It has specific provisions that take into consideration the following – Local government empowerment; Respect and concern for the indigenous cultural communities; Equitable sharing of benefits of natural wealth; Economic demands of present generation while providing the necessary foundation for future generations; Worldwide trend towards globalization; and Protection for and wise management of the environment.

      The provision of the Philippine Mining Act that allows open-pit mining however has been placed in legal question by local government units, which passed ordinances and resolutions banning the mining practice.

      In South Cotabato, the provincial government has passed the Environmental Code which bans open pit mining.

      Zamboanga del Norte also has expressed its opposition to the practice in a resolution passed by its provincial board.

       Zamboanga Sibugay was likely to follow suit, said the paper.

      The ban placed at risk billions of dollars in investments, said the paper.

      The mining industry has assailed the ban.

      Like a wildfire burning everything in its path, the South Cotabato Environmental Code is developing into a conflagration spreading to as far as the Zamboanga Peninsula and Palawan to push down to its knees the mining industry in Mindanao.

Local anti-mining legislation, the armed New Peoples Army (NPA) insurgents, and multiple taxation are the biggest threats to mining in Mindanao, said the Coalition of Responsible Mining (Coremin).

      Coremin raised its concern about threats to the mining industry during the 20th Mindanao Business Conference (MinBizCon) held in Pagadian City in early September.

      The SoCot Environmental Code has banned open-pit mining to pose a threat to the planned operation of the US$5.9 billion Tampakan Copper and Gold Project of Sagittarius Mines, Inc. in Tampakan in South Cotabato province.

      The South Cotabato Enviromental Code has served as a template for other provinces like Zamboanga del Norte and Palawan to copy, said Coremin.

            In the statement, Coremin urged the Aquino administration to resolve the conflict between local legislations and the Mining Act of 1995, which does not ban open-pit mining.

BY ROGER M. BALANZA

When the enemies get tough—-stop!
When the going gets rough —-flee!
These two lines may as well be part of the code of safety for journalists in Mindanao—to save their skin from harm or death.
Two media killings in Davao City illustrated the fate that could befall members of the press who violated the first code of safety.
In 2001, top-rated radio broadcaster Juan “Jun” Porras Pala was killed in ambush near his home in a middle-class subdivision at the outskirts of the city proper. Pala was armed along with his bodyguards when waylaid. It was the third attempt on his life. He survived the first two with minor injuries.
Pala as a popular broadcaster had ruled the Davao air lanes for decades through his top-rating radio programs peppered with tons of acerbic verbal assaults against persons in government, police and military and others he perceived were anti-people. It made him very popular but also earned a myriad of enemies.
He first made his name in the early 80s as the propagandist of the Alsa Masa (People Rising), the military-backed peoples movement that helped drive communist rebels away from the city’s urban centers, when communist hit men called ‘Sparrows’ used Davao City as a laboratory for its urban guerilla warfare. In that sad and violent era in the city’s history marked by hundreds of assassinations and summary executions of police and military personnel and civilians by the communist rebels, Pala emerged as a rabidly anti-communist radio journalists who marshaled public support against the rebels.
He would later parlay his popularity into winning a post in the local legislative body, but his anti-communist crusade continued this time coupled with an anti-corruption drive.
Pala’s enemies quadrupled.
Police investigating his death could only speculate as to who was behind the murder: police, military, politicians and the communist New Peoples Army. The murder remains unsolved until today.
Broadcaster Ferdie “Batman” Lintuan was positioning himself as the next Jun Pala when motorcycle-riding gunmen waylaid him while he was leaving his radio station in Agdao district. Lintuan was aboard his car with two broadcaster colleagues, who emerged unscathed, when shot dead in the ambush that also remained unsolved today.
Lintuan made a name by exposing anomalies in government and private sector. Politics could also be behind the killing. Lintuan was widely known as one of the publicists of a major political figure in Davao City.
Prior to his death, he had exposed alleged rampant smuggling in the Bureau of Customs and in the construction of a public park. His expose on the public park led the local government to ask the audit commission to conduct a probe to clear its name from Lintuan’s expose.
The threats against members of the press in Davao City are seldom reported either in print or broadcast but journalists take note of assassins to possibly target its members based on the line of broadcast or printed articles of individual newsmen. As a matter of self preservation, they advise each other about potential threats, caution each other to go slow and make notes in the event something happens to the pressmen. We are one of those who do this as part of our effort to save members of media from harm.
Press groups here like National Union of Journalists in the Philippines (NUJP), Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ), Kapisanan ng mga Brodkasters ng Pilipinas (KBP) and the Philippine Press Institute, or the local press clubs are helpless when threats against media members are reported, even if the danger is imminent.
But they quickly surface after the trigger is pulled and a member of the press is killed.
The press groups become visible only after somebody is killed, in finely-crafted press releases condemning the murder, that are nothing more than obituaries.
Pala and Lintuan violated the first code of safety for threatened journalists: When the going got rough, they refused to stop.
Call him coward but Stephen Manangan took the second code of safety when the wall was crushing down on him as the anchor of a highly-popular anti-graft, anti-corruption morning radio program BANAT on the ABS/CBN radio station DXAB.
A teacher by profession, Manangan raised the level of quality of local radio journalism, gaining respect through his acute analysis of day-to-day events in all spectrum of the city and in his crusade for good governance and social equity.
Like Pala and Lintuan however, he was also merciless in his crusade against corrupt police and military officials and those in other branches of governance.
Two unsolved media killings were enough for friends of Manangan both in media and public to dish out pieces of advices about slowing down on his verbal assaults.

