Apart from community-based programs under their Corporate Social Responsibility, the most tangible evidence of mining companies complying with rules and regulations on environmental protection under the Philippine Mining Act of 1995 is their programs on reforestation.
The mining act mandates that mining companies must replace if
not restore vegetation destroyed in the process of the mining operation.
The Sagittarius Mines Inc. (SMI) behind the US$55 million Tampakan Gold-Copper Project in South Cotabato, is among those closely watched by government on compliance with environmental protection.
But the Department of Ennvironment and Natural Resources (DENR) may not be having headaches in monitoring SMI.
Even before it could start operation in 2016, SMI, with a 10,000-hectare concession that straddles South Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Davao del Sur, already has set into place a massive and continuing regreening program started as early as 2008.
Tree-planting activities, in the concession area and extending to areas adjacent to it, are ongoing being implemented by SMI and backstopped by peoples organizations, NGOs, socio-civic clubs, schools, corporate entities, Church groups, local overnment units and other sectors who are pursuing their own respective reforestation and tree planting projects and provided by SMI with seedlings and other planting materials.
South Cotabato is a victim of uncontrolled illegal logging in the past, and illegal mining in the present, and has lost nearly all of its forest covers. The SMI greening program is helping it restore lost forests.
As what is happening everywhere, the people of South Cotabato are aware of global warming and how depleted forests had contrubuted to it, and are willing to help over-all efforts to help solve the climatic crisis placing Mother Earth in grave danger.
SMI with its resources may have come as an angel helping in the mission, at least in South Cotabato and its environs, to arrest global warming through its corporate reforestation program and linkages with various groups in the tree planting campaign.
The DENR has acknowledged that mining companies have resources to engage in massive reforestation, not only as part of their compliance with the
Philippine Mining Act, but also as an important partner in the National Greening Program (NGP).
This is the reason why DENR has entered into memorandum of agreements with mining companies foremost of which is the SMI as important partners of the government in the implementation of the NGP.
For its part, SMI has pushed the antes further as far as the greening program is concerned by entering into partnerships with local government units in Region Eleven and Region Twelve in the collaborative effort of successfully implementing the NGP.
Unlike before the mining act of 1995 when mining companies were not mandated to embed reforestation programs in their operations, the mining companies of today are forced to adopt responsible mining as the barometer of how deserving they are of the permits given them by the government.
The “sins of the past” of mining companies–massive floods, forest denudation and other threats to environment and people—are now being addressed by the Philippine Mining Act that imposes responsible mining as the mantra that should govern mining operations that must balance environmental protection with economic activities.
It is with high hopes mining companies would play an important role in the NGP that is targeting about 500,000 hectares for tree planting in the period 2012 to 2016.
The DENR projects the Philippines would have more green forest areas than deforested ones if NGP meets its 2016 goal of planting some 1.5 billion tree seedlings in about 1.5 million hectares of open, denuded and degraded forest land nationwide.
Philippine areas designated as forests account for about half of the country’s estimated total land area of some 30 million hectares.
Studies show that deforestation reduced the country’s forest cover from over 50 percent of land at the 20th century’s start to only about 24 percent at present. ROGER M. BALANZA
