Mining in Palawan and its impacts to biodiversity and local communities

The island of Palawan is endowed with beautiful hills and mountains, lust forest vegetation, rivers/creeks with crystal clear water, rich biodiversity and fertile lowland providing bountiful harvest. The major sources of livelihood of the local communities including indigenous people are agriculture and forest products. Ecotourism has become a potential livelihood in the entire island because of the experiences in Puerto Princesa City where its Mayor banned mining and developed instead, several ecotourism sites which brought millions of pesos in gross domestic products and increased the earning capacity of its constituents.

The mining act of 1995 however allowed mining to be conducted even in key biodiversity sites such as in Southern Palawan. The mining company operating in this area boasts of having planted and grown 800,000 trees in their 238 hectares of mined-out land. However, these species of trees could grow in toxic land because they are capable of absorbing heavy metals. If the miners think this is good, on the contrary, this is even worse because the toxic heavy metals are transferred from the layers of soil into the surface through the bodies of these colonizer trees. These plants will eventually contain toxic heavy metals that could affect herbivorous animals and instead of restoring biodiversity, will cause death to other living organisms that are connected through the food chain. When branches and leaves of these plants die and fall to the ground, their heavy metal contents will be release and scattered onto the surface soil. This is not the way to store the toxic metals.

Naturally growing trees in mineralized areas are not necessarily the aggressive metal absorbers, but could tolerate a small amount of metals. When mining disturbs the layers of soil and rocks, the process scatters toxic heavy metals contained in these layers and become mixed with loosened soil and tailings. Through mining, these metals become concentrated in surface soil and brought downslope by heavy rains and typhoons in tropical environments. In island ecosystem with steep slopes, these toxics reach the sea and kill marine organisms in marine habitats such as the coral reefs, seaweed and seagrass beds that provide nursery grounds and food for various fishery resources.

Metals provide the rocks and soil strength so that trees, through their roots could get a strong foothold on the ground. Thus, when metals are intact, the trees do not easily topple down in places regularly visited by typhoons. Trees replenish groundwater through the watershed effect. They provide an effective shield to smaller trees and plants that need only small amount of sunlight. In this way, moisture is conserved, temperature is controlled to an ideal condition creating comfortable habitats of biodiverse animals and plants. This is how biodiversity could be sustained.

Biodiversity cannot be sustained when trees carry toxic heavy metals that kill living organisms because such poison can transfers through the food chain when living organisms eat and are eaten. It is really naïve of miners to think that by just planting trees that could absorb and survive in highly toxic and artificially metal-enriched soil, the solution to pollution resulting from mining activities, is solved.

In Southern Palawan where mining companies are either conducting mining or have current mining applications that are being processed by the government, it is absurd that a miner Mr. Brimo could say “The mining we do is no different from the mining done in other parts of the word. But it’s very much attacked in the Philippines. I wonder why,”

With this comment, it seems that a mining company simply goes to any country and do mining when the amounts of the desired metals are economically profitable. It also seems that such miner does not look at situations of an area where minerals are. Thus, mining is done …

a) even if the area has lust forest that replenishes groundwater enabling agricultural crops to grow and provide for the needs of local communities
b) even if the trees are uprooted during open pit mining which consequently changes the local climate by increasing air temperature, causing drought because groundwater could not anymore be replenished as a result of the denudation, further killing other living organisms,
c) even if the area has steep slopes that facilitate the rapid downward flow of excavated soil and crushed rocks which result from mining activities, that affect cropland, rivers/creeks downslopes, further “depriving” the local communities of harvest/products from their farms, causing poverty, sickness and probably even death
d) even if toxic metal pollutants released by mining activities are brought down to the sea during heavy rainfall and contaminate and kill the marine habitats that provide fishery resources for the domestic needs and livelihood of local communities.

The wonder of the “wonder” of the miner is that he (and perhaps others) did not know that the mining act of 1995 states in general that “all areas in the Philippines are open to mining unless declared close?”. This is the very cause of sufferings of the people in the Philippines because the government had to enforce the mining act of 1995 which has proven to destroy many forest, croplands, coral reefs and marine habitats in a country composed of island ecosystems. In a country where the forest, rivers/creeks and marine habitats cannot survive mining (even if miners promised the best technology) because the country is not only composed of island ecosystems with steep slope, but it also has tropical climate, battered by typhoons (an average of 20 typhoons every year), and some areas naturally produced acids through the phenomenon of “Acid Mine Drainage”. Where acid is not produced naturally, mining activities necessitate the addition of acid such as sulfuric acid and/or cyanide to extract the metals such as what the current mining in Southern Palawan is doing. These metals/minerals normally found in these areas that are associated with laterite soil are highly toxic to living organisms such as nickel (Ni), Aluminum (Al), cobalt (Co), chromium (Cr), manganese (Mn), copper (Cu), cadmium (Cd), and Zinc (Zn). Mining activities caused the downward movement of silt and tailings laced with toxic metals onto the croplands, into rivers/creeks and marine ecosystems through run-off, erosion, and landslides.

