Following the Great Flood in Luzon at the height of Typhoon Ulysses last month and the discovery of illegal mining and massive tree-cutting activities in Magpet, Cotabato early this month, applications for small-scale mining permits and the establishment of Minahang Bayans will go through the proverbial “eye of the needle,” an official of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) said.
DENR Undersecretary for Policy, Planning and International Affairs Jonas R. Leones said in light of recent developments, the DENR will also be thinking twice before allowing small-scale mining operations to legally continue, including the grant of Minahang Bayan applications.
“Definitely, all these will have an impact on mining and quarrying,” said Leones, the designated spokesman of DENR Secretary Roy A. Cimatu, who has recently issued an order to DENR field personnel in Region 12 to strictly monitor tree-cutting activities in Magpet town upon discovering that a portion of a forest near the Mount Apo Natural Park has been “shaved off” apparently to pave way for the establishment of, possibly, a banana plantation.
The Mount Apo Natural Park is a Protected Area and is known to host at least 7 nesting pairs of the critically-endangered Philippine eagle.
Cimatu has earlier called for intensified monitoring of tree-cutting activities in the area, saying such destructive activity weakens the country’s natural defense against extreme weather events, such as excessive rain that trigger flashflood and landslide.
“We cannot allow people to further destroy our forests especially when we know that flooding is among its direct consequences,” Cimatu pointed out in a news statement.
“Many Filipinos have suffered enough from the devastation of massive flooding because of forest denudation,” Cimatu stated.
The DENR chief called on the local government of Magpet to be always on the lookout for any illegal tree-cutting activity within its area of jurisdiction and coordinate such activity with the DENR Regional Office.
In the same news statement, DENR-12 Regional Executive Director Felix Alicer said the tree-cutting activity was discovered during the Dec. 7 raid conducted in Barangay Don Panaca by operatives of the DENR, Mines and Geosciences Bureau, the local government of Cotabato, and the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
The joint operation team then discovered an illegal small-scale mining operation in the area located some 10 kilometers away from the Mt. Apo Natural Park.
The mining site has not been declared a Minahang Bayan or a common area where small-scale miners are allowed to operate, prompting Cimatu to order its immediate closure.
The operation also led authorities to a five-hectare area that has been cleared of trees, around 300 meters away from the mining site.
The felled trees were identified as Ulian and Agoho. Some 15.296 cubic meters of logs were also seen on the site.
Alicer said the “cleared area” is suspected to be intended for land conversion, particularly as a banana plantation, considering that the vicinity of Barangay Don Panaca within a banana-growing town.
“What we are seeing here is that the threat to denudation is not so much on timber poaching but land conversion,” Alicer said. “A banana plantation has higher economic benefits,” he added.
Alicer noted that barangay officials in the area are not empowered to apprehend the suspects.
“The barangay chiefs around the area, however, have helped us monitor the site which prevented the suspected planned land conversion,” he said.
At the same time, Alicer said they have not yet been able to remove the logs from the site because it can only be reached after a two-and-a-half hour-walk through a rugged terrain.
In Rizal, after the suspension of all small-scale mining, quarry and other related operations, including the development of subdivisions, near the Upper Marikina River Basin Protected Landscape (UMRBPL), the same challenge was posed by Rizal Gov. Rebecca Ynares to the DENR to do the same for large-scale mining and quarry operations in Rizal.
The DENR heeded the challenge and suspended 11 quarry and quarry processing operations, stopped all land-related development activities, including building construction within the UMRBPL with no proper tenure pending a comprehensive assessment of the state of the Marikina River Basin.
Some senators gave some DENR officials a dressing down during a hearing for a remark that even with a healthy river basin, flooding is inevitable because of the volume of water dumped by Ulysses which exceeded the water absorption capacity of the Marikina River Basin.
Asked whether these recent developments will affect the DENR’s policy related to mining and quarrying, Leones said “definitely.”
Leones acknowledged that even small-scale mining or quarrying has an adverse impact on the environment. “Even small-scale requires cutting of trees that’s why we are now pursuing programmatic ECCs (environmental clearance certificates),” said Leones.
He said for large-scale mining, the DENR is strictly enforcing progressive rehabilitation of mines, which he said, will also be enforced for quarrying, to minimize the environmental impact of their operations.
For new ECC applications considered to be environmentally critical projects that include large-scale mining and quarrying operations, Leones added that the DENR will strictly require programmatic environmental impact statement, documentation of comprehensive studies on environmental baseline condition of a continuous area. This includes an assessment of the carrying capacity of the area to absorb the impacts of co-located projects such as those in industrial estates or economic zones.
This also goes for applications for existing and to be expanded, modified, and rehabilitated projects.
For non-environmentally critical projects, the DENR will require Performance Report and Management Plan, or PEPRMP, documentation of actual cumulative environmental impacts of co-located projects with proposals for expansions, will be required before the grant of ECC.
The PEPRMP should also describe the effectiveness of current environmental mitigation measures and plans for performance improvement.
For small-scale mining, he said, the DENR Regional Office will be directed to probe the environmental sustainability of small-scale mining permits being sought as well as the declaration of Minahang Bayan.
The Regional Executive Director of the DENR sits as chairman of the Provincial Mining Regulatory Board, which regulates small-scale mining.
As for quarrying, Leones said the DENR-Environmental Management Bureau and Mines and Geosciences Bureau will be ordered to tighten the screw to strictly regulate operators and “do things right.”