar one and they raise hell because they were not invited.

That people are realizing that mining, especially the open pit type, threatens the fragile environment is not these people’s fault. One only needs to search the Internet for images of open pit mines in the world to see a gaping hole on the ground that is thousands of kilometers wide. We cannot blame Mindanaoans if they suddenly realized the beauty in their lush forests and mountains. After all, many have sought refuge in these, many moneyed ones even getting for themselves some cabin out there as a resthouse and source of pride. You only need to drive up the Bukidnon-Davao highway to understand what we mean.

What we see is an attempt to cast aspersion where there shouldn’t be any. Had scientific studies been made accessible to all, and not buried in tomes of reports that even a regular learned person will not have the patience to read through, then there would have been less compulsion for those against mining to gather their forces on an international scale.

As one lawyer who has been closely monitoring developments in mining industry here said, Expertise is expensive. Why should it be up to the communities to challenge the Environmental Impact Study (EIS) of mining companies? Had the EIS been done as it should have been? Scientific, credible and independent? Then there would have been no double expense of verifying?

Whether the mining sector would agree to this is a question that begs to be answered. But if we were to derive meaning on the 222,500 kilobytes (222.5mb) document called the SMI Tampakan EIS, a copy of which Sun.Star has, then we can easily conclude that someone somewhere does not even want to be fully understood.

Transparency is the key, especially if you intend to chop off mountaintops from an already naturally hazardous environment called Mindanao.

For as long as the issues are hidden in tomes and jargons, then people will always exert their best efforts to gather their forces together to best understand what it is they and future generations will be facing.

The International Conference on Mining in Mindanao is but one of these. The mining sector can only expect more.