President Rodrigo Duterte has lifted the nine-year moratorium on mining agreements through the Executive Order (EO) 130, April 14, to supposedly pave the way for the revival of mining projects to stimulate the country’s nosediving economy.

Environmental groups, however, denounce the reallowing of new mining mineral agreements, warning that such move only spells destruction for the environment.

“Lifting the mining moratorium exposes his (Duterte) administration’s support for mining projects that will impact our water, food supply, forest, biodiversity, indigenous communities, and fragile island ecosystems,” Alyansa Tigil Mina said in a statement, April 15.

The EO, released a week before Earth Day 2021 last April, instructed the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to craft terms and conditions in the new mineral agreements that will “maximize government revenues and share from production.”

Under EO 130, aside from ushering in economic recovery, the government eyes to provide raw materials for its infrastructure program Build, Build, Build, and increase employment opportunities in rural communities as part of the “Balik Probinsya, Bagong Pag-asa.”

As a sign of protest, fisherfolk group PAMALAKAYA and Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment staged a demonstration in front of the DENR office in to condemn the EO 130, while its Implementing Rules and Regulations is being crafted by the Mines and Geosciences Bureau, May 20.

“This administration’s pro-mining pivot adds to its records of environmental destruction and sell out of national patrimony. Duterte is a national traitor at its best in this respect,” said PAMAKALAYA National Chairperson Fernando Hicap during the protest.

Amending Agreements

The EO 130 has amended the previous mining reforms program under EO 79, signed on July 6, 2012 by former President Benigno Aquino III, which expanded the areas in the country where mining was banned, including 78 tourism sites, farms, marine sanctuaries and island ecosystems.

The previous EO also prohibited the grant of mineral agreements until a new legislation on the revenue-sharing scheme between the government and mining firms takes effect.

With these mining reforms, Aquino’s issuance has received merits for its clear intentions on lessening the negative impacts brought by mining operations to the environment and communities.

For think-tank IBON Foundation, the EO 79 only led to the opening of other mining sites, and lessened local government’s authority in imposing mining bans. Duterte’s EO, meanwhile, will only worsen these consequences, according to IBON in an April 26 article.

“EO 130 seeks to intensify these [destructions], especially by removing the moratorium–the perceived barrier to full-blast mining–leaving a thicker trail of damage on the environment and communities and with little benefit to the national economy,” read part of IBON’s report.

Despite these claims, the Duterte administration is hoping that the new EO will play a significant role in resolving the state’s economic crisis and that it would generate large funds from mining investments alone through this new issuance.

Taxes from mining operations could also significantly contribute to the economy, the government claimed, with the approval of the 2017 Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) Law which increased the excise tax rate on minerals from 2 percent to 4 percent.

Trivial Gains

Though EO 130 was built on the assumption that inking new mining agreements will generate profit, in reality, the mining industry has delivered little contribution to the economy.

Even if the export of mineral products increased from 2001 to 2020, this only amounted to 8.3 percent of the total Philippine exports last year, according to IBON’s report.

Despite the TRAIN Law, too, the taxes gained from mining only made up 0.07 percent of total taxes in 2020. In terms of employment opportunities, meanwhile, the industry has only generated an annual average share of 0.49 percent. The sector’s annual contribution to the gross domestic product is also only at 1.02 percent.

While the economy has little to gain from the industry, big firms have raked in revenues from continued mining activities. The gross revenue of top mining firms have skyrocketed from P10.4 billion in 2001 to P171.1 billion in 2018, IBON reported. Transnational mining companies have also enjoyed a significant profit increase from earning P1.7 billion to P78.9 billion in the same period.

Now that new mining agreements can be granted, these figures are only expected to further soar. Peddled as a program towards economic recovery, the EO 130 will only truly serve the business interests of the few, and not the Filipinos who have suffered heavy losses in a pandemic. Apart from being ineffective as a supposed driver of economic growth, mining activities will also cause irrevocable damages to the environment and communities.

Aware of the destruction mining will bring in its wake, different groups slammed Duterte’s lifting of the moratorium. For one, the Panalipdan Mindanao, a Mindanao-wide network of sectoral groups and environmental defenders, assailed the EO 130 as it could lead to the revival of Sagittarius Mines Incorporated’s (SMI) large-scale mining project in Tampakan, South Cotabato.

Fading Tradition

The SMI acquired mining rights over the Tampakan tenement in 2001, an area touted as Asia's largest known copper and gold reserve. But over the years, different legal battles and opposition from locals have stalled the development of the Tampakan mining project. In 2016, former DENR secretary Gina Lopez blocked the venture for its plan to employ open-pit mining.

In an online forum by the Panalipdan Mindanao last April 24, the Davao Association of Catholic Schools (DACS), a part of the network, revealed how the Tampakan project, which covers an area of approximately 10,000 hectares, could gravely impact the environment and the nearby communities. 

For the operation to proceed, almost 4,000 hectares of forests will be cut down in the area. The mining project will also affect six rivers in the area which communities depend on for water source, according to DACS.

The continuation of the Tampakan project will ultimately deprive irrigators and farmers of livelihood, and incur more frequent flooding and landslides in the area—the common destructive impacts of large-scale mining operations.

The Tampakan project could also cause grave injury to the culture and traditions of the B’laan people, who once lived on the large parts of the island but only managed to survive as a community up in the Tampakan mountains.

The B’laans, who were accustomed to living in the mine area, were no longer allowed to enter their fields located in the valley where the core elements of the mine are situated, according to BankTrack, a non-government organization working in the field of private sector banks and sustainability. As a result, the tribe, composed of successful farmers in the past, now rely on bags of rice provided to them.

For these groups, EO 130 is yet another one of the Duterte administration’s anti-people policies enacted to purportedly spur the economy out of recession amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The irrevocable desire of President Duterte to sacrifice our abundant natural resources at the altar of domestic and foreign mining interests is detestable and revolting,” said Hicap during the protest. “We are calling on the DENR to oppose this corporate greed and madness in the name of our environment and [the] livelihood of the people most of all.” ●