Image problem

An image can be far from reality. But it can make or unmake a president, or destroy a show biz career. It can discourage public cooperation with the police.

An image problem can make life difficult for an individual, an organization or an entire industry.

Large-scale mining firms have felt this for some time and are belatedly fighting back. Top officials of the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines met with STAR editors the other day to brief us on the state of the industry.

An image makeover is going to be tough for this industry, because much of the bad reputation is based on reality, documented on video, photographs and newspaper reports.

For example, the mining disaster in Marinduque occurred in March 1996, and the copper mine has been shut down. But fear of contaminated water from the Boac River finding its way to the sea has discouraged me from visiting a top-rate resort island in Marinduque, even if it’s a long way from the mine site.

What the mining industry wants to emphasize is that the reality is a thing of the past – about two decades past, for the most part – enough time to prove that the industry has rehabilitated itself and now promotes corporate social responsibility, including respect for the environment.

It can be a hard sell in this country, but there’s no harm in their trying.

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Mining is not a pretty activity. No matter how orderly the operation and modern the machinery, the ground still looks like it has been dug up by a pack of frenzied dogs. Vegetation is uprooted, water is contaminated or its flow disrupted, and the landscape becomes bleak, without the magnificent desolation of the deserts and canyons in the United States.

The images are even worse in a mining disaster, such as the one in Marinduque involving Marcopper and its parent company, Canada’s Placer Dome. The Canadian firm has been gobbled up by another and it has paid $35 million for the disaster.

These days large mining firms are spending millions – P44 million in 2010 alone by Nickel Asia in Palawan’s Barangay Rio Tuba, for example – for environmental protection programs.

Officials of the Chamber of Mines admitted that there were many mines that were not rehabilitated in the past. But Gerard Brimo, president and CEO of Nickel Asia, said, “This is history… this cannot happen anymore.”

The Mining Act or Republic Act 7942, passed in 1995, requires mining firms to rehabilitate mines after these are shut down. Old growth or virgin forests cannot be destroyed for mining operations.

“The question is what we do after we mine,” said Brimo, whose company’s operations are located in Palawan. The province has become the hotbed of anti-mining activism following the murder, still unsolved, of Gerry Ortega, a staunch critic of mining operations in the province. The courts recently cleared former provincial governor Joel Reyes of involvement in the crime.

Brimo pointed out that Palawan has issued 23 permits in the province for quarrying – which is another form of extracting resources from the ground and therefore a mining activity.

The chamber emphasizes that soil with minerals is not conducive to agriculture “so it is not an issue of mining versus agriculture.” Slash-and-burn farming is more destructive to the environment, the miners point out.

Photos and video footage are now presented by the chamber to show how mines are rehabilitated after they are shut down and surrounding communities are developed, complete with paved roads, schools and health facilities. The old mines are sealed, covered with soil and turned into vegetable farms or planted with trees.

“I’m willing to challenge any industry in this country that has planted more trees than our industry,” said chamber president Benjamin Philip Romualdez. “We plant millions of trees a year but we’ve been quiet about it… we have been very bad communicators.”

Their problem is if a province opts to shut out mining completely and decides to rely on other forms of economic activities, such as agribusiness or eco-tourism for Palawan.

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Is the country prepared to live without mining? Everything that we use has a component that is derived from resources extracted through mining, from houses to cars to cell phones and kitchen appliances, and even medical devices such as vascular stents.

Citing studies, chamber chairman Artemio Disini estimates that every human utilizes or consumes 2.9 million pounds of minerals, fuels and metals in an average lifetime, including 1,383 ounces of gold.

Last year, mining and quarrying accounted for 1.7 percent of Philippine GDP or P143.4 billion, up from P18.7 billion or 1.2 percent of GDP in 2004. The industry employed 200,000 people directly in 2010 and an estimated 1.2 million indirectly, and paid taxes totaling P20.252 billion from 2005 to 2010.

The chamber is balking at a government plan to impose more taxes on the industry. The miners said the government should instead go after small-scale miners, a number of whom are supported by local politicians and whose activities are not regulated. The chamber is also protesting a plan by the government to require major mining firms to set up their own power plants, which can cost from $400 million to $500 million each. Philippine power costs are already the second highest in Asia after Japan.

Romualdez said the state of the mining industry has to be one of the biggest disincentives for business expansion plans or the entry of more foreign direct investments in the Philippines.

“We’re not competitive,” he said. “Who wants to come here?”

The industry is prodding the government to support the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, a global program started in 2003 by the World Bank and the UK, which commits mining firms to open their records to government auditors and publish all the relevant figures in their operations. The Bureau of Internal Revenue opposed the proposal in the past.

“We’re not perfect,” Romualdez admitted, “and we’re going to improve.”

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REACTION: Magsaysay Transport and Logistics Group wrote to clarify that license plate PIO 961 is assigned to their service vehicle, alright, but it’s a white Isuzu IPV pick-up, not a large black van, and it doesn’t go around with two police motorcycle escorts using wang-wang.