Thursday, September 18, 2008 Editorial: Mining, trust, and governance
TODAY at the Waterfront Insular Hotel, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources will be spearheading the Mining Consultative Forum. Here, mining prospects, investments, existing mining operations, and mineral resources will be discussed; and because DENR has been drumming up interest on mining and inviting mining investors, it's can be assumed that this forum will be slanted toward mining.
Over at the Grand Men Seng Hotel, the Alternate Forum for Research in Mindanao (Afrim Inc.) will be conducting a peoples' mining forum; knowing the critical stand of Afrim on environment issues like mining, this forum will be slanted against.
In both major fora, mining takes center stage; specifically, Mindanao's mineral-rich lands and logged over mountains, and the conflicts and travails that always seem to accompany this sector.
The mining disasters of the 1990s have left a mark in the people's consciousness that will not be easy to erase. No assurance by major players in the international mining industry is enough.
After all, Filipinos still have to see what these foreign direct investors (FDIs) mean when they say modern mining methods are designed to be not as devastating to the environment as in the 1990s. What Filipinos still see are barren mountains being sluiced down, and once-green slopes now flattened and sporting nothing but red clay soil and threatening rocks.
Mining towns, present and past, are almost always the scenes of disasters.
No amount of drum-beating on the billions of investments and developments promised by the entry of one single FDI on mining will ever shut up the opposition because at the root of this is the lack of trust.
Sustainable development and mining do not go hand in hand, if mining means sluicing down mountains, boring tunnels upon tunnels into vast ranges without much care of what's happening outside just to bring out the gold.
Mining can only be made to contribute to sustainable development with good governance, and we all know that governance in this part of the world is shot.
They can't even approve an annual budget without shooting it down with accusations of double entry. How much more a mining investment that will mean billions of dollars.
Mining activities, as we have seen just these past weeks in the tit-for-tat word war among BHP Billiton, Asiaticus Corporation, and different lumad groups, straddles complex environmental and social problems.
There is a whole range of policies involved that have to be in place, in force, monitored, and violations must be strictly penalized for mining activities to engender sustainable development.
March 24, 1996 is not that long ago; but that was when the Marcopper Mine in Marinduque dumped 1.6 million cubic meters of mine tailings along 27 kilometers of the Makulapnit-Boac river system and the coastal areas.
Rapu-Rapu Processing Inc., a unit of Lafayette Philippines Inc. that has mining operations in Albay, was ordered shut down in October 2005 after a cyanide spill from its gold, copper, and zinc mine that polluted a nearby river twice. The first incident involved the spillover of processed slurry due to mechanical and human error, while the second involves the leakage of water tailings from the dam induced by heavy rain.
Both disasters are avoidable, but weak and corrupt governance brought these about. Corruption, governance, and inept bureaucracy still prevail today as they did in those two incidents, almost a decade apart, the last of which is just three years ago.
Things haven't changed it seems. In fact, governance is even becoming worse.
The challenge then is not how to convince people that mining is good for the economy and their future, but to convince them that government can be trusted to be there, on guard, armed with all the laws of the land, and incorruptible, while major investors dig up gold, silver, bronze and other multi-billion worth of minerals. Stated this way, the issue becomes a very tall order, an impossible dream.
