Environmentalists buck lifting of mining log ban

Imagine the environmental impact of giving blanket authority to mining companies to cut down thousands of trees in forests: more floods and landslides.

And what do we get in return: Saplings that will take years to grow?

This is how activists and environmentalists on Friday responded to President Aquino’s new policy exempting the mining industry from the total log ban in exchange for its participation in the National Greening Program.

“The President is committing a grave environmental crime,” charged “Clemente Bautista, national coordinator of the Kalikasan-PNE, saying it would “surely lead to fast deforestation and degradation of our remaining forests.”

Jaybee Garganera, national coordinator of the Alyansa Tigil Mina, said the “suspicious” policy  reversing the intent of the total log ban embodied in Executive Order No. 23 would “spell disaster.”

In effect, the exemption authorizes mining companies to cut down trees in the exploration stage and more so in the operation stage in areas covered by their mining contracts, whereas before they had been forbidden by EO 23, he said.

“With this exemption, the sound basis for coming out with EO 23 is rendered moot and academic because you’re giving special privileges to mining companies,” he said in an interview.

“Why would you want to destroy trees that are intact, and plant new ones that take 10 years to grow? This will have a direct impact on the capacity of trees to hold water, hold soil and absorb carbon. That’s the cumulative effect,” he added. “What’s the basis for this policy?”

“We fear that’s once (the logging ban) is lifted, it’s going to spell disaster,” he said.

“We’re implementing the Mining Act, flawed as it is, at the expense of the Climate Change Act and the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Act.”

Leo Jasareno of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau, who announced the policy at a mining conference in Baguio City, said the new move was the administration’s attempt at making mining more acceptable and industry regulations more efficient.

The greening program entails the planting of 1.5 billion trees from 2011 to 2016.

Annabelle Plantilla, chief operating officer of Haribon Foundation, said: “That in effect renders EO 23 useless. Our forest cover is less than 20 percent and yet we allow extractive industries like logging and mining to remain in forested areas, knowing very well that forest areas supply us with ecosystem services. This government does not give importance to ecological services.”

According to her, current operations and applications for mining and logging permits cover at least one million hectares of land in watersheds and protected areas.

“This policy pronouncement is saddening because I thought that under this government there would be a glimmer of hope, that there would be a paradigm shift. Elsewhere there’s the Occupy Wall Street, a campaign against corporate greed. Yet here, we’re promoting corporate greed by allowing these companies to exploit our resources,” she added by phone.

Mr. Aquino “deliberately forgets” that most of the mining concessions are located in ecologically critical forest areas, Bautista said, warning that the exemption “will surely result in loss of biodiversity and also to community displacement as we have seen in the provinces of Surigao del Norte and Palawan.”

According to Bautista, forest cover has been reduced to an estimated six percent of the original forest habitat, and is further threatened by an average of 157,400 hectares lost to deforestation per year.

He added that the national greening program was insufficient to alleviate the deforestation rate.

“It takes decades for a tree to fully mature and function sufficiently,” scoffing at the industry’s “involvement in the government’s token reforestation program.”

“The logging ban exemption shows how indifferent and callous President Aquino and his administration are in protecting the interests of foreign investors and corporate mining at the expense of our environment and communities, he said.

The Aquino administration can expect greater opposition from mining-affected communities from Northern Luzon to Southern Mindanao if his coddling of the mining industry continues, he warned.