One early evening in middle 2009, gunmen strafed the house of a tribal leader in a far-flung district in Davao City.
There were instant suspects in the murder of Datu Dominador Diarog, the leader of the Guiangan Tribe in Tugbok district, and the wounding of his wife and children: henchmen of the head of a religious sect that wanted to grab ancestral domain lands from tribal communities in Tugbok. The leader of the sect, a politically-connected pastor of an internationally-known evangelist group, planned to build a 100-hectare Prayer Mountain in Tugbok that it would call Little Jerusalem in preparation for what it prophesied as the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
The area included an ancestral domain land claimed by the tribe of Datu Diarog.
Datu Diarog had marshaled his tribe to rise up against the land grabbing.
But his world got smaller, with his tribesmen selling their lands to the sect out of self-preservation and fear, after being harassed by armed men.
At the time of his murder, Datu Diarog’s 2-hectare property was the lone property that has not been bought out by the sect. He had vehemently refused to sell his land despite the harassment and threat to his life.
Prior to the killing, armed men also strafed his house and in another incident burned his house. A barangay official linked to the sect of the preacher is suspected as the mastermind in the killing of Diarog.
Manangan came into the picture by using his program to encourage the tribal natives to rise up in arms against the preacher and urged the communist New Peoples Army to come to the aid of the harassed natives. That the sect had no qualms about using violence against its enemies was fearsome. One of the organizers of mass rallies and marches from the farflung village to the urban center by the natives in protest of the harassment and land grabbing would be killed in downtown Davao City.
For his broadcast, Manangan would earn the ire of the preacher and his followers, who are suspected as behind threatening phone calls and text messages targeting Manangan.
Armed men on motorcycles suspected as on a mission to kill Manangan were regularly spotted passing by ABS/CBN headquarters in Matina Hills in Davao City apparently to intimidate Manangan to stop him from continuing his verbal assaults against the preacher and his hired guns.
Manangan dipping his fingers into harassment of the tribals by a religious group was a potential motive for him to go the way of Pala and Lintuan. But Manangan played his cards well.
There were other issues he raised that placed the life of Manangan in grave danger from assassins.
For years, elements of the Highway Patrol Group (HPG) policing the southern highways of Davao City have made a lucrative business of fleecing cargo trucks from Central Mindanao entering the city. The policemen demanded money from drivers before allowing them to proceed to deliver their cargo of agricultural products and fish.
Manangan took to task in his broadcast the regional head of the Philippine National Police (PNP), which has supervision over the HPG. PNP regional chief Oscar Tango was open in his anger at Manangan for his broadcast that led him into being confronted by then Mayor Rodrigo Duterte for his failure to stop the highway robbery by police personnel. Manangan’s expose also led to the dismissal of the head of the HPG and subsequently threats on his life sent through text messages..
In 2009, Manangan also came into collision with the local political leadership and police over his negative commentaries on summary executions of minors suspected as linked to crimes.
His broadcast in part helped in catching the attention of the Commission on Human Rights on the killings and an investigation by then CHR Commisioner Leila Delima into the alleged role of then Mayor Rodrigo Duterte and the local police leadership in the killings and for their failure to stop the extrajudicial killings.
Direct threats through verbal warnings coursed phone calls apparently coming from elements of the dreaded Davao Death Squad, the alleged state-backed assassins said to be behind behind the killings, reached Manangan.
Manangan also carved out warfronts with local officials allegedly involved in corruption through legislative approval of controversial business projects.
The biggest of these controversial projects is the multi-million-peso hydropower dam by power producer Aboitiz planned to be built in the city’s highland district of Tamugan in Marilog.
The project was highly opposed by Manangan in his broadcast commentaries, picking from fears of tribal native and farmers that the project would destroy farmlands and violate ancestral domain rights of the natives. Some members of the legislative council took umbrage at Manangan’s claim of huge pay-off in the approval by the Davao City Council of the project. ABS/CBN personnel tell of a confrontation between Manangan and the chairman of the city council committee that handled the Aboiitiz project, right inside the ABS/CBN compound, after one of the commentaries of Manangan where he assailed members of the city council for approving the project.
Other serious topics that led Manangan in confrontations with aggrieved parties included the killing of a Davao city businessman’s son by a scion of the politically-connected powerful Ampatuan clan of Maguindanao province in Central Mindanao.
Long before the infamous Maguindanao Massacre in 2009, where 53 people including 32 members of the press were murdered in a politically-related media killing, the worst in media history, Manangan exposed the abuses in Davao City by the members of the clan, many of whom had residences in Davao City.
The businessman’s son was shot dead in a bar after an argument with a member of the Ampatuan clan. Manangan’s commentaries on the abuses triggered a flood of threats in phone calls and text messages warning him to stop. His neighbors in Tagum City also warned him of motorcycle-riding armed men reconnoitering his house, while ABS/CBN personnel also said suspected persons were looking for him in Davao City.
Manangan had “wronged” so many people that members of the media in Davao City are surprised that he had not gone the way of Pala and Lintuan.
But the threats remain and Manangan may not be safe: the Davao Death Squad is alive, so are the politicians and police personnel damaged by his commentaries and exposes.
Some members of the Ampatuan clan may be in jail for the Maguindanao Massacre but their henchmen are still around in Davao City.
The preacher is still politically-connected and the Little Jerusalem issue remains hot with the tribal natives continuing their fight against the land grabbing.
Manangan has created many enemies. The biggest fear is that there is danger in the silence before the storm. Retribution is safest and cleanest when the target thinks time has healed the wounds.
Manangan was right in seeing logic in the second code of safety for threatened journalists.
Unlike Pala and Lintuan, he chose the other road. When the going got rough—he fled to the United States of America.
Before assassins can get to him.

