Tag Archives: Gina Lopez

komentaryo

Zambales mines: A history of questionable practices

Between the pro-mining students protesting at the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) officials, and the insistence that we talk only about the jobs to be lost and the stock market crash, it is clear that we are being distracted from the more important questions about whether or not the mining projects the DENR has ordered closed have in fact been bad for the environment and our communities.

For some of these mines, there is already enough proof and data, enough studies through the years, enough protests, that prove how these have adversely affected the environment and the communities that are in close proximity to the mines.

Case in point: Zambales. (more…)

komentaryo

DENR’s daring, mining’s crisis

I was one of many who thought Gina Lopez was one of President Duterte’s more daring choices as far as picking members of his cabinet was concerned. A staunch environmentalist, she was a welcome decision for Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Secretary, after decades of seeing our natural resources go to waste in the hands of big business, oligarchs, capitalists all in the name of investments and “development” as every government before this one has claimed.

I thought: finally, someone who could shake the system up a bit – if not completely turn it upside down – if only so we can have a different, more honest conversation about the state of our environment. Finally, I thought, someone who would have the interest of communities, including the Lumad, as foremost on her agenda.

And while I am not blind to the limits of Secretary Lopez’s push for eco-tourism, as I saw the people she started bringing into the DENR, I thought: certainly, there will be more to her plans for the environment than eco-tourism. Between Ipat Luna and Philip Camara, she was off to a good start. (more…)