Sango: Can we talk a bit about how mining companies approach communities and how that negotiation process works?

Peter: In theory, the process with communities might work. However, under the new drive for economic development in the country where mining is seen as the major engine, it is difficult.

Sango: Who do the companies deal with in communities? Are there particular leaders who are targeted?

Peter: Yes there are. Remember mining areas are often far away and can often be in indigenous peoples' domains. There are elected barangay officials, there are also business people of influence and there may be datus or tribal leaders. People may be of different political persuasions and act out of opposition to the other. So to some degree, a very loose, traditional - if we're talking about indigenous peoples - system can be overrun by the political system. This undermining and manipulation is unacceptable but difficult to challenge.

Sango: What level of consent does a company need from a community before they can go in?

Peter: Free, prior and informed consent or FPIC must be obtained in ancestral domain areas. The National Commission on Indigenous Peoples specifies how exactly this is to be done. But it's the integrity by which we carry it out that is not followed. I can say this openly given recent proceedings with communities in Bukidnon for example. And for areas with no ancestral domains, the barangay council is asked to pass a resolution to support or not to support the proposed activity.

Sango: This is required by law?

Peter: Yes, FPIC is required under the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act of 1997 and even the Mining Act of 1995. But it's how we go about it that's presenting the problems. On the other hand, I also recognise that mining companies, if they are genuine, are faced with huge politicisation. This is mainly coming from NGOs that oppose such government-backed interests for their lack of sincerity, and whose motives they do not trust. This results in a politicisation of people without really learning the processes of establishing good participation and genuine agreement or disagreement. But basically mining interests break down the accountabilities within that local community without clearly working out a way forward.

Sango: Can there be division between people who are in favour of mining and others?

Peter: Look at human nature. What we are trying to establish here is a process with a degree of integrity by which a society can be informed. But mining as a whole, as it is currently of such a massive scale of exploration and global determination, denies that. This is so because we're asking people in communities who have never associated to the same extent to come together in relation to a mining dynamic, the impact of which they have no real understanding.

Government is there as an informal guarantor anyway. We have government officials - the Mines and Geosciences Bureau or MGB - who should be there at a technical level telling what the problems are and explaining the impacts to people. But they are now moving in so pro-mining at times and manipulative of the situation that they fall over themselves and are not following government procedure. At best we could say they are misguided. Unfortunately, we increasingly hear the word "corruption" at local and national levels of government. And so people lose trust.

So it's very hard to make decisions about people without their participation, when they haven't participated to any extent in the system. And we are going to solve all of this in a couple of weeks consultation? It's not possible! So, if development means that we have to move at the rate of industry, in order to develop and make decisions in society, then we're going to have a lot of fall-out. Fall-out in terms of people, loss of ecosystems, loss of environmental integrity, social fabric. And at the end of it, who is any better off? Who lives any better?

Sango: Do people gain employment and other benefits from mining?

Peter: Again, we have to break all of this up. We can ask any question about mining and there are black and white answers on paper, but there are so many ways to read a text that many communities do not end up with the level and number of locally employed that is expected. We do not find black and white reality. It's always a range. Of course there are degrees of employment. But what does that employment lead to? What security do they have as a result of it?

And again, there are all of the promises of when the mine folds up, this is what the company will now do, they'll put money aside etc. But that just hasn't happened so far! The past may be different from the future but the new spate of exploration gives little confidence as the companies are often new entities that can easily fold up and pass on rights to others, but leave the community without accountability or continuity.

Even in the present activities by Lafayette under the new mining law, transparency is not being done properly. The recent fish kill reports by communities and organizations not sympathetic to the mines - these accusations cannot be dismissed. So under the present climate of operations in the Philippines, how are people going to have the security that what is done is going to put things in place for the next 25 years? There's nobody around, even the Mines and Geosciences Bureau - who should really be working with local people - that can assure them that of a system that's actually going to make that happen.

Because we see how companies divest off each other. And we don't understand these things and can't do anything. There's no integrity in looking at the long term. Society isn't always conscious of the impact of a global industry on its political and social institutions as well as its environmental systems. We've lost a great deal of integrity both in the mining industry and in civil and local society. We may not be aware of it on a day-to-day basis, but mining in a sense is destroying Philippine social integrity. We are fighting each other, and the greed to get a share of the pie seems to be without control given all of the recent corruption scandals.

