Mining in the Philippines - Concerns and Conflicts

Appendix 5. The Threat to Indigenous Rights and Environment by Mining
- A Philippine Case Study
A Letter of His Excellency
MOST REV. RAMON B. VILLENA, D.D.
Bishop's Residence Bishop of Bayombong,
Bayombong, 3700 Nueva Vizcaya
Thursday, 21 September 2006
Latest government statistics on national physical accounts show that mining in the Philippines has gained in
value. However the environmental degradation it has caused has also increased. This, it seems, is the principal
trigger of the continuing wide opposition against mining as an economic activity in the country. Placed further
in the context of extremely high biodiversity, low land base, rising demand for land due to a rising population,
extremely socially sensitive tenure regimes involving indigenous peoples, and high downstream impacts of
open extraction in a generally mountainous archipelago, the negative externalities of mining invite magnified
cause for social, ethical, religious and ecological concerns.
International mining companies from Australia (nine at the last count) have entered into financial and technical
assistance agreements. Climax Arimco Mining Corp. (CAMC), whose name has been changed to Australasian
Philippines Mining Inc. (APMI) operates on 21,465 hectares of the Didipio Copper/Gold Project in Didipio,
Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya. The site is located some 200 km north of Manila.
The company claims that it has "strong local community and government support." This could not be farther
from the truth. The people have resisted the entry of the mine from the beginning of the mid 1990s. Here are
some events:
1. Invoking a people's initiative, the local barangay mustered 20% of the legitimate voters and filed a petition to
the Commission on Election (COMELEC) for the conduct of a referendum to decide whether the mine should be
allowed in or not. However, the COMELEC took almost four years to act on the petition. Eventually, the
petition became moot and academic since the majority of the anti-mining candidates for the Sangguniang
Barangay (local legislative body) won 6 out of 8 seats. The people retracted their petition for obvious reasons.
2. The local barangay council (Didipio) had passed a resolution approving the mine's entry, which was revoked
by the new set of barangay officials after the 2004 election. (The officials were reportedly elected on the basis of
their anti-Climax Arimco stand.)
3. In July 2005, the municipality of Kasibu voted against the entry of the mine, but the provincial government
(egged on by the regional MGB) approved it the following month.
4. Within a week of the provincial board's decision, the people – led by DESAMA (Didipio Earth Savers
Movement) and supported by the Social Action Centre of the Diocese of Bayombong, Nueva Vizcaya – turned
out in a well-attended indignation rally in front of the provincial capitol. Despite the rains and the short notice,
some 1,000 people were at the rally.
The local economy is agricultural, with fruits, vegetables, and rice grown in the province and brought for sale to
Manila. There is also a thriving citrus fruit production, for which a festival is held every two years, to announce
to all that "the people’s gold is picked from a tree, not dug from the ground." (Their situation is much like that
of Tambogrande, Peru, where farmers engaged in growing lemons and mangoes fought a giant gold mine.)
Brooms and baskets woven by the people from locally-sourced plants are also brought to Manila or sold along
the highway.
The people are a mixture of Ilocano and several indigenous tribes, notably the indigenous Bugkalot (or Ilongot)
and the Ifugao, who went east when the large dams in the Cordilleras displaced them in the 1960s and 1970s.
The people resist the mine because:
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