Envi alliance to strengthen rank to defend the land from greed

BAGUIO CITY The people cannot live at all without the natural resources and countless gifts the environment is providing them so they have all the reasons to defend and nurture it as their forefathers have done at all cost for their survival and for the future generations.

Members and convenors of the Amianan Salakniban (AS or Defend the North) further strengthened their resolve to guard the environment from developmental aggression and corporate greed amidst the continuous entry of large scale mining corporations, renewable energy projects and other developmental concessions favored by government officials through their manipulations and maneuvers of government policies and laws. Peasants, small scale miners, church workers and human right advocates as well as individuals among other sectors in a forum on August 11 at Teachers Camp, Baguio City discussed the present situation and the experiences of struggle to defend the land and resolves to further advance the fight.

Regional Development Center-Katinnulong Daguiti Umili iti Amianan, Inc.(RDC-Kaduami) Executive Director Roxanne Veridiano said that the people of the regions of the Cordillera, Ilocos, Cagayan Valley and other parts of Northern Luzon should be bonded by a strong manifest to unite against corporate greed that plunder the environmental resources of North Luzon. She said that because of seemingly unstoppable large scale off-shore and on-shore mining activities that are being allowed by the government, the people saw the continuous environmental degradation affecting their source of livelihoods and making them vulnerable to disasters.

She said that mining plunder is found from ridge-to-reef where foreign-owned large scale mining companies dig and scrape the mountains to get the gold ores and disturb and destroy the seashores just to collect the magnetite or the black sand disregarding their effects to the environment and the people. She said that these corporations are able to do such with impunity with the blessings of the laws and policies of the government.

Neoliberal mining policy and anti-people interventionsCordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) Deputy Secretary General Santos Mero said that the mineral-rich agricultural lands, seashores and the sea itself and the territories of the Indigenous Peoples (IPs) of the Philippines are deemed as for sale because of the open-house attitude of the government. He said that the passage of such anti-people law like the Republic Act 7942 known as the Philippine Mining Act (PMA) of 1995 revitalized the mining industry in favor of the large-scale mining corporations by allowing its liberalization.

He said that because of this law, the country's patrimony is at stake as the government offered the foreign companies tax incentives and other privileges in the expense of the people. He said that the foreign investors were assured of 100% ownership, were given easement rights that they have the power to clear out their areas of operations of people that they see as obstruction with impunity and others like water rights and timber rights.

He added the issuance or approval of Financial and Technical Assistance Agreement (FTAA) applications to foreign corporations even with strong opposition for host communities.

According to the Center for Environmental Concerns (CEC) and the Kalikasan-Peoples Network for the Environment (PNE), the present administration of Benigno Aquino III reinforced mining pro-plunder provisions of PMA 1995 through executive Order 79. The group said that this assured mining companies of super profit while intensifying environmental destruction and massive displacement of communities.

AS secretariat member Sandra Ferwelo said that foreign mining companies are easily entering the territories of the people through deceptions and maneuvers. She cited the manipulations of Free Prior and Informed Consents (FPIC) by the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP) that caused confusion, disarray and disregard of IP rights over their ancestral territory.

She said that with the foreign mining corporations insisting their entry to the peoples' agricultural and ancestral lands comes militarization disguising as part of the governments anti-insurgency campaign. She said that with this, human rights violations are committed by elements of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) where they target leaders and members of groups critical to large-scale mining.

Ferwelo said that countless community members and leaders, organizers and advocates fell victims to extra-judicial killings, illegal arrests and detentions, surveillance, intimidation and harassment and so on.

Attack on the traditional mining method of the peopleAS spokesperson Fernando Mangili said that while large-scale mining companies continue their mining plunder in North Luzon, the 500 year-old small scale mining activities of the people were being blamed for the pollution and denudation of the environment. He said that the traditional SSM is used by the forefathers like in Benguet more than five centuries ago and is existing until the present. He said this kind of peoples activity employ manual and hard labor extraction of gold ores and the processing of gold with high regards of the environment. He said that traditional SSM only get the needed minerals from the earth enough to sustain their survival.

It is until the entrance of large mining companies he said that the people learned new technologies that made their activities easier. These he said also taught the people to use chemicals and other harmful methods just to get more gold as the competition gets tougher while the large companies have all the capacities to extract more gold ores by operating over thousands of hectares of mineral lands. He also described some companies or groups claiming to be SSM but actually are using heavy machinery and extensive method of gold extractions

He lamented on the passage of laws designed to control the activities of SSM such as the RA 7076 requiring the poor miners to form cooperatives; apply for minahang Bayan; apply for mineral processing permits and paying high fees among others. Mangili said that the small scal miners are hard to cope with this yet they have to comply as they fear being issued cease and desist orders.

Peoples Unity and mobilization for the environment and the futureSherwin de Vera of AS and Defend Ilocos said that the Northern Luzon Ecosystem gives the people everything to survive. He said it is the source of life therefore it should be guarded from destructive projects like mining and other corporate greed. He said the people has no other things to rely on but through their strong and determined unity in ensuring that the environment will continue to exist for the next generations.

He reiterated the call to repeal PMA 1995 and change this oppressive law with People's Mining Bill which promotes a mining industry based on the principles of social justice, respect for people's rights and welfare, environmental conservation, in the defense of national sovereignty and patrimony, national industrialization and agricultural modernization.#Aldwin Quitasol