Sango: if you were in a position where you could ask the people who represent mining companies when they go for these initial dealings - if you had the ability to ask them to do 3 things, what would they be?

Peter: Well, there's a basic policy we're asking them to go through and they should go through with that policy. In recent cases I know, they are asked to follow that policy as they seek permission to undertake exploration activities. FPIC is reported as not working in several areas. Second, the culture may be very open and welcoming, but please don't abuse it and don't give salary-like benefits to barangay officials and datus. Though they may need it in their jobs, they lose credibility amongst their own and it starts the cover-up on future problems that may arise. Third, companies must be open and declare a problem when there is a problem. It will take both DENR and Lafayette a long time to recover for the initial wash-out of cyanide in Rapu-Rapu.

Sango: The recommendation is: the policies are there, just follow them?

Peter: If companies would follow present policies with an adequate degree of sincerity that would be a tremendous start. There are some loopholes in the law and they need to be reviewed with due process from government.

But what I'm saying is that the policy alone will not work. We actually have to understand people and work with their integrity. What is government most of all after? Is government willing to sacrifice the integrity of a community and split it up just because it cannot understand mining and cannot culturally any longer exist in the face of mining? Overseas workers are doing a lot for the government and for the name of the country abroad. At the least, the government needs to look after the people at home and not just dismiss them as unimportant or as obstacles to national development. For some communities way up the mountains, this is the first time they see government other than the military. If their first experience is the kind of fast dealings we have seen recently, what sort of citizen development are we looking at? Is this what we are to understand of society and the greed, while communities face their most basic survival needs?

Some communities don't have the means to hold themselves together as a people, and we're going to lose that social integrity in the face of mining. That's what's happening in some areas. But because we can't put a price on it, we've moved in with the mining before we can understand what we've lost, because the pressure becomes too much for these people to bear. Now how do we help a community deal with mining if we so divide them from their integrity and relationship with the land? They have half the land they need to live, or if they don't have any, they just work in the mine. How do those people go home and continue to live as a community? It's something that can happen in 5 years total!

The company may give them a school building here, or give them a nursing post there, but is that what makes a community? No! It's the relations and how those relations can continue to exist and to build capacity. It's not easily solvable, but if a company says it wants a decision now and it's the only way to do it, and the company gives the community money, we give them one side of the equation. The reason why mining does not work in many areas is because we don't have patience, because we won't work with people. We won't acknowledge their integrity; we won't go through a process that gives them enough time to express themselves, to see where they want to be and where they want to go. It is always for the nation's immediate development.

But what has government done for people in recent years? It's heavily dependent and living off the hard work of Filipinos who have gone abroad and are sending their savings home. Now, in addition to the overseas workers, we're going to mine the poverty of the poor and disenfranchise them. This doesn't have to be the case. I don't believe and I don't think it's happening in every area, but many are increasingly untrusting of the other as a result of it.

Sango: So where do you see things going in the next few years, because you were talking about reinitiating a national dialogue...

Peter: Well, the question was whether we could reinitiate levels of dialogue. I think it's very difficult to do that until we regain a level of integrity and get some things answered. Free, prior and informed consent seems increasingly not to work for communities. National government does not have integrity through its line agencies.

Sango: Is there anything else you want to add on what is needed to take this dialogue forward?

Peter: Well, my answer on the dialogue is the old adage that is in use in Australia, "there is nothing in the middle of the road except a dead armadillo". And that's pretty much where we are at the moment unless there is seriousness on different sides to build together. However, the potential "prize" is too great to leave the minerals in the ground and those supporting mining are seeking to muster the power to go full blast leaving little room for broader negotiation.

Sango: It's that seriousness isn't it, because there are so many statements of policy -

Peter: Look at the fellow who got shot - near Guiting-guiting. He was a barangay official. A security guard of the company shot him. The question is why did they have guns at that time? If the only way foreign companies are going to - in broad daylight - defend claims in the Philippines is by the point of a gun then we've missed the point of what is human development. Then the company says it is not their responsibility, as they had subcontracted the security services. I then begin to think if there is a disaster, what aspect of the disaster is subcontracted and how do they get out of that?

