31 Years of Insatiable Greed and Plunder, The Continuous Fight Towards People’s Sovereignty over National Patrimony
31 Years of Insatiable Greed and Plunder, The Continuous Fight Towards People’s Sovereignty over National Patrimony
Thirty-one years after the passage of the Philippine Mining Act of 1995, or Republic Act No. 7942, the Filipino people continue to confront the consequences of a policy framework that entrenched neoliberal and imperialist control over the country’s mineral wealth – an unimaginable plunder driven by the greed of Marcos Jr. regime.
Enacted at a time when the state sought to attract foreign capital into high-risk, capital-intensive extractive industries, the law institutionalized mechanisms that entrench imperial take over our national patrimony. Mechanisms like the Financial or Technical Assistance Agreements (FTAAs), allowing up to 100% foreign ownership and control of large-scale mining operations. Under the PMA ‘95, mining corporations may control up to 81,000 hectares for 25 years, renewable for another 25. They are guaranteed generous incentives like the six-year tax holidays, export tax exemptions, and income tax breaks, advantages that ripen the ground for intensive extraction and profit accumulation, allowing the convenient entry of foreign capital in the country.
Yet the promised development of mining remains illusory in the country after 31 years of the implementation of PMA 1995. Mining’s contribution to national employment has remained below 1%, and government revenues from taxes and fees have been disproportionately small compared to the immense value of extracted minerals. The Philippines’ estimated mineral potential is between US$850 billion and US$1 trillion, valued at around 10 times the country’s annual GDP and 15 times its total foreign debt. Only Php 16 went to the gov’t for every 100 pesos of minerals extracted. What has prospered instead are environmental destruction and community displacement.
From the 1996 Boac River disaster linked to Marcopper Mining Corporation and Placer Dome in Marinduque, widely called the “mother of all mining disasters”, to the 2012 Philex Padcal tailings spill in Benguet, and the deadly 2024 landslide in Masara, Davao de Oro involving Apex Mining Co. Inc., mining operations have repeatedly resulted in loss of life, poisoned rivers, and devastated communities. These are tragedies resulting from an extractivist regime that hungers insatiably for profit, while completely negligent to the welfare of the people and ecosystems.
In recent years, the state and mining corporations have also aggressively greenwashed large-scale extraction, portraying it as indispensable to the so-called “green economy.” Government agencies and corporate actors frame expanded mining as a contribution to climate solutions, obscuring the massive ecological damage, deforestation, water contamination, and displacement of communities that accompany extraction. In reality, the push for “critical” minerals has only intensified the pressure on mineral-rich territories like the Philippines, further legitimizing the same extractivist model that has permanently damaged ecosystems and communities in the name of profit.
There are also series of human rights violations that have likewise marked the industry’s expansion. Paramilitary forces, the military, and CAFGU units have been linked to harassment and abuses in mining-affected areas. Extrajudicial killings of anti-mining activists intensified when state security forces were mobilized to protect mining investments. Even more alarmingly, around 60% of mining concessions in the country overlap with ancestral lands of indigenous peoples, placing them at the forefront of dispossession and violence as they defend their collective rights.
Yet people’s resistance lives on against persecution and deterioration of communities. Across the archipelago, alliances of environmental advocates, church groups, local governments, academic institutions, and grassroots communities continue to demand the repeal of the Mining Act. People across the country are leading several community resistance against destructive projects that pose imminent threat to the biodiversity and socio-economy of the community. Recently, in Nueva Vizcaya, residents of Dupax del Norte continue the legacy of the people’s struggle against encroachment of large-scale mining. They have erected people’s barricades to block destructive operations of the British-owned Woggle Corporation. Supported by environmental advocate organizations, communities have secured temporary suspensions of permits. This triumph demonstrates that organized, collective action can compel accountability.
On this 31st anniversary, the call is even more dire, urgent, and militant. We have to dismantle the structural architecture of plunder, feeding off from the destruction of nature and lives in the community. We have to relentlessly fight for the rights of our peasants and indigenous peoples most affected by the wreckage of inconceivable social and environmental destruction of mining. We must continuously and tirelessly struggle to advance a development path anchored on ecological sustainability, national industrialization, and genuine national sovereignty. Pass the People’s Mining Bill that institutionalizes mining for the development of national industry complemented with sustainable ecological and community protection.
Hold the Marcos Jr. regime, along with his corporate cronies, responsible for the systemic and permanent destruction and displacement in different communities of peasants, indigenous peoples, and fisherfolks. We must courageously take on different forms of struggle that forward the genuine interest of the people. The struggle continues, not only against destructive mining projects, but against the systemic forces that enable them.
Junk PMA 1995!
Pass the People’s Mining Bill!
People and nature over profit!
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