Philippines: Preparatory work for coal mine begins amid complaints concerning environmental impacts & encroachment on Indigenous people's land
"Philippine coal mine roars into production amid waves of complaints", 17 September 2024
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In the first quarter of 2022, the San Miguel Corporation, one of the largest and most diversified conglomerates in the Philippines, began preparatory work for a coal mine in the village. This was despite opposition from the local Catholic Church as well as environmental and tribal groups, who cited concerns about risks to the environment and to lowland farms that rely on the upland watersheds for irrigation.
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... [C]oal-rich Ned is the largest of the 19 villages of Lake Sebu township in South Cotabato province ....
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...San Miguel’s chairman and chief executive officer, Ramon S. Ang, said the tribal and non-tribal villagers displaced by the coal mining operation would be provided with land and a house in a relocation site.
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Meanwhile, the Catholic Diocese of Marbel, which covers the village of Ned, has accused the mining firm of harassment and intimidation, citing the arrest and detention in April of four members of a family who refused to sell their farmland to the company....
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San Miguel didn’t respond to questions from Mongabay to its published media contacts.
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Company representatives also told provincial officials that the company would rely on strip mining to extract the deposits, as the province has since 2010 banned open-pit mining.
“Coal cannot be mined using open-pit mining method because such mineral is soft,” Ang said at the time. “You can’t operate from the top because it will collapse. You can only operate from the side, you strip it … Our coal mining operation will not be an open-pit operation.”
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The mining activity has also come close to, but not encroached on, the titled ancestral domain of the Indigenous T’boli-Manobo S’daf Claimants Organization (TAMASCO)....
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In December 2017, Dande Danyan’s cousin, Datu Victor Danyan, then the TAMASCO chair and at the forefront of the struggle to defend their ancestral lands, and six other tribal members were killed during a military operation. ...
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