Zoe Kenny
The Didipio community in the province of Nueva Vizcaya on Luzon, the Philippines' largest island, is campaigning against a proposed gold and copper mine that could have a devastating impact on the area. Green Left Weekly spoke to JP Alipio from the Cordillera Conservation Trust about the campaign.
In 1995, the Climax-Arimco Mining Corporation signed a "financial and technical assistance agreement" (FTAA) with the Philippines government. At that time Climax-Arimco was Australian-owned, but recently merged with OceanaGold, a larger New Zealand-owned company.
According to Alipio, who is currently touring Australia to build support for the campaign against the mine, the FTAA contravenes the Philippines constitution and law, as it was signed before the implementation of the 1995 Philippines Mining Act, which allows fully foreign-owned corporations to mine. The FTAA goes against the stipulation in the Philippines constitution that "mining corporations have to be 60% Filipino-owned and only 40% foreign-owned", Alipio explained.
The Didipio community has filed a petition against the Department of Environment and Natural Resources aiming to force it to cancel the environmental compliance certificate that it had issued to Climax-Arimco.
Philippines law also requires the company to obtain local consent — either from the community or government — for the project. However, when the local Didipio community rejected the company's proposal, "they simply scrapped that agreement and wrote up a new one and tried to get local government consent. When the local government rejected it as well, they wrote up another one and persuaded the provincial government to agree, possibly as a result of some back-door dealings."
Previous large-scale mining projects indicate the potential for social and environmental disaster. One of the most notorious cases is the copper mine near the island of Marinduque, which was run by the Canadian-owned mining company Placer Dome in 1975-96. According to Alipio, Placer Dome "dumped more than 200 million tonnes of mine tailings directly into the Calancan Bay, eventually covering more than 80 square kilometres of the bay with mine tailings. The community suffers from arsenic and lead poisoning, especially children, and many people suffer from chronic pain. The mine's pollution also affected the livelihoods of people in 12 fishing villages in the area. When the mine was closed the local economy collapsed and the people were left without employment and with the natural resources polluted."
Climax-Arimco's FTAA is valid for 25 years and the original gold deposit it seeks to mine is estimated to yield 300,000 ounces of gold each year. Alipio said "there will be a huge amount of waste rock and pollution produced each year. One gold ring produces five tonnes of waste rock. The mine will be an open-pit mine and they will use cyanide for processing. They will also have to clear thousands of hectares of pristine forest to make way for the mine."
The mine could affect the livelihoods and food security of millions of people, as it will be located "in an important watershed area for the whole of the Nueva Vizcaya and the mine's usage of that water for mining operations will affect a very important agricultural area with major citrus plantations and rice production". Alipio also said that he had seen the mining plans, and although the original deposit is located in one hill, other surrounding hills also have gold deposits. "Because it is very easy to get the agreement renewed, [Climax-Arimco] could be in the Philippines for 100 years."
The mine will not even contribute much to the government's coffers, Alipio said, as the agreement is designed to give generous "incentives" to foreign corporations. Climax-Arimco has been given "a four-year tax holiday, there are no tariffs for any equipment that they bring into the country to use on the mine, they are allowed to sell the gold directly onto the international market and they can repatriate all their profits.
"Another corporate-friendly loophole is that they don't have to pay any taxes as long as they declare that they aren't making profits. It also undercuts small-scale mining, which would at least mean that the money stays in the country. The big companies export everything and leave nothing in the community except cyanide."
Alipio said the campaign has the support of many organisations, including the bishop of the Catholic church, and is very important because, "currently 60% of the land in the Philippines is under exploration for mineral deposits and if this mine goes ahead it will basically signal that the Philippines is open for business, it is the key to large-scale mining really coming to the Philippines".
Alipio asked Australians to support the campaign by "raising awareness of what is happening, organising campaigns against ANZ, which is the major bank behind the project, or through informing shareholders of what Climax-Arimco is doing in the Philippines".
[Alipio will be speaking in Melbourne on July 27. Check the Activist Calendar on page 23 for details.]
From Green Left Weekly, July 26, 2006.
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