Reply to prominent environmental columnist
Please go to this link to read the recent column of Canada’s Dr. David Suzuki: http://www.davidsuzuki.org/about_us/Dr_David_Suzuki/Article_Archives/weekly06160601.asp
Dear Dr. Suzuki,
I would like to comment on your recent column, Time for the mining industry to clean up its act, June 16, 2006, in which you criticise the Government of Canada for inaction in responding to a report by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, related to international mining ventures. In passing, you refer to the Committee’s “deep concern” about “the possible impact on human rights” by our company, TVI Pacific Inc., in the Philippines (emphasis added).
In its report, the Committee used the word “possible” for a reason. During the hearings it was presented with hugely contradictory claims – those of anti-mining campaigners (who seriously misrepresented the facts) on the one hand; and those of the Company and of the actual residents of the indigenous community affected, on the other.
You add, “no investigation was ever done [as called for by the Committee]”. This is not entirely true, as I will outline below. But the assertion, coupled with the statements that “some companies are giving the industry a bad name”; and, “the status quo is not acceptable”, imply strongly to the reader (unintentionally, I believe) that the Company is clearly Guilty (which it is not); and the mining industry overseas is generally Bad and needs to be Held to Account.
In your column you question the Government for organising a series of Roundtable conferences on the governance issues of extractive industries in developing countries – rather than Doing Something. The problem – as the Government pointed out to the Parliamentary Committee – is that there are no agreed-upon standards, yardsticks, or mechanisms (yet) for monitoring and measuring human rights impacts; and that the question in many countries is hugely complex:
If companies, for example, who in the overwhelming majority are attempting to be excellent corporate citizens in the face of tremendously challenging circumstances, are to be Held to Account, what exactly is it that they are to be held to account for? How exactly is their performance to be monitored, and by whom? By what Court will they be judged, and how will that Court be assured of the veracity of the evidence if it comes from a foreign jurisdiction – or jungle – so that justice is done on all sides, including to the company?
Interestingly, the Canadian institution, Rights and Democracy, congratulated the Government for organising the roundtables, in their paper to the opening session in Vancouver, June 14-16. Rights and Democracy described the international debate over standards and complimented the Government on a transparent and participatory process for arriving at specifically Canadian standards. For all these reasons, Rights and Democracy is working on developing a methodology for Human Rights Impact Assessment – and TVI is participating in this exercise in a variety of ways as outlined below.
You open your column with the recognition that “we all need natural resources brought up through the earth through mining.” So the question is not whether we mine, but how. And increasingly, the “how” and our ability to “how” is put to the test in developing countries, rather than developed, since that’s where so many of the new resources are to be found.
Equally, developing countries are crying out for the same rights to development from which developed countries have already benefited. The Philippines is no exception, seeking foreign investors to bring capital and expertise to the aid of an underdeveloped sector. But, as with many developing countries, there are problems: lack of infrastructure, underdeveloped and underfinanced administrative and judicial systems, an effective absence of the State in remote regions (with regard to education, health, police, social security, all the things we take for granted in Canada), and widespread corruption.
Perhaps the most important issue – to be seen in many ways as a positive, actually – is the existence of indigenous populations in many of the areas where minerals happen to be deposited. There are an estimated 13+ million indigenous people in the Philippine Islands.
On the one hand, the fact that there are people claiming the rights to the mineralised land, constrains a mining company’s freedom of movement. As in Canada, it introduces the delays and costs needed for briefing, explaining and gaining Free Prior Informed Consent. Then there are the costs of actually delivering the benefits of development to a remote region. But on the other hand it gives us the opportunity to “make a difference”, and to help uplift people who have been downtrodden or abandoned for centuries and who have had few of the advantages of modern life (even those of underdeveloped countries) such as a modicum of education and health care. These are things we are doing at our Canatuan Project in the Philippines, rendering our impact on human rights in an overwhelmingly positive manner, considering the whole range of rights including the right to education, right to health, right to food and water, right to security and the other rights of the UN Declaration.
This is all on top of the requirement to respect the environment and manage the environmental impact of our operations. Like every other industry, the mining industry has hugely greater technological capability today than it did 50 years ago, or even a decade ago; and we also have a much better understanding of the social footprint of our operations, and our responsibility as businesses to the stakeholders we affect. Speaking for TVI, I’ll describe how we are generously responding to these responsibilities toward the end of this letter.
So why do we get pilloried both by protestors and by well-meaning columnists alike?
