The outgoing administration is brazenly relentless in perpetuating the destruction it has wrought our communities and ecosystems. With just four months to go, President Arroyo has placed Horacio Ramos, the country’s long running top mining bureaucrat, at the helm of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

As Director of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB), Mr. Ramos has acted more like a sales representative and storekeeper of our country’s mineral resources rather than its administrator. Our mineral resources have been squandered in exchange for loose change from mining corporations and have not led to the industrialization of our economy nor supported sustainable areas development.

In pursuit of opening up mineral lands to corporations, the MGB has already given out 272 Mineral Production Sharing Agreements (MPSAs), 4 Financial and Technical Assistance Agreement (FTAAs), and 46 Exploration Permits (EPs) - and yet Ramos still seeks to further facilitate the issuance of mining permits with moves such as reducing the processing time of mining permits, diluting the right to free prior and informed consent (FPIC) of communities, and processing of mining applications notwithstanding protests or opposition.

Under his watch 432,091.5017 hectares of land have been covered by MPSAs, 94,712.91 hectares by FTAAs, and a further 171,549.95 hectares under EPs - notwithstanding that these overlap agricultural lands, watersheds, protected areas, geo-hazard areas, forests, and ancestral domains. This has led to resource and community conflicts on the ground, exacerbated by government moves to ensure the entry and operations of mining corporations such as deployment of military and paramilitary forces in mining areas, the creation of an Investment Defense Force (IDF), and the Committee on Mining Security of the Minerals Development Council.

In this mad fixation on mining we have not seen or heard Mr. Ramos being concerned with the attendant civil and political rights violations such as violent dispersals, displacement of communities, harassment of individuals, restrictions on mobility of persons, and extra-legal killings of community rights defenders. Human rights violations to health, work and livelihood, education, culture, environment and peace also abound.

With this framework, there is not only a disjoint between mining and other development objectives, but mining - as led and promoted by Horacio Ramos - actually sabotages the rational conservation, development and utilization of natural resources, minerals included. Exactly the opposite of what we truly need the DENR for.

The governance of our country’s natural resource base would not be served by someone with an established extractives fixated mindset - not as President, not as DENR Secretary. We fear the wholesale commodification of our natural resources with Horacio Ramos as top auctioneer. The DENR will now truly be the Department of Exploitation of Natural Resources.

We demand an end to TRAPOs and corporate lackeys holding sway over the DENR.

Recall and revoke the appointment of Horacio Ramos as DENR Secretary!!

Statement by the women and men of The Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center-Kasama sa Kalikasan / Friends of the Earth - Philippines (LRC-KsK/FoE-Philippines) {jcomments on}