Gov’t not monitoring ecosystems in mining reforestation, says expert

BAGUIO CITY—The mining industry’s forest program has succeeded in producing 14 million seedlings for 10,000 hectares of mined land in 2012, which should have enhanced the image of this economic sector, a forest expert said during the 60th National Mine Safety and Environment Conference here last week.

The industry also reported that its reforestation projects had posted a 90-percent survival rate, said Dr. Enrique Tolentino Jr., vice chancellor for community affairs of the University of the Philippines-Los Baños.

But all that the government has been able to monitor to ensure that the mining industry is fulfilling its environmental mandate is the number of trees it has produced and the species it has planted, Tolentino said.

The government should instead determine how the industry has managed to restore the ecosystem on mined-out areas, he said at the conference mounted by the Philippine Mine Safety and Environment Association (PMSEA).

“This is a weakness of [the government’s] monitoring system for rehabilitation,” Tolentino said. “A functioning forest is what we want.”

The absence of ecosystem data has prevented the industry from claiming full credit for its role in improving the environment and negate the bad press generated by past accidents, and a growing antimining sentiment in the provinces, he said.

“In 2012, [the mining industry’s] export value was $1.5 billion with an investment worth $4.63 billion so it’s definitely a huge industry … . [But] concomitant to this is the environmental impact of mining and this is something that we need to address,” he said.

The industry complies with regulations, including provisions required to secure an environmental compliance certificate (ECC), he said, but some regulators had started treating the ECC as a mere fulfillment of documentary prerequisites to operate a mine.

“The poor rehabilitation monitoring system has resulted in inconsistent rehabilitation standards. One company would be evaluated differently from another company…. No common standard is applied to any company,” he said.

He said the poor monitoring system and faulty decision-making by policy makers result in the poor public image of the industry.

Tolentino advocated the use of landscape function analysis as a parameter for monitoring mine rehabilitation, which determines the stability of a mine site that is being prepared for the reestablishment of an ecosystem.

The ultimate goal of any mining rehabilitation is to have biological and functioning ecosystem that is resilient and self-sustaining, he said.

Mining firms that have used this method include Taganito Mining Corp. in Surigao del Norte and Rio Tuba Nickel Mining Corp. in Palawan, he said.

Dr. Bibiano Rañes, Rio Tuba’s resident forestry expert, said the firm had rehabilitated more than 200 ha of mine land and had initiated ecosystem projects discussed by Tolentino, including a project aimed at determining the new forests’ value as carbon absorbers.