Lake Sebu groups worried about DOE’s coal drive

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THURSDAY, 03 MARCH 2011 17:06 MANUEL T. CAYON  / REPORTER

DAVAO CITY—An organization of ancestral land claimants and a group against mining operations in South Cotabato criticized the active campaign of Energy Secretary Jose Rene Almendras for coal mining and energy utilization, expressing their concern over the fate of their opposition to coal mining in their province.

The Hublag Kontra Mina (Hukom) and T’boli-Manobo S’daf Claimant Organization (Tamasco) said Almendras’s campaign for coal operation was pushed “in the guise of stable and reliable supply of energy [but] only to serve the interest of big companies.”

“The Secretary is shaping up our minds that the current energy reserves are thinning.  

This scenario is orchestrated to condition the people that there is no other way for a stable energy in the country but to accept the environmentally-destructive coal-fired projects,” he said.

Hukom’s Yellen Zata dared Almendras to galvanize his campaign by explaining to South Cotabato villagers “the [sorry] state of the test pit mines in sitio Tafal, in barangay Ned.”

“Tell us, Mr. Secretary, how can the damaged site be brought back to its original form? Even the test pit mines in Sitio Tafal were left open and wasted,” Zata said.

“That’s impossible. I never knew any mining area in the world that was restored to its original form. The mining companies’ definition of rehabilitation, which is just to plant trees, extremely contradicts Secretary Almendras’s declaration,” she added.

Hukom said in a statement that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources granted an Environmental Compliance Certificate in October 2009 to Sultan Energy Philippines Corp. to conduct test mine operation in sitio Tafal, barangay Ned, South Cotabato. 

Datu Victor Danyan, chairman of Tamasco, said that “government has never run out of propaganda just to cuddle multinational companies and siphon in huge money.” 

They expressed their indignation in the wake of their relentless opposition to local coal mining in the province. Recently, they also criticized the entry of food and beverage giant San Miguel Corp. in the coal industry after it acquired Daguma Agro Minerals Inc.  and sister-company Bonanza Energy Resources Inc.

San Miguel also acquired the coal-operating contracts of Sultan Mining and Energy Development Corp. for production and development of an estimated 17,000 hectare-coal rich area in barangay Ned, Lake Sebu, Hukom and Tamasco said in a joint statement.

Another group, the SoCSKSarGen Climate Action Now (Scan), an environmental group also based in South Cotabato, warned that “coal-fired power plants have significant contribution to climate change because of its emission of massive carbon dioxide and greenhouses gases like methane, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide.”

Scan said that “countries like Australia, India and Malaysia have reports holding accountable the mining companies for the rise of green-house emissions, one of the serious causes of climate change.” 

Hukom and Tamasco said they would call on President Aquino “to redeliberate its neoliberal energy security framework without compromising the lifeblood of indigenous peoples and people in the upland communities.”

They said that the Aquino administration should “push for energy sovereignty that would give people the freedom to resolve for a sustainable energy generation, distribution and consumption.”

Sr. Susan Bolanio, OND, chairman of Scan, said that “there should be decentralization of energy generation, supply, administration and management, community control of technologies, elusion from privatized technological dependency and increased democratization of decision-making and access to control of energy production.”

“Those are just some of the prerequisites for energy sovereignty.

The most imperative here is the sincerity of the Aquino government to resolve the present depressing plight of the indigenous peoples and other upland rural communities that are seriously affected by the encroachments of corporations,” Bolanio said.

Jean Marie Ferraris, team Leader of Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center-Kasama sa Kalikasan (LRC-KsK) Davao Office, said that energy sovereignty “will uphold the right of people to have access to energy and to decide over their sustainable energy sources and consumption patterns.”