Mining conference an ‘insult’ to Environment Day, say advocates

By Manuel T. Cayon

Reporter

http://www.businessmirror.com.ph/06052007/economy03.html

DAVAO CITY—Environmentalists described as “insulting” the holding of the international mining conference today, Tuesday. The World Environment Day (WED)-Philippines and the Mother Earth, also an environmentalist group, said it was bad taste “to hold that conference timed during the celebration of World Environment Day.” The mining conference will be held at Makati Shangri-La Hotel. “For us, it’s a great insult,” said Ed Aurelio Reyes, secretary general of WED-Philippines. Reyes’s group and the Mother Earth, which figured in the filing of cases against some barangays in Kalookan, Batangas and Northern Samar for failure of the latter to implement the solid waste management, have said they had been opposing mining in the Philippines over their alleged adverse effect to the environment. Sonia Mendoza, chairperson of Mother Earth, said mining “would only bring nothing but destruction to the environment.” “Tell me any place that has benefited from any mining activity,” she told a regular Monday news conference at the SM City mall here. Meanwhile, Mother Earth’s president Marie Marciano urged Davao residents “to join us in protesting the Jpepa (Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement).” “Read closely, again, the agreement which is being negotiated secretly by our government with Japan and look where it is leading us to,” she said, citing the agreement that the Philippines would allow the trade of wastes, “including radioactive or toxic waste, incinerator ash and medical and industrial wastes.” “If this is ratified, we would become the dumping ground of Japan’s wastes,” she said. A provision in the Jpepa’s basic agreement would eliminate tariff on similar waste products from sewage sludge, clinical waste old clothes and rags. “What is alarming is when Japan assured the Philippines that it has no intention of using the country as a dumping ground for its garbage while it promised to adhere to the 1992 Basel Convention,” she said. The convention refers to the “Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Waste and Their Disposal,” but Marciano said that Japan was not a signatory to the convention “that does not allow any export of toxic or hazardous waste to another country unless the government of such country approves such export.” The US and the Philippines have neither signed the Basel Convention, she said. This city would be this year’s site of the World Environment Day celebration. Tonight (Tuesday), at 7 p.m., would link the Philippines to the world as they hold the “Handshakes and Hugs for Earth’s Synergy.” The event will be also held in 52 other countries when their respective time zone would strike at 7 p.m. “It would be a succession of holding handshakes and hugs like circumnavigating the world,” city councilor Leonardo Avila III, also told the news conference. The event would be held at a tent area inside the Matina Town Square entertainment park here, and would be covered for global broadcast by the Philippines’ Cable Channel 43 of ACQ-KBN Network. The channel is owned by evangelist pastor Apollo Quiboloy of the religious movement he formed called The Name Above All Name.