Mining – The good and the bad

If you cook your dinner in a stainless steel pot or pan, have a computer
for your e-mail and research or wear a watch, the chances are that you
have nickel helping you along. It’s a very valuable and important
metal, it’s in most of the things we use daily and the world is hungry
for it.

So hungry that the global mining companies in collusion with locals in

developing countries are gouging the earth, blasting mountains,
digging huge holes, tunneling into the earth and criminally polluting
rivers, cutting forests and creating environmental havoc in the
stampede of greed. It’s likely also that the nickel in your appliances
and kitchen ware, computer or watch comes from the Philippines.

The Philippines where one third of the people numbering over 100
million are living below the poverty line has vast reserves of mineral
wealth but they benefit little or not at all. The mining of the precious
metals, gold, silver, chromium, copper, nickel is reaping billions of
pesos mostly for the wealthy.

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Those who benefit are the large scale multinational mining companies
and investors from Britain, Australia, Switzerland, Canada, the USA
and China. They do with the help of the ruling industrial families.
They make up one percent of the population but control or own up to
70 percent of the national wealth. Some of that comes from the earth
and the land of the tribal indigenous people and has caused conflict
throughout the nation.
Such global exploitation is not only confined to the Philippines but is
similar in most developed countries where the ruling oligarchy is part
of the incredible and large scale theft operation. In Nigeria the oil
wealth is disappearing by the billions of dollars.

The exploitation of the Filipinos and their natural resources is made

possible by the rich Filipino elite who controls the Philippine
Congress. They passed the 1995 mining law that benefits the
Philippine mining interests, in cahoots with the multinational mining
corporations. They bring little benefit to the country. The International
Monetary Fund made a study in 2012 showing that the mining
industry reaps vast profits but contributes a fraction in taxes.

The law gives huge tax holidays to mining corporations and allows
them to import machinery tax free and other exemptions. The tax rate
is one of the lowest in the world, around 2% to 3% percent of net
earnings. In Australia it is close to 35 percent.

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Environmentalists protested and campaigned against the law and the
scale of destruction and damage to the environment and to the loss of
ancestral lands and the killing of human rights advocates. Even priests
and pastors and church workers have been assassinated for giving
their lives to protect the indigenous people and their ancestral lands
and traditions. The protests still go on.

In Santa Cruz, Zambales, a successful campaign led by Benito E.

Molino, a medical doctor, and other environmentalists won a victory
last July against nickel mining companies in Santa Cruz when the
Mines and Geo-sciences Bureau (MGB) suspended their mining
operating permits because of their destructive mining practices and
environmental damage.
The companies are enraged and are striking back by paying people to
campaign against the good doctor and his supporters. Some mining
managers around the country have divided communities turning the
people against each other so that the mining company can continue
their destructive practice. “It’s easy to get someone killed in some of
these countries. Decapitate the leader of the movement and then buy
off everyone else—that’s standard procedure,” Said Phil Robertson,
Asian Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch.

In Mindanao Italian Catholic priest Faustino Tentorio of the PIME

missionaries was shot dead by assassins for his support of the people
of the Manobo tribe who are struggling to save their ancestral lands
and forests from mining interests.

As many as fifty people have been killed for taking a stand against
environmental exploitation and advocating for a new mining law in
the Philippines. That new law will promote safe and responsible small
scale mining. The large scale mining operations can remove half a
mountain and its forests, pollute its rivers and in a decade and leave a
pit half a kilometer deep.

President Aquino responded to the mounting protests and outrage over

the mining issue with an executive order in 2012 that excluded certain
areas from mining. The Executive Order also asserted national
authority over local laws. Several governors and local officials who
are against large scale mining protested. This favored the powerful
mining corporations who have well paid lawyers who can overturn
local ordinances that ban large scale mining so as to protect the
environment.

That’s something that we all can do in our own small way. We can all
be advocates for a healthy planet, we can campaign over the social
media, march for a free countryside, help by planting flowers or trees,
speaking out to save a pond or a tree from being cut down, recycling
our waste.

Small actions together make one great powerful action. Change for the
better is made up of millions of small acts of preservation and love of
life and creation. We will preserve and enhance life, and give us
greater meaning to our lives, existence and purpose on this troubled
planet.