Anthem Press Mining and Natural Hazard Vulnerability in the Philippines: Digging to Development or Digging to Disaster? (Anthem Environmental Studies)

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Mining and Natural Hazard Vulnerability in the PhilippinesDigging to Development or Digging to Disaster?By William N. Holden, R. Daniel JacobsonWimbledon Publishing CompanyCopyright © 2013 William N. Holden and R. Daniel JacobsonAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-0-85728-776-2ContentsAcknowledgments, xi, List of Tables and Figures, xiii, List of Acronym, xvii, Introduction, 1, Chapter One: Mining in the Philippines, 7, Chapter Two: Government Efforts to Encourage Mining, 35, Chapter Three: Environmental Effects of Mining, 59, Chapter Four: Mining amid Natural Hazards, 77, Chapter Five: Technocratic Responses to the Risks, 121, Chapter Six: Risk Society in the Philippines, 163, Chapter Seven: Mining as a Flawed Development Paradigm, 185, Chapter Eight: Is Another World Possible?, 225, Conclusion, 245, Bibliography, 251, Index, 277, CHAPTER 1MINING IN THE PHILIPPINESThe Philippines: A Developing Country in Southeast AsiaAn introduction to the archipelagoThe Republic of the Philippines is an archipelago of approximately 7,100 islands in Southeast Asia (Figure 1.1) located on the western side of the Pacific Ocean between latitude 20 degrees north and latitude 6 degrees south. The archipelago lies east of Vietnam, south of Taiwan and northeast of Borneo and consists of four distinct regions: the northern island of Luzon, the southern island of Mindanao, the long finger-like western island of Palawan and the central Visayan Islands. It has a land area of 300,000 square kilometers with approximately 65 percent of this being taken up by Luzon and Mindanao while only 500 of the 7,100 islands exceed one square kilometer in area (IBON 2002c). Located on the "Pacific Ring of Fire" – a belt of volcanoes running along the Pacific coasts of the Americas and Asia – the islands of the Philippines are mountainous and are frequently described as a series of "half drowned mountains" (IBON 2002c, 8). The majority of the land area of the archipelago consists of land over 350 meters above sea level with flat land remaining concentrated in river valleys or in small discontinuous strips of coastal plains backed by steep mountains (Newson 1999). Indeed, the topography of the Philippines could be described as an outcrop of mountains emerging from the sea with a small fertile coastal strip and a series of narrow interior valleys (Bankoff 2003a).In 2011, the Philippine population stood at approximately 100 million people (United States Census Bureau 2011). As of 2007, approximately 50 percent of the population was living on the island of Luzon, 25 percent of the population was living on the island of Mindanao, and 19 percent was living throughout the Visayan Islands (National Statistical Coordination Board 2011). Like many countries in Southeast Asia, the Philippines has a large and rapidly growing capital city to which migrants from countryside move, and Manila houses almost 11 percent of the national population (National Statistical Coordination Board 2011). With a 2010 population growth rate of 1.9 percent per year, the population of the archipelago can be expected to double by the year 2047 (United States Census Bureau 2011).A developing countryA member of the so-called "developing world," the Philippines is classified as a "lower-middle-income country" by the World Bank (World Bank 2009). In 2009, its gross national income (GNI) per capita was USD 1,620, a number below average relative to other East Asian countries (USD 2,182) and other lower-middle-income countries (USD 1,905) (World Bank 2009). The Philippines, like many other developing countries, faces challenges such as low life expectancy, low levels of education and low levels of personal income. In this regard, the Human Development Index (HDI), a composite index taking into account life expectancy, education, and income can be a useful descriptive statistic. The HDI can range from a high of one down to a low of zero and, in 2010, the h