Pitfalls and Pipelines - Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links

118 Pitfalls and Pipelines: Indigenous Peoples and Extractive Industries
includes all conservation units, IUCN’s Categories I through IV and to
a certain extent Categories V and VI, such as national parks, state or
provincial parks, UN Biosphere Reserves, UN World Heritage Sites,
areas scheduled for inclusion in the national system of conservation units,
protected forests, UN Ramsar Convention wetland sites, as well as their
buffer zones. Most mangroves and old-growth tropical forests should be
included.
5. Cultural Property
Areas of indigenous peoples’ religious sites, sacred groves, battlefields,
archeological sites, petroglyphs, geoglyphs or rich fossil sites are no
go zones for mining. There may be exceptions, for example, when a
compensatory offset reserve is purchased by the mining proponent, which
is unambiguously bigger in size and richer in contents than the area
sought for the mine
An Assertion to Land and Life: The Binongan Struggle against
Canadian Mining Giant Olympus, Philippines
By Abigail Anongos, Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA)
Introduction
This case study involves the Binongan indigenous peoples in Baay-Licuan
in Abra province in the Cordillera region of the Philippines. It analyzes their
collective and successful resistance to the persistent efforts of Canadian
mining company, Olympus Pacific Minerals, to mine their ancestral
lands at Mount Capcapo. They succeeded through organizing around
indigenous traditions of consensus building, decision making and struggle.
This case also highlights the Binongan indigenous peoples’ assertion
of their collective right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), in the
face of intensifying militarization and the tactics of the company to break
their will. This is case also illustrates the militarization of indigenous
communities to protect large mining interests.
Background
In the Philippines, since the 1997 Indigenous Peoples Rights Act,
indigenous communities have the recognized right to FPIC in a legally