PRESS RELEASE

Environmentalists raising the alarm over the state of the Philippine's endangered forests are dismayed, horrified, and furious over Pres. Noynoy Aquino’s declaration last Thursday exempting mining corporations from the bogus log ban he issued via Executive Order 23 signed last February.

“Aquino’s insincerity over saving our remaining forests is now clear. EO 23 was nothing more than a stunt to deceive the public into thinking that the government is doing something to address the series of flashfloods and landslides that struck the country early this year, while ignoring the role that unabated logging and mining has played in destroying our remaining forests”, said Frances Quimpo of the environmental NGO Center for Environmental Concerns-Philippines (CEC-Phils).

“Pres. Aquino has shown his true colors by exempting mining from the log ban. Considering the number of large-scale mining permits approved so far by the government, he is practically mandating the mass destruction of forests and key biodiversity areas,” Quimpo declared.

Quimpo said that the current mining operations approved will speed up total wipe out of Philippine forests.

“Mining projects are usually situated in mountainous and forested areas. However, the extent of damage by mining on the country's few remaining forests is alarming: nearly 63 percent of our remaining forests are to be affected by government-sanctioned mining projects”, Quimpo said..

“Exempting large-scale mining from the log ban will wipe out our natural forests in less than 40 years, given the current deforestation rate of 1.9 percent annually,” she added..

As of March 2011, existing large-scale mining concessions cover 1,140,136 hectares or 3.8 percent of the Philippines’ total land area—many of these operating within the country's remaining forests and key biodiversity areas (KBA).

“Currently, the country has 228 KBAs, most of which lack formal government protection. 92 of these KBAs are major forest areas found in mountainous parts of the country. If you compare the areas covered by existing mining permits with the areas classified as KBAs, you will see that four Financial Technical Assistance Agreements (FTAA), 174 Mineral Processing Sharing Agreements (MPSA), and 50 Exploration Permits (EP), or a total of 228 mining permits operate within and affect 58 out of the 92 forest KBAs,” Quimpo said.

Quimpo added that more destruction of the country's biodiversity will follow if forests are affected. “Forests and KBAs are interlinked and interrelated systems. Forest ecosystems support biodiversity; any massive interference in these ecosystems—such as mining—adversely affects not only trees, but also the balance of living and non-living species within these areas,” she explained.

Instead of kowtowing to the interests of large and foreign mining firms, Pres. Aquino should stand for the genuine conservation and protection of our natural forests, Quimpo said. This is a function that cannot just be relegated to the private sector, she added.

“The precondition that obliges mining companies to reforest via the National Greening Program is not very assuring given the track records of both private companies and the DENR’s implementation of reforestation programs. It should be noted that private companies reforest much less than government agencies (294,625 hectares reforested by the government while only 74,672 hectares reforested by private sector between 1997 and 2006),” according to Quimpo.

“Instead of providing foreign miners the easy access to plunder our forest and mineral resources, the administration should ensure that proper reforestation and rehabilitation should be done in deforested areas while remaining forests should be protected. To effectively implement reforms, corruption within the DENR must be eliminated. National policies that have gravely affected forests such as the Mining Act of 1995 must be junked and replaced by a pro-people and pro-environment policies such as the People’s Mining Bill pending in Congress,” Quimpo said.

“In the end, it will be the Filipino people and our forests who will lose if this gamble for profit is not reversed,” she said.

“Pres. Aquino’s program has continuously exposed itself through its policy pronouncements on mining that it is clearly a continuation of mining liberalization policy that his predecessor has promoted. The environmentally destructive, export–oriented and foreign capital-driven nature of the Philippine mining industry remains unchanged even under this new administration’s so-called “straight” path’, Quimpo ended. ###