The Indigenous Peoples of Nueva Viscaya, Philippines are indignant over the appointment of Horacio Ramos as the new Department of Environment Natural Resources (DENR) secretary.
“The appointment of Horacio Ramos to the post signifies that the government is now taking away whatever pretension is left with the Department of Environment Natural Resources in protecting the environment”, says Peter Duyapat, chairperson of the Didipio Earth Savers Multi-purpose Association.
“Horacio Ramos has consistently been the government’s top mining bureaucrat for years. He has represented the mining industry’s interests with an attitude that can only be likened to a race horse on blinders: always coursing forward to open up bigger areas to mining operations, and never once looking back to check on the lives and communities left in the dust,” says Ronald Gregorio, of the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center. “This one-track mindset has led to the indiscriminate human rights violations”.
To confirm this, Duyapat refers to his hometown in Didipio, Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya, currently the site of a copper-gold project spearheaded by Australian mining company OceanaGold Philippines, Inc. “The mining company has displaced more than 180 Ifugao families since 2008. Homes were demolished, sometimes in the middle of the night, and any protests to these activities were violently dispersed,” he says. “Tracts of fertile land previously devoted to agriculture have been converted for use in mining operations, and our access to safe water sources is also compromised.”
“OceanaGold's mine has plundered our lands, cost us our livelihood, and has put the safety of our families at risk,” Duyapat continues. “Surely no minerals can be worth so much that they outweigh the cost of human lives.”
In December 2008, due to mounting public protests, OceanaGold Philippines was placed under “care and maintenance.” Then-DENR secretary Lito Atienza gave the company six months to begin actual operations or risk cancellation of their mining license, granted in 1994. Since then, the agency has not acted on Atienza’s pronouncement.
“OceanaGold has shown that it does not possess the financial and technical capability necessary to carry out a mining project, and we have made repeated demands for the cancellation of their license on this ground,” Duyapat says. “But Mr. Ramos has yet to heed our request, and in the meantime, our homes and families are continually threatened by the mine and its employees.”
“The country’s mineral resources are finite. It is ironic that under the Arroyo government’s Mining Revitalization Program, these minerals never benefit the Filipino people and only fuel the neoliberal framework that makes the rich countries richer,” says Gregorio. “A DENR chief should know his priorities. Ramos’ track record only shows that his approach to the utilization and development of the Philippines’ mineral resources is incongruent with judicious and socially just natural resource management, which is the very mandate of the DENR.”
February 17, 20009
LRC Luzon
