Group: Nickel mining increases Caraga’s risk to severe storms
DAVAO CITY—A report released by Climate Rights International (CRI) on Tuesday warned that communities affected by nickel mining in Caraga region will be most vulnerable to severe weather condition, including storms like Typhoon “Tino” (international name: Kalmaegi), which are becoming more frequent and more intense because of climate change.
CRI released its report on the impact of nickel mining in communities in the Caraga region—host to 23 nickel mines, the largest number in the country known as the world’s second-largest producer of nickel—just as Tino was wreaking havoc across the Visayas and parts of Mindanao.
Nickel, a transition mineral used to fuel electric vehicles (EVs), has been touted as one of the solutions to lessen the world’s dependence on fossil fuel, but mining it ironically caused untold sufferings among communities where they are mined, according to the CRI’s 106-page report “Broken Promises: Philippines’ Nickel Mining Causes Rights Abuses and Increases Climate Vulnerability.”
It said that nickel mining increased the vulnerability of poor, low-income communities to severe weather conditions like the recent typhoon as it destroys forests and reduces the environment’s resilience to extreme weather.
CRI interviewed 57 residents and workers who live near nickel mines in the provinces of Dinagat Islands and Surigao del Sur in the Caraga region of Mindanao, the heart of the country’s mining industry.
Vulnerable
Community members report increased vulnerability to the climate crisis linked to mining; the destruction of fishing and farming livelihoods; severe environmental pollution that threatens drinking water and health; increased rates of food insecurity; new difficulties accessing education; a lack of accountability for harms; and attacks, killings, criminalization and intimidation of those who speak out, including environmental and human rights defenders, said Krista Shennum, CRI researcher who wrote the report.
It said nickel mining drives deforestation and loss of species that provide climate resilience, increasing the community’s vulnerability to extreme weather.
When terrestrial forests and mangrove forests are gone, carbon stored in both plant matter and soil may be released into the atmosphere, turning a carbon sink into a source of emissions.
In the report, residents of Tubajon in Dinagat Islands described how the loss of forests and mangroves due to mining operations and mining-related pollution exposed their communities to storm surges, high winds and flooding during extreme weather events like the devastating Supertyphoon Odette (Rai) in 2021.
Jaybee Garganera, national coordinator of the group Alyansa Tigil Mina, said the stories in the report captured the daily struggles and sufferings of people in mining communities.
“This is very important (because) while some companies and maybe the country benefit from nickel mining, the suffering it has created confirms that the destructive and long-term impacts of mining create more disadvantages for the Filipinos,” Garganera said during the launching of the report on Tuesday.
Who benefits
He said the report validated common knowledge among environmental activists that 90 percent of nickel goes to China. “That completes the story, we are not benefiting from extraction of nickel but many of our communities are suffering the consequences,” Garganera said.
CRI said the sale of EVs in the Philippines had skyrocketed; from just 1,000 units sold in 2022, to more than 20,000 units in the first nine months of this year.
But in the Caraga region, nickel needed for EV batteries is often mined with little regard for the environment, polluting land and water and devastating forests and violating people’s human rights. It destroyed the lives and livelihood of local communities, according to the report.
Although the global energy transition away from fossil fuels is critical to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of the climate crisis, communities where nickel are mined in the country and who “(bore) no responsibility for the climate crisis” are being asked to pay a high price for climate solutions
It said the rights of these communities must be respected for the energy transition to be “truly just.” INQ
“Low-income, rural front-line communities are being asked to pay a high price for climate solutions, like electric vehicles, that will largely benefit high-consuming economies, including those in the Global North,” the report said as it challenged the Philippine government to implement existing laws, make nickel mining companies accountable and put the health and welfare of local communities at the center of the agenda.
Challenge the narrative
Garganera also said it is high time to challenge the dominant narrative that the world needed to extract more minerals to attain the clean energy transition. “That’s only half of the story. The other half of the story is that we need to start discussing what are the adjustments that the first world countries and the northern countries have to seriously consider for the growth of the circular economy,” he said. “Of course, we want alternative energy sources but certainly creating more vehicles that are electric without addressing transport mobility for the masses is not the right direction,” Garganera added.
“We cannot be extracting more nickel for electric batteries so that millions more in the north and first world countries can continue the nice way of having their own individual cars,” he said.