In the case of TVI the answer is relatively simple, although the situation itself is complex. It has to do with the financial and municipal mafias of illegal small-scale mining; as well as the political objectives – and practices – of the Philippines anti-mining movement.
Why the campaign against TVI?
When the Company purchased the legitimate rights to explore at Canatuan, the mineral claim was populated by several thousand illegal miners, and by no means predominantly by indigenous people. While the majority of the miners are ordinary Joes trying to make a living the only way they (and their children) know how, illegal mining in gold gives rise to financial mafias that depend on an intensely polluting, socially destructive process for their profits. The makeshift rod mills and processing plants (built from illegal deforestation giving rise to erosion) use mercury that is vaporised into the atmosphere, only to condense out quickly and poison the surrounding gardens and streams. The sandbag tailings ponds leak large quantities of cyanide into the watershed. Mercury and cyanide are illegal and have to be smuggled in by various means. But the untaxed profits are so enormous, relative to the local economy, that these people are prepared to pay – and pay big – in order to protect their business.
What happened at Canatuan was that illegal mining paid for protests, through (among other means) “royalties” paid to the municipality on the one hand and to indigenous leaders who had recently come in to the community from the outside on the other. Their cause was taken up by the anti-business, anti-foreign, anti-mining movement of the Philippines, led, in part, by holdover “liberation theology” elements of the country’s Catholic Church, and by a variety of NGOs who added to the financing and the campaigning. The campaign was then picked up through the internet and various networks by genuine and well-meaning international organisations concerned about human rights, but also, like you, depending on secondary sources. Repeated investigations in the Philippines spanning a number of years showed all accusations against the company to be unfounded, but by now certain irresponsible NGOs, who are themselves never Held to Account for the accusations they make, have already sullied the Company’s reputation.
In the meantime, the majority of the indigenous community, tired of being exploited by the illegal miners, objecting to the use of child labour, among many other things, and being persuaded that the TVI project offered a better way, rebelled against the previous leadership. After much conflict (for which the company, not illegal mining, is blamed) the majority of the community turned against the former leadership and elected to support the proposed TVI project; and the former leadership abandoned the community to continue a by-then internationally orchestrated campaign.
At that point, two terrible ambushes were carried out against TVI vehicles carrying indigenous people from the community to market. In the first attack, two people including the brother of one of the new leaders supporting TVI, were killed. And in the second, 13 people including the new leader himself were viciously murdered by strafing gunfire and another 15 were injured. The ambushes were carried out by people identified as members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) – the guerrilla army that is today in peace negotiations with the Government but was then fighting a military campaign for an independent Muslim State in Mindanao.
TVI and the indigenous community made an urgent request to the Government to be protected from further attacks. The government recruited and allocated units of non-regular troops (called “SCAA”) to protect the community and to control the surrounding forests where guerrillas, by definition, operate clandestinely. After the illegal mill owners consistently defied government and court orders to comply with environmental and social laws, the guards were tasked to intercept the mercury and other contraband being smuggled to the plants, much to the distress of the illegal miners and their indigenous spokesmen. At that point the Government and the indigenous community together decided to apply the law and dismantle the rod mills and cyanide/mercury plants. Again, TVI was unjustly accused of human rights violations around the world through the medium of the internet.
One of our initiatives to try to balance the smear campaign against the company has been to establish a project website at www.tvicanatuan.com, part of an ongoing Transparency Initiative, which posts not only our own news and information but also all the documents relating to the above incidents – and others. If you or your readers have any questions about these or any other issues raised about the project, I would urge you to consult the site. I also hope you won’t object if we also post your column and this reply on the site.
Positive Initiatives on Human Rights: Present and Future
Let me now turn to the more positive content of the site – what TVI is actually doing with regard to the broader issues of human rights (right to development, right to food and water, right to education, right to health, right to security) in a remote region of strife-torn Mindanao, Philippines.
First, regarding the “investigation” called for by the Parliamentary Committee: For one thing, the staff of the Canadian Embassy in Manila has been following this issue for years and have recently conducted a tour of the site and interviewed all the players. Secondly, TVI is publicly co-operating with the Canadian Parliament-created institution, Rights and Democracy, in a Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) of our project. Unfortunately, Rights and Democracy is conducting its study through the very anti-mining organisations that have been fabricating allegations against the company for a decade, including two organisations consisting of the ousted former leadership in the Canatuan community.
