ON April 14, President Duterte lifted the ban on new mining permits or mining production sharing agreements imposed by his predecessor in 2012, paving the way for an increase in mining investment in the country but understandably causing a great deal of consternation among environmental advocates.
Duterte’s move comes at a sensitive time for the Philippines because except for a rapidly shrinking minority of misanthropic critics still futilely trying to poison the public discourse with long-discredited claims of “climate hysteria,” environmental sustainability has already been established as a strong priority here, both socially and economically. The policy change is a reversal of the position on mining the administration has maintained since taking office, and even though Duterte justified the decision on rational economic grounds, it does stand in rather stark contrast to his government’s otherwise environmentally conscious record.
Mining is unavoidably environmentally harmful. Despite what some of the more ardent mining advocates might say, it simply cannot be done without causing a considerable amount of damage to the environment; the damage cannot be prevented, it can only be mitigated and repaired. For a mining industry and corresponding national policy to be termed “successful,” then, sufficient methodologies and safeguards to reduce the damage to the minimum possible level while mining operations are ongoing, as well as postmining cleanup and remediation standards have to be in place; and these have to provide the acceptable level of sustainability at a cost that does not exceed the revenue potential of the mineral resources.
To encourage the development of “sustainability in the minerals industry and charting a greener community,” the Department of Science and Technology-Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development (DoST-Pcieerd) and the UK Research and Innovation-Natural Environment Research Council recently assessed a number of research projects on sustainable mineral exploration proposed by joint teams of Philippine and UK scientists. Out of 18 proposals received, five were selected to receive grants of up to £1.5 million (about P102 million, of which about 80 percent are provided by the UK government) to carry out their work. The selected research projects include:
– “Developing a sustainable pathway for the Philippine nickel sector,” a project led by Prof. Romell Seronay from Caraga State University and Dr. Paul Lusty of the British Geological Survey, which will focus on environmental and social impacts of mineral exploration and mining techniques in the Caraga Region;
– “Philippines Remediation of Mine Tailings (Promt),” led by Prof. Carlo Arcilla of the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute and Prof. Gawen Jenkin from the University of Leicester; the project seeks to develop ways to reduce mine tailings through more efficient management, including reducing water consumption, applying effective methods to recover metal ores from existing mine tailings, and decontamination.
– “Philippine Mining at the National to Catchment Scale,” led by Dr. Decibel Faustino-Eslava from the University of the Philippines Los Baños and Dr. Richard Williams from the University of Glasgow. This particular project is interesting because it is one of the few research efforts that have been proposed that addresses mining impacts on the very large scale of entire catchment basins, which would ideally lead to “a combined geomorphological-and biogeochemical-based management approach to remediate waste and protect the environment” on a national scale – in other words, the functional part of a revamped national mining policy originally promised but never delivered by the hapless Aquino administration.
– “Systems Approach for Greener, Eco-efficient and Sustainable Mineral Resource Management (Sages),” a project intended to develop a research program on creating a sustainable “circular economy” for the mining sector and involved communities, led by Dr. Arnel Beltran of De La Salle University and Dr. Pablo Rafael Brito Parada of Imperial College, London.
– “A framework for the sustainable development of marine mineral resources in the Philippines,” directed by engineer Teodorico Sandoval of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and Dr. Ian Selby from the University of Plymouth. Of the five research projects selected for the grant program, this one deals with what is probably the most controversial aspect of mining – undersea mining – and the one that has gotten the least amount of research attention despite investor enthusiasm for it.
None of these research projects individually or even taken all together are going to answer all of the myriad social, environmental and economic questions that mining in the Philippines raises. What is encouraging, however, is the willingness of the government to apply its resources through the DoST to tackle at least some of the bigger questions head-on. As in other countries in the former colonial world, the biggest handicap for the Philippines with respect to mining throughout its history has been a shortfall in knowledge; the grant program at least helps to address that problem.