DENR’s Lopez bans open-pit mining
Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Secretary Gina Lopez ordered last Thursday the banning of prospective open pit mines to ensure the protection of the country’s environment.
The DENR issued last Thursday an administrative order “banning the open pit method of mining for copper, gold, silver and complex orders in the country,” citing records that show “most of the mining disasters in the country were due to tailings spills associated with open pit mining.”
“As a matter of policy, which is my prerogative as DENR Secretary, we’re banning open pit mining prospective, for the following reasons that pit is gonna be there forever and a day, eternally,” she said during a press conference last Thursday.
“Who is gonna take care of that? It’s a financial liability to government for life,” she said. “I am doing this because I have no idea what’s going to happen on Tuesday,” she added.
The Commission on Appointments (CA) is set to decide on Lopez’s confirmation as DENR Secretary this Tuesday (May 2). Her confirmation was bypassed by the CA after she failed to get its approval before the Congress went in recess last March 15.
According to DENR Undersecretary for Legal Affairs and Policy Planning Ipat Luna, the DENR Administrative Order will be effective 15 days after its publication in a newspaper.
“The DENR Secretary has visited a lot of open pit mines and some have been abandoned for 20 years. She realized that we need to do something immediately to stop another damage from happening,” Luna said, citing the Marcopper disaster, where mine tailings spilled into the Boac River in Marinduque in 1996.
“The government has to keep taking care of the environment because we have no other choice otherwise it will threaten the communities,” she said. “The government has to do something to stop that damage from happening,” she added.
When asked whether Lopez has the power to issue such order, Luna said she believes so because “under the mining act she (the Secretary) has the authority to define the parameters of the mining activities in order to ensure that the environment is protected for the future generation.”
Among other reforms, she also signed a memorandum circular clarifying the definition and function of a watershed, which is also part of her months-long crusade versus destructive mining operations in the country.
As soon as she took over the DENR in July last year, Lopez already began criticizing the Philippine Mining Act of 1995, saying it is “grossly unfair” and that it should be overhauled in a way that it would no longer allow open-pit mining.
Passed into law in 1995, the Philippine Mining Act is the main legislation that governs all mining operations in the country. It includes measures to protect the environment and defines areas in which mining should be allowed.
The country’s mining law currently allows open-pit mining but DENR consultant and former Mines and Geoscience Bureau (MGB) Director Leo Jasareno said the law is actually “silent in terms of the method.”
Sometime in 2010, Costa Rica became the first country in Latin America to ban open-pit metal mining.
Lopez said she is willing to take legal battles that the miners might pursue against the order.
For his part, Chamber of Mines of the Philippines (COMP) Vice President for Legal and Policy Ronald Recidoro said the newest DENR order is “absurd.”
“Open-pit mining is an internationally accepted method for mining. It can be done safely and properly, and can be rehabilitated in a manner that allows for other land uses- agriculture, fisheries, and even tourism,” Recidoro said in a text message