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Imperative 36: 15th vision: mega co-ops' joint venture clean mines

    Most Philippine mines for extracting iron, nickel, copper, gold, silver and other ores are popularly known to operate with scandalous disregard for the environment.  Their poisonous wastes and tailings get washed off into rivers and sea coasts, killing all life that come into contact with the poisons, including marine creatures within square kilometers of seas.  The mines' land-surface scouring methods carve out thousands of hectares of forested mountains and plains which are never reforested after depletion of their mineral ores.  The mines' local and foreign owners are so powerful and bribe-savvy, many say, that no laws can be passed and implemented that are able to curb the ecology-killing processes.  Mining companies (almost all capitalized by foreigners) have ensured that their representatives, some of them heads of mining clans, are permanently ensconced in Congress to make sure all bills and bureaucratic appointments that endanger mining interests do not pass.  Conflicts between mining site tribes allied with environmentalist groups against mining companies have even resulted to killings and court cases that seldom get resolved.
    How may our mega co-op Movement address the issue?  The only way is for the skilled masses to become government thru People's Initiative law, whereby 12% of voters may revise the constitution and/or any Philippine law.  First revision should be formation of a 600,000-strong Internet Congress of the country's top retired corporate and sectoral skills thru localized elections. The number represents 1% of voting population.  As committees of hundreds or thousands or as 'committee of the whole', I-Congress should be tasked with, among others, revising the country's mining laws.  The entire I-Congress membership should vote on revisions, and since they are 600,000-strong, they will become unaffordable for foreign bribe-savvy mining entrepreneurs.  Freed of monetary temptation, I-Congress may then consider planetary interest,  environmental good and democratic wealth-sharing in crafting new mining laws.
    After the new laws have been passed, I-Congress has to authorize the Treasury to sell billions of dollars in sovereign bonds in international markets, buy off the mines' irresponsible  controlling shareholders at market rate, and sell majority shares to mega co-ops, 1st World and local CSR companies, State corporations and agencies, and local employee masses.  Responsible mines may be spared from State takeover action.  As new owners, the CSR shareholders may then rehabilitate and reforest the devastated mines' lands, especially their thousands of hectares of open pits.  The new mines should then adopt clean, 1st world style environment-oriented mining technologies for the planet's benefit.  State research and development budgets should partly finance researches on how to neutralize toxic mining wastes and avoid further toxicity in the mines' production processes.
    What are the climate change benefits?  Reforestation of old abandoned mines as well as re-greening of operational mines with large devastated open pits (all at mining company cost) should create thousands of hectares of new CO2-absorbing forests.  Added to mega co-ops' millions of hectares of agro-forests, all the greenery will enable the Philippines to sequester millions of tons of CO2 each year.  No more additions to mine wastes (mainly pulverized ores with cyanide) already dumped into the sea should in due time revive affected phytoplankton populations that convert CO2 into oxygen.   
    Over long decades, scores of Philippine mines have been dumping cyanide and other poisonous chemicals into the ocean, and they are expected to continue the routine until all Philippine mineral ores have been extracted.  Unless we shift to saving action mode, we may expect large and further enlarging swaths of Philippine seas to be devoid of phytoplankton, for ocean waves and currents disperse cyanide over large areas of marine waters.  
    For centuries the Philippine rule-making elite have always won political fights for their personal benefit.  Responsible masses and their international allies should now take action for human and planetary benefit!
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