Laterite is a residual ore deposit resulting from the weathering of rocks and soil. Its parent rock is aluminum- and iron-rich igneous rock. Aside from this, nickel and cobalt deposits are also found in laterite soil developed from ferromagnesian-rich igneous rocks (Keller, 2000). Other metals such as iron, aluminum and chromium can also be found in association with nickel in laterite soil (Trolard et al., 2000). In some places such as New Caledonia (Southeast Asia), nickeliferous goethite when heated, shows other metals associated with iron during subsequent dissolution. These are: Ni, Cr, Al, Co, and Mn (Landers and Gilkes, 2007). The impacts of some of these metals to plants and animals including humans based on several studies are as follows:

Nickel, above the natural tolerable level in soil caused reduction in yield of shoots of rye grass (Khalid and Tinsley, 1980). The species of Rice belongs to the family of grasses which is supposed to composed of sturdy plants. Nickel also reduced the growth of corn (Huillier et al. 1996) and higher concentration of Nickel in the germinating seeds of cabbage, lettuce, millet, radish, turnips and wheat cause reductions in root elongation (Carlson et al. 1991). Similarly, elevated levels of nickel in higher forms of flowering plants such as rice for instance, blocks cell division in the pericycle of roots, resulting in the inhibition of root branching (Seregin and Kozhevnikova 2005). Likewise, the toxic effects of Cr on plant growth and development are in the germination and growth of roots, stems and leaves, hence, its yield. In addition, Cr causes harmful effects on photosynthesis, water relations and mineral nutrition by direct effects on enzymes and anti-oxidants (Shanker et al. 2005). Hence, the abovementioned effects would definitely impact on plant growth and productivity.

The study of Hamoutene et al. (2000) observed that even iron ore leachate is also potentially toxic to fish such as salmon. In another study, manganese toxicity in plants include those observed for rice plant such as chlorosis (whitening) of young leaves, stunted plant, drying of leaf tips, reduced grain yield among other effects (Dobermann and Fairhurst 2000). Iron also reduced root elongation (Ward et al. 2008). In animals, chromium is a carcinogen and can alter their genes and high levels of Cr in aquatic ecosystem can damage the gills of fishes (LENNTECH http://www.lenntech.com/ periodic/elements/cr.htm). In humans, nickel is also a carcinogen (EPA, http://www.epa.gov/RSSuper/ecology/html/ toxprofiles.htm)

A worse scenario is the synergistic effects of naturally occurring combined metals (arsenic, chromium, manganese and nickel for example) have been demonstrated by the studies of Mumthas et al. (2010) on Vigna radiata wherein the impacts are on growth, total chlorophyll content (causes inability to produce food), and sugar and protein content (make the plant weak due to lack of energy and component of body structure) which can result to the death of the plant.

Experiments on combined metals by Wiliam and Wilkins (1982) on Bush Bean showed the following yield depression in dry weight of its trifoliate leaves:

a) Singly = 0% for cd, 2% for Cu, 43% for Zn, 32% for Mn, 0% for Co, and 4% for Ni.
b) Combined Cd, Cu, and Zn = yield depression was 46%
c) Combined Mn, Co, and Ni = 23%
d) Combined b and c elements = 85%

The above findings concluded that synergistic effects with even trace elements in combined metals situation resulted to higher loss in yield of the Bush Bean crop.

A similar case as above in tomato is also shown in an experiment by Hale et al. (1985). Heavy metals Cd, Cu, Zn, Mn, Co and Ni, when found together, also caused decreased in plant growth. Among the metals involved, this study observed that the most damaging was nickel.

With the situation of destruction resulting from mining activities, this is an appeal to our Philippine government to see and realize that mining our fragile island ecosystems is an injustice to the local communities of the Philippines. Metals can be recycled and countries of the world have been doing that. There are also alternatives to generating revenues for the government and the people without destroying the natural resources and these are specifically ecotourism, sustainable agriculture and sustainable fishery resources. These three commendable livelihoods give more revenues than mining activities under the mining act of 1995. These sustainable livelihoods are all anchored on the conservation of biodiversity, hence ensuring the sustainability of the islands for the present and future generations.

By:

Dr. Emelina G. Regis
Director
Institute for Environmental Conservation and Research (INECAR)
Ateneo de Naga University, Naga City 4400
July 12, 2011

References:

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Dobermann A and Fairhurst T. 2000. Rice. Nutrient disorders & nutrient management. Handbook Series. Potash & Phosphate Institute (PPI), Potash & Phosphate Institute of Canada (PPIC) and International Rice Research Institute. 191 p.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the United States. Ecological Toxicity Information. Retrieved from http://www.epa.gov/RSSuper/ecology/html/toxprofiles.htm on April 12, 2011.

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