The island of Mindanao in the Philippines is ringed by beaches and covered in volcanoes and gardens of exotic orchids. Mindanao has been home to the Indigenous Lumad peoples for centuries, but beginning in 2026, the island will become the site of the Philippines’ largest mining project. The Tampakan Copper-Gold Project has been in the works since large gold reserves were confirmed in the 1990s, and since its inception, there has been intense Indigenous resistance. Kat Dalon is one of those people working to stop the mine.
Dalon has been fighting to stop the mine for most of her life. Today, she writes and organizes to stop the project. ”We will realize our right to practice self-determination,” she said.
A new report from Global Witness, an international human rights advocacy group, says that increasing demand for transition minerals necessary for green energy are putting Indigenous peoples, like the Lumad, as well as critical biodiversity in the Philippines at risk. More than a quarter of lands in the Philippines identified for mineral mining overlap with biodiversity hotspots, while nearly half of all mining permits issued by the state “clash” with important ecological zones. Since 2010, Global Witness estimates that nearly 800 miles of critical forestlands have been lost to mining — an area around three times the size of New York City.
Hannah Hindstrom, a senior investigator at Global Witness, says that a fifth of the land in the Philippines is already covered in mining leases. “It’s quite a shocking figure. It’s a heavily mineral-developed country,” she said. “The government has strongly signaled that it is open for business in the mining sector, and they are trying to position the country as a leading producer of transition minerals.”
The Philippines is one of the most mineral-rich countries in the world and is the second-largest global producer of nickel. It’s estimated that only 5 percent of the nation’s $1 trillion worth of minerals has been explored. As the world moves from fossil fuels to green energy solutions, like electric vehicles, minerals including nickel, copper, gold, and silver are critical to building energy infrastructure, and the Philippines is positioning itself to be a major economic player in the global mining industry. It’s estimated that by 2040, the global need for renewable energy will increase sevenfold.
But that move away from fossil fuels has put Indigenous peoples at the front lines of land theft and business-driven violence. The United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues has made many recommendations over the years, repeatedly pointing out that clean energy projects impede on Indigenous peoples’ right to free, prior and informed consent, as outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In addition, Indigenous experts and advocates have called carbon markets “false climate solutions” and have encouraged countries to instead entrust land stewardship to Indigenous communities that have done so to great success for thousands of years.
In 1997, the Philippines passed the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act. The act, which is aimed to protect ancestral, Indigenous lands, has provided Indigenous peoples land titles to nearly 5 million hectares of homelands since 2020. But it’s an expensive and lengthy process that has taken as long as 20 years to complete, and an estimated 80 applications are still waiting to be processed. Because of the bureaucratic burden, Indigenous peoples have accused the government of undermining and manipulating the process to further extractive business interests. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources, or DENR, in the Philippines is looking at shortening the mineral leasing time from six years to one year. According to Global Witness, since the 1990s, Indigenous peoples have lost around 60,000 square miles, an area roughly the size of the state of Georgia.
That development has put many Indigenous people face-to-face with violence. In the last decade, one-third of environmental land defenders killed in the Philippines were Indigenous, and nearly half of those cases were associated with mining. Hindstrom said that the country is consistently ranked as one of the most dangerous in Asia for environmental land defenders. “Where there was a high rate of overlap between mining and Indigenous land, there’s also a high rate of killings of Indigenous defenders and especially, obviously, anti-mining defenders.”
Global Witness reports that the Filipino military, which is mandated to protect state resources, have close ties to mining operations and are linked to around half of the killings of Indigenous land defenders.
Kat Dalon says that if small-scale mining could help benefit the country, Sabokahan youth would support it. She says as long as everyone is able to feed their families, protect the land, and share harvests, there may be a different conversation — but that’s not what’s happening now.
“The point,” she said, “is that our lands, and what happens to it below and above the soil, should be under our self determination as its stewards.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Philippines is going all-in on transition minerals and endangering Indigenous lands on Dec 9, 2024.
