The Philippine Catholic Church picks the wrong target, either by
accident or deliberately
In the Catholic diocese of Marbel
in South Cotabato Province in Central Mindanao, parish priests regularly
demonize the large-scale mining companies seeking natural resources in the
province. Some priests have gone as far as barring employees of the mining
companies from Sunday Mass. In Zamboanga Province, dioceses have reportedly
refused to hold mass or to administer church services in areas where
large-scale, licensed companies are operating.
The church’s antipathy to mining
companies stretches back to earlier decades when multinationals poured into the
Philippines to loot the country’s vast store of natural resources, estimated by
the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to be worth as much as US$1
trillion.
Multinational and domestic
large-scale mining companies drove indigenous peoples off mining lands without
compensation, left abandoned mines to deliver up a toxic mix of poisonous
minerals that poured into rivers and streams, built substandard dams to hold
back toxic tailings and looted substantial areas of the country. The
environmental and social damage was so severe that President Benigno S. Aquino
III, shortly after he came into office, issued an18-month moratorium on mining
until guidelines could be promulgated reforming a disastrous industry.
It is an industry that holds
enormous promise for the Philippines if strong regulations and an efficient
bureaucracy can keep the mining companies under control. The country is believed
to have more extractive reserves than Indonesia. The Philippine Mines and
Geo-Sciences Bureau, which is constantly upgrading its reserves, believes that
besides gold, another 13 classes of precious and semiprecious minerals could
total mineral wealth of as much as US$464.9 billion. Another 25 recorded
non-metallic or industrial minerals are believed to be worth as much as $71.7
billion.
In recent years, as the
multinationals have moved back in, now operating under stricter Philippine
government environmental standards, the Catholic Church has remained an
implacable foe. In 1998 and 2006, the Conference of Bishops issued statements
maintaining that large-scale mining causes environmental destruction and breeds
poverty.
The reasons for that antipathy to
large-scale mining, however, may have to do with other reasons than either
environmental depredation or concerns over poverty.
In a Nov. 15 report, the
Manila-based Pacific Strategies & Assessments country risk firm noted that
the church gets sizeable donations from anti-mining NGOs across the planet,
including Bread for the World, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development,
the Ecumenical Council for Social Responsibility and the German Catholic
Bishops’ Organization for Development.
“Should the Catholic Church
suddenly abandon its anti-mining campaign, it potentially could lose the
funding it currently receives from international donors sympathetic to the
anti-mining cause,” the report alleges.
Whether deliberate or
inadvertent, the church has ignored the fact that it isn’t the big mining
companies that are wrecking the landscape. It is indigenous miners, who are
empowered by the 1991 People’s Small-Scale Mining Act of 1991 which allows
anybody with a pick and shovel and P10,000 (US$242) to obtain a tract of land
to dig in. Under the law, they must rely on manual labor.
As Asia Sentinel reported on Nov.
13, however, often those who obtain permits are paired up with Chinese mining
companies that bring in the bulldozers and skip-loaders, the cyanide and
dynamite and wreak environmental havoc. In addition, the Department of
Environment and Natural Resources estimates that nearly 80 percent of the
300,000-odd miners operating in 30 of the Philippines’ 80 provinces are
operating without permits.
Philippine Sen. Miriam Santiago
Defensor has called for a legislative investigation of the industry, citing a
Reuters report that said almost all the production of small-scale mines goes to
the black market. Despite reported small-scale mining output of $10.4 billion
early this year, gold purchases by the Central Bank dropped an annual 4
percent, 4 percent, 76 percent, and 88 percent in the second, third, and fourth
quarters of2011, respectively, and 92 percent in the first quarter of 2012
because it either passes through traders in the black market or is sold
directly from mines to foreigners coming in on tourist visas.
The PSA report, which is
available only to subscribers, pointed out that as many as a thousand illegal
miners have invaded the area where the Tampakan Copper-Gold Project, operated
by the Australian mining firm Xtrata, has been given a license by the
Philippine government to mine.
“An estimated two hectares of the
mountains have reportedly been destroyed due to sluice mining operations, which
began as early as 2008,” PSA reported. However, the church, PSA reported, has
purposely ignored reports of illegal miners exploiting 8-and 9-year-old
children who are forced to use primitive air hoses in water-filled pits as a
breathing mechanism.
There may be more than delayed
recognition of the problem, according to the PSA report In fact, according to
the report, “the tendency to overlook the obvious ills of illegal mining while
demonizing large-scale mining is no doubt attributed to the desire to bolster
the church’s populist image.”
In fact, the church has also
overlooked the role of local governments, in collusion with private firms, to
hide behind small-scale mining to conduct unregulated large-scale operations,
while insisting that regulated and monitored large-scale mining has been the
main cause of environmental destruction throughout the country.
Some priests have privately
acknowledged that their opposition to large-scale mining is based on their
diocese’s accountability to the council of bishops and to the fact that the
church’s local parishioners tend to be the illegal miners and their families.
“By all appearances, the Catholic
Church has elected to remain silent and mute to blatant illegal small-scale
activities throughout the country,” PSA said, “although a vast amount of
evidence shows it accounts for the majority of the mining related environmental
damage across the Philippines.”
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