Vice Mayor Rodrigo Duterte has laid down two conditions for him to allow mining in Davao City: modern technology that reduces to the barest minimum risk to people and environment and statutes that would ensure the poor would benefit from mining revenues.
Until such conditions are met, Davao City is mining-free, he said at the recent edition of the television show Gikan sa Masa Para sa Masa on ABS/CBN.
But Duterte also bared the underlying and primary reason why he is vehemently against mining at this point in time.
“Davao City’s mineral resources should be conserved for future generations of Dabawenyos,” he said.
They should be treated as a piggy bank of today’s children for their future, he said in the program hosted by lawyer Geraldine Tiu.
Duterte made the comment as a January 5 landslide in a gold mining settlement in Compostela Valley killed 36 people, with more than 40 people still missing.
Mining in Compostela Valley, also known as the Minerals Corridor of Mindanao, has helped the local economy but unregulated mining by smallscale and bigscale miners had led to hundreds of dead in tunnel cave-ins and landslides since gold was discovered in the province in the early 80s. Unstable peace and order and violence also added to the death tally.
Revenues from mining to increase funds for local government operations, and its attendant risk to people and the environment, may be the least that the Davao City needs today. Davao City is an economically viable corporate entity able to respond to public services with its annual revenue of nearly P5 billion. As a premier city in Mindanao, it is experiencing a surge in investments that could ensure a highly functional local government unit in the coming years.
Davao City’s hinterland districts of Marilog and Paquibato are said to be rich in deposits of gold and other minerals.
Foreign mining companies have expressed interest in exploration but found a solid wall in the local government’s anti-mining stance and heavy presence of the communist New Peoples Army (NPA) in these farflung districts. The NPA, the armed wing of the National Democratic Front (NDF) years ago publicly announced it would oppose any mining venture in Davao City.
Duterte said several years ago while he was the sitting mayor, an Australian mining company asked him to convince the NPA to allow the company to do exploration works in Paquibato.
He said he told the company that he is also not interested in having mining in the city.
Recently, Mayor Sara Duterte also has expressed aversion at mining operations in the city citing the attendant ills that go with mining—environmental pollution, unstable peace and order and social problems— that she said the local government wanted to avoid.
I am thanking my daughter for her position, said Duterte, the mayor’s father.
Duterte said present government policy on mining has not translated to economic benefits for the poor and workers in mining, and would like to see legislation that would ensure that mining companies share their revenues with the poor before he would change his own view on mining.
In the mining industry, the rich go richer, while the poor workers can hardly have three meals a day, he said.
Foreign mining companies come and then go away with the revenues leaving environmental devastation, with Filipinos getting only a pittance, he had earlier said.
He also said that national legislation should also be in place for foreign mining companies to answer to damages in case of disaster stemming out of their operation.
There is a surge in investment in the mining industry in the country today after the Arroyo government fully implemented the Philippine Mining Act of 1995, which allowed foreign capital in the mining industry.