Accordingly, TVI has enlisted the participation of a panel of independent human rights experts to carry out a parallel study using the Rights and Democracy and other methodologies. This study will lead, not only to a discussion of the issues of the past, but more importantly to the definition of policies for a mining company as we go forward, and a methodology to assist us in the preparation of new projects using a rights-based approach.
By all social indicators, the impact that TVI has had on Canatuan is positive. We have brought initial health care and education to a remote indigenous population. (See our Canatuan website for details) We are now taking this program to the next level – sustainability – by working with the indigenous community itself and the National Commission on Indigenous People (NCIP) on the Ancestral Domain Sustainable Development and Protection Plan (ADSDPP) – the first such joint effort between the NCIP and a mining company. Pursuant to an agreement with the tribe, reached when they voted to support the company’s project in 2002, and signed in 2003, we pay a royalty of 1% of gross revenues to the holders of the Ancestral Domain, in addition to the legislated 1% of operating expenditures that goes to fund social development programs. We employ over 300 indigenous people, most of whom have never been employed before; and we are embarking on training programs and other forms of community development.
With regard to security, it is known that Mindanao was a conflict zone with active rebel armies; and even today the New People’s Army (Communist) operates in some parts of the island. It is also true that after the ambushes there was a time of considerable tension due to the smuggling of mercury and the dismantling of the mercury plants. And there continue to be elements that might like to make a hit on the project or attempt to steal its valuable product. Today our export is gold and silver bullion; by next year it will also include copper and zinc concentrate. So a certain measure of security is a given. In the Philippines, even Starbucks coffee shops have armed guards who routinely stop and check all customers who enter the shops.
There are people who argue that companies should not invest in a conflict or post-conflict zone such as Mindanao. I strongly disagree, and so does the Government of the Philippines. It is another human right – the right to development – that ultimately paves the way to the resolution of such conflicts.
The question then becomes, how do we manage security in such conflict areas, in such a way as to protect human rights at the same time as we protect our people and our assets? The challenge is complicated by the fact that security in a theatre of guerrilla operations, and in densely forested areas, requires a control “net” that impacts freedom of movement. The approach of the Philippines military (throughout the country) is to maintain checkpoints on the roads, and outpost encampments that monitor activity and control access. The issue is complicated further by the fact that the owners of the Ancestral Domain – the indigenous people of Canatuan – also wish to control access of non-indigenous people to their land. They do not want just anyone coming in and stealing their hard-won benefits or their jobs.
TVI has been discussing this issue with the secretariat of the Voluntary Principles on Human Rights and Security, a coalition of governments, companies and NGOs such as Amnesty International. Formal adherence is made difficult by the fact that Canada is not yet a signatory; but TVI has nevertheless proceeded with the implementation of aspects of the voluntary program.
Most notably, we have initiated a groundbreaking partnership with the Philippines Human Rights Commission and the Armed Forces of the Philippines to conduct an in-depth Human Rights Training program for all security personnel assigned to the project. This program is a “first”. It will be extended to include TVI personnel in the coming year – and I would not be surprised to see the Philippines Armed Forces adopt the model for other operations.
Our Doors Are Open
To my knowledge, all significant mining companies understand the new realities of our “footprint” and our responsibilities. There is a potential issue, identified by the representatives of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade to the Parliamentary Committee, that smaller companies (responsible for finding much of the world’s new reserves of both minerals and oil and gas) do not always have the resources to deal with these complex issues in the same comprehensive manner as major corporations. There may be mechanisms that could be introduced to assist smaller companies in this regard, to the benefit of developing countries and the companies alike.
To get a better understanding of these complexities – and the tremendous contribution being made by TVI’s people on the ground – we have implemented a comprehensive Mine Tour program, under the slogan “Our Doors Are Open”, in which anyone and everyone is invited to come and see and hear for themselves what we are doing and what the indigenous people feel about the positive impact on their human rights at Canatuan. This is in addition to the Multipartite Monitoring Team where environmental impacts and practices are monitored monthly by a wide variety of representatives from governments at all levels, communities, NGOs and the Church.
I hope this letter may have contributed to the ongoing discussion in a constructive manner, and I also sincerely hope that at some time you might be able, Dr. Suzuki, as an important contributor to the Canadian conscience on environmental and social issues, to join the many hundreds of people who are visiting Canatuan regularly to evaluate the issues first hand.
Yours sincerely,
Clifford M. James (original signed)
President and CEO