This might be government's kind of development, but this is not the kind of development a community can accept anywhere in the Philippines. It divides a community against itself. Now fair enough, we need security, but if one government official cannot walk up and protest, then we've seriously got to ask ourselves where are we going? And if we're so hot-tempered and driven to push these things through before opposition is heard, then these things are going to go wrong. The answer is not to have more guns and not to have more protest, but to have more clarity and accountability before powerful decisions are implemented, as part of the integrity as a society.

Sango: Do you think civil society is playing a useful role in enabling communities to have more of a voice in negotiations?

Peter: Civil society is like an amoeba. It pushes a foot out in this direction, it pushes another foot out there. Who and what is civil society? There are institutions within civil society that are consistent and accountable and trying to move this engagement with mining forward in a way that responds to genuine and desperately needed economic growth. But civil society cannot be government. People have to go and do a day's work at some point and government too. It is asking too much of civil society, of NGOs, of church, to keep us on the straight and narrow. In honesty, a lot of the bishops were pulled into the mining disasters of the past and the new interests in the Philippines since the Marcos era. But they are the first to say "this is not what our job is, this is not what we want to be doing". They're often caught saying unbalanced things, but they actually want to get on with what they are supposed to do! They are however caught as they are concerned about the social welfare of people and to see critical improvement in government practices.

But there's little integrity coming out of government and there's nobody answering the questions in a way that holds. Civil society is not an excuse for allowing government to do whatever it wants until it's corrected.

Sango: You seem to be basically saying that government needs to do its job and actually take into account what people's needs are. And companies: their job is to follow the policies and to have real consultation and allows space and time.

Peter: Yes, and companies and government must accept that in some areas, we are not going to do mining. This is clear in much of the Central Cordillera of Luzon, but that is clear for historical and political reasons that the cultures can forcefully make a stand. So at what point will government accept that it does not do mining in some areas? In some cases there are people, or biodiversity, or geological factors that mean there should be no mining. Government does not seem to be accepting that, and wants to open up the entire country without clearly showing the limits. The limits seem to be where people are strong enough to stand up and stop, so the style of engagement by government provokes resistance and there is increasing lack of trust.

Sango: So is that the importance of the national process, as well as specific site level activities?

Peter: Yes. The problem is there is no trust, so they throw whatever truth or untruth they have at each other... And now we have other investors from the region who come from a very different context and do not have scruples about extracting minerals at lowest financial cost. There isn't this sense of responsibility, corporate or otherwise, that they connect with in the Philippines.

They want the resource, they go through the basic requirements, and they go and get it. But we have population densities that just cannot cope with the dislocations. Look at all the disasters we have had in the country already through floods and landslides, with maybe 1,000 or so people dying in each major event. Mining disasters are generally of a very different nature, causing massive loss of livelihood and sustainable landscapes, though thankfully not such loss of life. But all of the relocation of people and livelihoods puts increased pressures on the landscape with increased labour and needs from outside.

If we acknowledge these factors, then we can have a process whereby we move forward. We can say "we will have these mines". But to destabilise and threaten everyone with this open policy, so everyone in the uplands feels vulnerable - there's no security in the process and there's no transparency and accountability. Where do we now go?

Until integrity returns to government, people don't have secure livelihoods. They don't have a secure resource base. They lack access. So we've got 13 million indigenous peoples or 25 million people living in the uplands... whatever figures you want to quote. And this is insecurity by definition, with the land rights controlled by one government department that has both the responsibility of resource extraction and environmental protection. We want society to progress but keep this number of people at risk for the sake of national development? Whose development is this?

It's not helpful. We have to give these people basic rights beyond ancestral domains and literally not take the ground from under them. We give them rights to ancestral domains on paper, but who do we want to give them to in reality to mine? What areas of an actual ancestral domain, certified or not, will be incorporated or affected by future mining operations once clearance is given? Do the communities have any way of generating a livelihood out of the land left? Are these people able to get on with their life and culture above the poverty line? Today we can only say basically no. So again it's a question of integrity. So many are out for profit, not people, at the moment.