– A Cordillera Elder

(When the forests are gone and the rivers are dry,Of what good is gold?

The people are scattered as the wind do to dust, Can gold restore life?

The Asia/Pacific Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD) has defined ecological debt as the debt incurred by the industrialized countries and transnational corporations of the North towards the people of the South in the continuing plunder and exploitation of the ecology and resources of the South, and in the destruction of the planet due to their production and consumption patterns that dominate the global economy. Ecological Debt is the ultimate debt, not by one people against another, but by a definite class who works from one country to another, and has institutionalized a system of production driven by greed for profit. It is the sum total of exploitation and plunder of resources on the one hand, and the deprivation of the vast majority of peoples on the other hand. The net effect of ecological debt is the destruction of the material base of human survival-the earth.

Ecological Debt is hard to translate in terms of concrete monetary terms.

Existing laws provide for penalties and other forms of assurances for rehabilitation in cases where the environment is damaged and destroyed. But as far as those who have been victimized are concerned, these assurances are not enough. In fact, funds are never enough because ecological destruction can never be paid.

How can one compute the dollar equivalent of destruction and despair? Can one come up with monetary value for scattered communities and denuded resources that affect present and future generations?

Over the last four decades, the Philippine government has facilitated and presided over the fastest deforestation process one could ever imagine. By virtue of the partnership between local and foreign companies both in logging concessions and mining operations, the Philippine forest cover has been reduced significantly: from 9 million hectares in 1968, to 1.6 million hectares in 1996. On top of this deforestation process, the Philippine government has also invited global mining companies to engage in large-scale open pit mining operations all throughout the country.

The cases that will be described later will show how much suffering and misery has been inflicted on the peoples of the Philippines, all in the name of development and modernization.

It is important to note that many of the projects that will be cited are so-called priority development projects of the government. The objective of which is to boost the national economy, earn dollars, and pay the country’s foreign debt. Moreover, these projects are meant to eventually eradicate poverty.

The logic is simple: destroy the earth to reduce the number of impoverished peoples. The result: many impoverished peoples and communities are now in their graveyards.

This process could not have been made possible without the support of the country’s loyal patrons and mentors: the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Asian Development Bank. With programs such as Structural Adjustment and other conditionalities, the Philippine ruling elite is able to pursue a development and modernization process that has led to the transformation of rivers into dry lands, of forests into muddy grounds, and of self-subsistent communities into beggars and slum dwellers.

Indeed, the development process in the Philippines has gone a long way.

Traditionally, the mining sector has been a significant contributor to the country’s economy. This sector of the economy must have also been important to the American colonial government because a mining law was enacted as early as 1905. Since early 1900s, large scale mining operations have proliferated all throughout the country for gold, copper, silver, coal, and other minerals.

However, due to the alleged major flaws in the country’s policy environment, the mining sector began suffering a serious decline starting in the 70s. In the 90s, President Fidel Ramos wanted to fast-track the so-called industrialization process and he made sure that the mining industry would contribute significantly to his vision of a Newly-Industrialized Country. With that, the government in partnership with the Asian Development Bank, commissioned the East-West Center of Hawaii to evaluate the factors leading to the downturn of the industry. Upon the recommendations of the East-West Center and the Asian Development Bank, the Philippine Chamber of Mines came up with a set of recommendations which were later adopted by congress and incorporated into a new mining law, now known as the Philippine Mining Law of 1995 or Republic Act 7942.

The new law, and the package of financial aid that came with its passage, are clearly not meant to encourage small miners to go into the industry but for global mining corporations to extract the country’s resources. Some of the benefits it promised to foreign companies were 100% ownership, tax holidays, 100% repatriation, exemption from environmental impact assessments, direct sale of gold to the international market, and other offers.

So effective and attractive was the new mining law that in one region alone (Western Mindanao), a flood of mining applications poured in from the world’s biggest mining company Rio Tinto, with a total applied area of 500,000 hectares. In 1997, a total of about 9,299,121.78 million hectares were applied for large scale mining operations all throughout the country. About 99.9% of these are applications of foreign companies, mostly Australian, Canadian and British.

While the applications have triggered the sprouting of many protest actions and mobilizations throughout the country, the government and the global companies continued to campaign aggressively for support both from local residents and local government units. This explains why despite the protests, some applications were able to push through with exploration, and eventually operations.

Yet, many lessons have to be learned from the history of mining operations in the country-lessons that are too bitter to be remembered especially by those whose lives have been shattered and whose sources of livelihood have forever been destroyed. Unfortunately, the government’s drive for dollars and foreign investments prevented it from learning the lessons of the past. In the name of development and modernization, the government, again, pursues a program that will only lead to more destruction and devastation, where multinational corporations and their local patrons reap gargantuan profit all at the expense of the people.

From Luzon down to Mindanao, various people’s organizations and communities have documented different incidents of environmental destruction brought about by mining-incidents that are seldom reported, much less, investigated by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). This is why the people have renamed the department as Destruction of the Environment Never Reported.

In all the so-called mineral development projects, the people have only seen devastation and destruction. The impacts have been disastrous and far-reaching. Below are specific cases that have occurred over the last 15 years.

In March 1996, 3-4 million tons of metal-enriched and acid-generating tailings filled the 26-km Boac River in the island province of Marinduque. This was caused by a badly sealed drainage tunnel in an old mine pit that burst. The mined-out pit which is located in the high central mountains of Marinduque had been used as storage pit for the tailings from a new adjacent mine since 1992. The culprit was the firm Marcopper Mining Corporation.

Greatly affected by the Marcopper incident were the municipalities of Sta. Cruz (center of mining operations), Mogpog, and Boac, all in the island province of Marinduque, 170 kilometers north of Manila.

Marcopper is the third largest mining company in the Philippines with a reported production of 30,000 tons of copper daily for the last 27 years. It began mining the Tapian ore body in Marinduque in 1969, and proceeded with San Antonio project in 1991 using the old Tapian pit for waste disposal.

The company is 40% owned by the Canadian firm Placer Dome Inc. (PDI) and 50% by a front corporation of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos called Performance Investment Corporation; since it was sequestered during the Aquino government, it is also partly owned by the Philippine government

Placer Dome is one of the top gold mining corporations in the world, second only as a mining corporation in its home country, Canada. In 1998, the company posted profits of US$105 billion.

Placer Dome employs some 8,400 people in its 14 mines scattered in five countries in five continents. It has a reputation of coming into conflict with local populations in areas of operation. Like the Western Shoshone tribe in Nevada for polluting land; people of Strickland, New Guinea for dumping wastes in the river, and the people of Costa Rica. The company’s Golden Sunlight Mine in Montana, USA is accused of cyanide leaching.

Marcopper has a 30-year history of mining disasters and environmental abuse in the Philippines. The 1996 tragedy got the national and global attention on Marcopper’s culpability in destroying entire river systems, communities and livelihoods but actually, the trail of destruction can be traced as far back as 1969.

Marcopper responded, albeit inadequately, with the following actions:

In 20 years of its operations in the Philippines, PDI accumulated earnings estimated at US$1 billion. Their contribution to the national reserves stands at US$370 million. Taxes paid to the government amounted to a mere US$100,000 in 20 years. Social projects have been estimated at only US$40,000. Is these enough vis-à-vis the irreparable damage done to the people and environment of Marinduque?