Bagging our mountains

Social media is a great source of all kinds of information. Just last week, I found pictures of tree houses, home libraries, container gardens, and nifty home offices through Facebook. They provided inspiration to my ongoing de-cluttering and repotting project at home.

Not all the information I got had happy news, though. Someone shared a picture of sedimentation along the coast of Barangay Buenavista, Manicani Island, Guian, Eastern Samar. The rains had apparently washed the dug-up soil from mining operations to the seashore. The same day I saw the picture, there was a news article about earthquakes in Eastern Samar. I thought about how lucky we still are since it was not The Big One. I also wondered how long our luck would hold.

I also found a disturbing article about Benedictine nun Sister Stella Matutina. She was tagged as a member of the New People’s Army by the military because of her environmental work.  She is the spokesperson of Panalipdan Mindanao, a group resisting large-scale mining operations in Mindanao. What bothered me most was her story about how the bishop allegedly told her to refrain from filing charges against the persons who detained her and her companions when they visited a Davao community who sought their help to stop mining. Her congregation now wants her to move to Europe for her safety.

Because I shared these stories on my own wall, a friend sent me a message about plans to put up a cement plant in Malabuyoc, Cebu. He also sent me pictures of his town’s coastline, its pristine rivers, its townsfolk, and fishermen. He takes beautiful pictures and the ones he shared could have been part of the Department of Tourism’s “It’s More Fun in the Philippines” campaign. While I have not had the chance to explore Malabuyoc, I have no doubt that it is as scenic and as postcard-pretty as my friend showed in his pictures. It is no surprise that he worries about the effects of cement-making operations in his hometown.

Malabuyoc is located along the coast of Tañon Strait, a protected seascape and landscape famous for its dolphins and rich marine resources. I wonder if the people in southwestern Cebu are aware of the possible effects that a cement plant will have on the livelihoods of its farmers and fisherfolk. Maybe they haven’t heard of how plans to put up a cement plant in Bolinao, Pangasinan were shelved because of opposition from fishermen and marine scientists who knew that it would destroy the marine environment.

A check with Google led me to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) website. The MGB list I found showed that the DENR has issued mining tenements over thousands of hectares of land in Cebu. For Malabuyoc alone, several Mineral Production Sharing Agreements for limestone and other mineral deposits have been registered. I was shocked. I thought that an environmentalist friend was kidding when she said that miners seemed to want to dig up the whole Philippines. It certainly looked like they wanted to bag up all of Cebu’s mountains for cement.

Malabuyoc shares its limestone mountain ranges with Boljoon, my hometown. When she was a student, my mom trekked from Boljoon to Malabuyoc on trails along our shared mountains. It is something that I had planned to do in the future. With reports that Malabuyoc will be the site of a mining area soon, I better make my trekking plans more definite. The mountains might not be there long enough.

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