THE Scrap the Mining Act Network (SMAN) welcomes the order of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) closing down 23 mining firms and suspending five mining operations.
All government agencies should cooperate and ensure the implementation of this order, SMAN said.
It also encouraged Environment Secretary Regina Paz L. Lopez to remain firm in her decision amid the taunts of big businesses and threats by politicians and Cabinet members.
“This bold act is a step forward to uphold the Filipino peoples’ national patrimony as basis for our national industrialization,” SMAN said.
“We agree these mines, especially those devoted for the extraction of gold and nickel, have endangered river ecosystems and destroyed or put in danger some watersheds. In the setting up these mines, forests were denuded and large areas stripped of vegetation, thus denying refuge to plant and animal life,” it said.
However, SMAN said one cogent reason for abusive mining operations to stop is the slew of human-rights violations committed by these companies, with people opposed to mining being targeted.
“The DENR also failed to mention how these companies forced residents to give their consent through blandishments, outright threats or violence. In many instances, social acceptability was secured under duress, thus defeating the very substance of free, prior and informed consent [FPIC] among those affected by mining operations,” the group said.
SMAN asked Lopez and members of the two chambers of Congress to just scrap the Mining Act of 1995.
“The enactment and implementation of this law exacerbated the effects of large-scale mining to the environment and to the people’s lives and welfare, exporting thousands of tons of mineral resources without even establishing our own national mining industry. Existing mines became bolder in their expansion moves and approved mining applications pushed through, as exemplified by the Marcventures Holdings [MARC] assertion of their ‘prior rights’ as recognized by the mining law while operating in a watershed area in Surigao del Sur. Before the new leadership of the DENR came, there was minimal assessment of the environmental and human-rights performance of mining companies. The Mining Act of 1995 was implemented to attract foreign companies and investments, without regard to its real benefits to the economy, to job generation and adherence to international human-rights and environmental standards,” SMAN said.
“We appeal to Secretary Lopez to add voice to our clamor to scrap the Mining Act of 1995 and for Congress to replace it with a law that will employ stricter environmental and human-rights standards to mining companies. The People’s Mining bill that was filed in Congress also seeks to reorient the mining industry toward the creation of a genuine and sustainable national industry,” it stressed.
“As long as the current Mining Act is in place and is being implemented, environment woes caused by large-scale mining will not end. It is not enough to impose environment regulations. Regulation of the mining industry must be integrated in a holistic and sustainable development agenda, one that will serve the peoples’ genuine interests and aspirations,” SMAN said.