[Address: Stakeholders’ Caucus on EO 79 on Mining, Ateneo de Davao University
July 18, 2012]

No one really talked much about mining when I was going to school. It was one of those activities engaged in by a relatively small number of people; its effects were not well understood. Things have changed. While no one will contest that in the modern world we need the products of mining for such as celfons, computers, skyscrapers and the like, there are concerns about the costs of mining on the environment. The desire has been to understand what “responsible mining” is. Even as some Philippine activists’ positions have been characterized as “anti-mining,” the thrust is less to ban mining activities absolutely from the country, but to hold it in abeyance until a broader consensus is achieved as to what responsible mining policy might be, and until the country clearly has the structures and…