The Glencore-Xstrata super-merger, which was stalled for months on price and management-retention issues, has finally been forged. This merging of two giants into an even bigger giant simply means their corporate clout has increased not two-fold but five-fold. The super-merger was met with protests against Xstrata’s environmental crimes related to mines in Peru, Columbia, and elsewhere throughout the world.
This merger has vast implications on ordinary Filipinos, especially the people of Mindanao, and the affected B’laan communities in Xstrata’s future mine site in Tampakan, South Cotabato. In fact, it has profound implications on President Aquino’s mining policies, which will affect the lives in the entire country in the next few decades. Xstrata-SMI has an application for a gold-copper mine in Tampakan, South Cotabato, the largest-to-be in Asia, if approved. Xstrata’s schedule to start operation in 2012 has been moved to 2018 because of three big hurdles.
First hurdle is South Cotabato’s ban on open pit mining. Xstrata will not settle for tunnel mining. Xstrata will do everything by hook or by crook to buy out the ban, or prop their own pro-mining governor in the next election to remove the ban. There have been past failed attempts to have the ban reversed – 1) pressure on national government to nullify local autonomy, 2) pressure on the governor to reverse the environment code with the ban provision. With the merger and the consequent increase on investments, Xstrata seeks the Achilles heel in our governance, which will be detrimental to the destiny of agriculture in Mindanao, and of the B’laans in the project area. There is currently a trend in Mindanao provinces to adopt the open pit ban, scaring many powerful mining multinationals.
Second hurdle is the Free Prior Informed Consent (FPIC), which Xstrata has not yet achieved, a requirement for the yet-unapproved Environment Compliance Certificate (ECC). No ECC means no mining permit. Their dirty tricks of deceit in consultations, exposed in the media, has undermined their credibility, which has made people less prone to give consent or FPIC, except those who have been bought with ‘development’ funds. With the merger, these funds will increase and undermine the resolve to protect our agriculture and the lives and lands of the B’laans in Tampakan. That is Xstrata’s weakness, loss of credibility. Their strength lies in the principle ‘everyone has his price’. Thus, their last option is to buy the Filipino into destroying themselves.
Third hurdle is the increasing human rights violations (HRV) which may result in an all-out war that will scatter protestors from the project area. That war, intentionally triggered by HRVs, is the excuse for Xstrata and the military to ‘cleanse’ the area of protestors. War is the tool to solve the FPIC impasse, by simply removing people from the area. Recently, the family of a B’laan protest leader was massacred, the wife and two children shot point blank. See it in the youtube – http://youtu.be/tjg8yAl6qrc.
With the dollar on a tailspin, the price of gold has soared to the high heavens. Observers say prices may go up still in the next few months from $1,700 to $5,000, even $10,000, depending on the intensity of the looming dollar crisis, which can occur without warning. This will give the edge to Xstrata-Glencore to buy Filipinos from the top to the bottom, even if the gold is tinted with our blood. The Tampakan mine can easily destroy the entire Central Mindanao bread basket, part of our precious agricultural, which comprises 70% of our national economy, and which sustains 70% of our people.
The Glencore-Xstrata giant drools over Tampakan, whose tailings dam has a capacity of a whopping 1.35 billion metric tons to sit forever on top of a mountain below the prime agricultural areas of the South Cotabato and Davao del Sur, underneath a network of major seismic fault lines. This dam is ten times bigger than the collapsed tailings dam no. 3 of Philex with a capacity of 144 million metric tons (mmt), which caused the biggest ever dam collapse in Philippine history, and 100 times bigger than the collapsed dam of Marcopper in Marinduque with a capacity of about 10 mmt, where millions of dollars of rehab funds have failed to restore the Boac river. The Tampakan dam is the Sword of Damocles.
If Noynoy gives in to Xstrata-Glencore, it will be the biggest blunder of any president in history. But he will be long gone from the throne when the dam collapses. It will induce hunger, insurgency, anarchy, and poverty on a wide scale as never before, while the giant gets windfall [profits]. Mining multinationals have become so big and so powerful as to be able to manipulate Third World governments, mess up their policies and laws for their self interests, buy national and local governments. Lately, even developed nations like Australia and Canada where these multinationals originate, are helpless to contain their environmental crimes. They are not afraid to publish data on such a big dangerous tailings dam because they are so confident of their success worldwide to buy out all opposition.
The best strategy is therefore to not give these giants any foothold at all, no project, no ECC. That is the only way to save the Filipino.
— eastwindreplyctr@gmail.com