The other accused are former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) Gov. Zaldy Ampatuan, former Acting Maguindanao Gov. Sajid Ampatuan, Akmad Ampatuan, Anwar Ampatuan, and 196 others.

It was earlier alleged that the massacre claimed the lives of 57 civilians, including 15 women and 30 media practitioners in Ampatuan town, Maguindanao on Nov. 23, 2009.

Only 57 counts for murder are now being tried by Quezon City Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 221 Presiding Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes.

In a complaint-affidavit filed by Ma. Reynafe Momay-Castillo, she said that a case for murder should have been filed for the death of her father Reynaldo Geneblaza Momay, a photojournalist for the Tacurong City-based Midland Review even if his body has yet to be recovered.

Castillo said that only the dentures of her father were recovered.

The dentures, she said, was identified by the herbalist who made it “because he made these dentures and placed special marks on them” to identify that it was he who made it.

Atty. Gilbert Andres, the legal counsel of Castillo, said that the Philippine National Police (PNP) has already submitted their referral before the DOJ last year.

“We opted to file our complaint to remind the DOJ that there is still another victim whose case is not among those being tried in court,” Andres told reporters in an ambush interview.

Andres said that it was not only the dentures but they have witnesses who can say that he was part of the convoy of the wife of Maguindanao Gov. Esmael “Toto” Mangudadatu that were ambushed and killed by armed men on Nov. 23, 2009..

“Authorities earlier reported that a total of 57 human remains have been recovered from the site and of these, only three have remained unidentified. Of the three human remains, two have a full set of teeth while the third has full upper and lower dentures,” Castillo said in her complaint-affidavit.

“This, (Peruvian forensic expert Dr. Jose Pablo) Baraybar said that at least another body is missing, bringing the fatalities in the slaughter of innocents to at least 58,” Castillo said.

