Mike Defensor: 97 percent of forests gone on Mining projects

Environmentalist Lory Tan, in a recent paper, said that close to a century ago, the country had 22 million hectares of old-growth forest. By 2000, only 600,000 hectares were left. Fully 97 percent of forests have vanished.

However, government disagrees, declaring that the country still has 7 million hectares of forest cover.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defines forest cover when 10 percent of an area is covered with trees. Ten percent of 7 million hectares is close to Tan's estimate.

"Mining and other extractive industries threaten farm life, coastal and marine resources, access to water, and spawn epidemics and pollution of all types," Cenpeg said. "Foreign mining firms have, since the 1970s, plundered as much as $30 billion worth of mineral resources from the Philippines. Moreover, some $2 billion is lost to environmental degradation every year."

The country has mineral reserves worth $840 billion and government hopes to attract $10 billion in investments, mainly Chinese and Australian, to get the wealth from the bowels of the earth but never to process the ore into finished products.

So strong is the government's interest in opening up the country to mining investments that no less than defeated administration senatorial candidate and former secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Mike Defensor has partnered with a Chinese corporation to intensify the extraction of mineral ore in Zambales, currently the locus of the battle between Zambales Chromite and a number of small miners allegedly poaching on its concession, which is covered by a Mineral Production Sharing Agreement (MPSA).

Defensor's colleague in the local company is Rene Puno, as brother of Secretary Ronaldo Puno of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG).