Environmental groups express concern on increasing plunder of resources in the ASEAN

November 15, 2017

Quezon City, Philippines—The Center for Environmental Concerns-Philippines joins hundreds of civil society groups gathered in the Philippines to hold the ASEAN People’s Forum/ASEAN Civil Society Conference 2017 (APF/ACSC), a CSO parallel event to the ASEAN Summit and related meetings hosted by the Philippine government this November 2017.

The CEC facilitated and organized the workshop on energy and extractive industries that talked about how the ASEAN policies could affect this sector and grassroots communities in the region. Resource persons are from different organizations in the region that work with grassroots communities being affected by large-scale and destructive mining and extractive activities, in particular, from the Philippines, Indonesia, the Mekong region and Timor Leste.

“The communities are not benefitting from this large-scale and destructive industries, they get a meager wage and the environment is being destroyed,” says Juvinal Diaz of Lao Hamotuk from Timor Leste.

Glenis Balangue of IBON Foundation also presented the different ASEAN policies, in particular, the provisions in the ASEAN Economic Integration, that impact the sector in terms of liberalization and opening up of mineral resources to foreign corporations outside of Southeast Asia such as companies from Canada, USA, Australia, UK, among others.

Another presentation is from Tek Vannara of the NGO Forum of Cambodia who presented cases of community displacements due to large-scale dam constructions in the Mekong region.

The highlight of the workshop is the presentation of the International People’s Conference on Mining (IPCM) represented by Clemente Bautista on the impacts of large-scale mining and extractive industries to human rights of communities. “These communities are at the forefront of their struggles in defense of their environment and natural resources against destructive industries,” says Clemente Bautista.

The workshop concluded that with the ASEAN Economic Integration, which aims to liberalize economies in the region and open up to further investments from large-scale and destructive industries such as mining, mega-dams, oil explorations, among others, the people’s sustainable future and the environment will always be threatened.