Southerners support DOJ, DENR environment-protection deal

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Residents of a highland town in South Cotabato and nearby areas that have vast copper and gold deposits have assured of their support for the newly forged partnership of the justice and natural resources departments in prosecuting violators of state environment-protection laws.

Local executives in South Cotabato province told reporters on Saturday, March 8, that Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla and Environment Secretary Maria Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga signed last month in Manila a memorandum of agreement binding their agencies to cooperate in litigating “crimes against environment” in all parts of the country.

Radio reports in Central Mindanao cities on Saturday stated that Blaan and T’boli chieftains in South Cotabato and community leaders in Tampakan town in the province have assured to help the Department of Justice and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources achieve the goals of the MOA that Remulla and Yulo-Loyzaga and their subordinate-officials had crafted together.

The Blaan ancestral lands in Tampakan and in nearby barangays in Kiblawan in Davao del Sur, in Columbio in Sultan Kudarat and in Malungon in Sarangani have, according to experts, no less than US $200 billion worth of copper and gold deposits soon to be explored by a private firm, the Sagittarius Mines Incorporated, based on a license from Malacañang and a written free and prior consent from municipal tribal councils.

“We don’t have a problem supporting that agreement of Secretaries Remulla and Yulo-Loyzaga,” the tribal chieftain Domingo Collado, an appointed Blaan tribal representative to the Tampakan Sangguniang Bayan, said.

Collado and Bai Dalena Samling, also a Blaan tribal leader, said the DOJ-DENR agreement can boost their environmental-protection thrusts in areas to be covered by the Tampakan Copper-Gold Project that the communities they lead have long been wishing to begin to spur economic development in their ancestral lands and in South Cotabato’s capital, Koronadal City.

Members of the influential Mindanao Business Council and the multi-sector Regional Development Council 12, whose chairperson is Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza, had earlier passed resolutions endorsing the Tampakan Copper-Gold Project.

“This partnership of the DOJ and DENR in addressing crimes against the environment is a source of inspiration for us who are helping protect the areas in South Cotabato that are rich in coal, copper and gold,” Edmund Ugal, an ethnic T’boli tribal leader, said.

A big mining firm has been extracting coal in T’boli enclaves in Lake Sebu, South Cotabato for about three years now, as permitted by the national government and tribal leaders.

Vice Mayor Naila Mamalinta of Columbio and Mayor Maria Theresa Constantino of Malungon had separately confirmed that Blaans in their respective towns, in Kiblawan and in Tampakan and the employees of the mining firm contracted by the government to operate the Tampakan Copper-Gold Project had planted more than a million forest tree seedlings in their tribal domains in the past six years.

“The agreement of the DOJ and the DENR will give our local government units more strength to protect the areas in our hometowns that are rich in copper and gold from all forms of abuse. It shall be like a whip we can use to hit those who shall violate the country’s environment-protection laws,” Mamalinta said.