Several students and a professor of the geosciences department of the University of the Philippines are opposing the permanent appointment of Gina Lopez as Secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), following her controversial orders to close 23 mines and suspend five others.
In a press conference at the UP National Institute of Geological Sciences (UP-NIGS) in Diliman, Quezon City, on Monday, the UP Geology Majors’ Society, the Iuvenis Orbis Geological Fraternity, the UP 49ers, StandFirm and former UP-NIGS head and now professor Carlo Arcilla made known their positions against Lopez’s confirmation by the Commission on Appointments.
The UP groups were joined by representatives of the Philippine Business for Environmental Stewardship and the Chamber of Mines, as well as indigenous peoples’ leaders from mining communities in Surigao del Sur and South Cotabato, who had likewise registered their strong opposition to Lopez’s confirmation.
“With the DENR Secretary-designate Gina Lopez’s persistent unscientific and illegal actions, we found her unworthy to remain in that position,” said geology student Ralph Lauren Abainza, reading out the statement of the UP Geology Majors’ Society.
Abainza called out Lopez for her “absurd” and “misleading” statements on geology, such as when Lopez erroneously linked earthquakes to mining processes.
“As geology students, we, too, are environmentalists. We love the environment so much that we chose to dedicate our lives studying its process,” Abainza pointed out. “If we have very strict laws with responsible mining, then, we, too, shall uphold high standards for responsible environmentalists.”
“My main purpose for opposing Gina Lopez is because of students who will be losing jobs. We are not bad people. We do not teach our students to do bad, to rape our environment,” said former UP-NIGS head and now professor Carlo Arcilla.
“We are looking at the wrong problem and putting the blame on mining, when this has been happening in the past. We should look at the root of biodiversity loss, which is deforestation, ‘kaingin,’ and illegal logging,” Arcilla said.
While admitting that irresponsible mining also had adverse environment impacts and “give us a bad name,” Arcilla underscored that “only in 3 percent of 30 million hectares of land are there mining tenements, so that’s less than one percent of 30 million. So how can something being done in only one percent of the country be responsible for such massive pollution and degradation of the environment?”