The local chief executive said this means there are still illegal loggers operating in the mountains, defying President Benigno S. Aquino III’s Executive Order No. 23 which orders a total log ban in the entire country.

Mayor Uy further stressed that the teeth of law should be properly implemented both in the sources of the logs as well as providing personnel in the roads where hot logs are being transported.

In a press conference last November 8, 2011, Mayor Uy challenged the DENR hierarchy to “clear their men” Uy expressing that while he is impressed by the efforts of the department to curb illegal logging, he is certain that there are few men from DENR who are involved in this illegal practice.

Meanwhile, the delivered logs – mostly of Lauan – will be utilized to fabricate school chairs which he hope could be distributed to all schools in Davao del Norte and Compostela Valley Provinces, respectively.

As of press time, 14, 435 pieces of school furniture were already distributed to different schools in Davao Region and some 4,000 pieces are already in place at the Tagum City Motor Pool ready for distribution

With five years to go before starting its operation, Sagittarius Mines Inc. (SMI) is optimistic the South Cotabato Provincial Board would lift its ban on open-pit mining.
The Board approved in 2010 the provincial Environmental Code which bans open-pit mining, the method that SMI would use in its US$5.9 billion Tampakan Gold and Copper Project, which is set to go into commercial operation in 2016.
The Board has been asked to review the Environmental Code, the biggest threat to the SMI project considered as the biggest single investment in the country today.
The Regional Mineral Development Council (RMDC) had filed a petition to review the Environmental Code as soon as it was approved, citing that it collided head-on with Republic Act 7942 or the Philippine Mining Act of 1995 and Republic Act 8371 or the Indigenous People’s Rights Act (IPRA) of 1997.
The Provincial Board is yet to review the code nearly two years after the petition was filed by the RMDC.
SMI is pinning hopes the Board would favor a review of the environment code to lift the open-pit mining ban, said John B. Arnaldo, SMI corporate communications manager
The Tampakan project of SMI backed by Canadian mining giant Xstrata Copper, the world’s fourth largest copper producer, is seen as a crucial project that was expected to dramatically transform South Cotabato’s economic landscape when its starts operation.
Nearly two years after the RMDC petition to review was filed, the members of the Board are still studying their options, according to Board Member Ernesto Catedral.
Many of the board members belonging to the committees tasked to act on the petition have yet to submit their positions, he said.

Sagittarius Mines, Inc. (SMI) confirms it has received official notification from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) denying its application for an Environmental Compliance Certificate (ECC) for the Tampakan Mine Project until issues with the use of open pit mining methods have been resolved with the Provincial Government of South Cotabato.

SMI President Peter Forrestal said SMI was extremely disappointed with the decision.

“SMI intends immediately to file an appeal for a reconsideration of the decision as permitted under the ECC application process.

“We are concerned this decision was not made on the merits of our Mine Project Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), which fully complies with the requirements of the DENR’s own ECC process and is backed by a world-class environmental impact assessment study.

“Our EIS is one of the most comprehensive environmental impact assessment studies ever undertaken in the Philippines, which was prepared in line with international standards and further strengthened by the feedback gained from a two-year consultation process that involved more than 9,000 stakeholders.

“During the 40 day review period of our ECC application by the Environmental Impact Assessment Review Committee, an independent panel of experts established by the DENR’s Environmental Management Bureau, all queries regarding SMI’s EIS and its ECC application were addressed to the satisfaction of that committee.

”The decision to deny SMI’s ECC application on the basis that the open-pit ban in South Cotabato must be resolved before the national government can issue an ECC is inconsistent with the DENR’s established procedures for the processing of ECC applications.

“We believe this decision sets a precedent that contradicts the publicly stated views of the Aquino Administration – namely that national laws which permit open-pit mining methods should have precedence over conflicting provincial ordinances.

“This lack of consistency by the national government poses a very real threat to investment confidence in the Philippines and introduces significant uncertainty to national government approval processes.

“It also hampers the Project’s potential to make what would be a significant contribution to the economic and social development of Southern Mindanao and the Philippines,“ Mr Forrestal said.