MICC to pursue review despite Lopez rejection

By Luis Leoncio 

Despite the rejection of Regina Lopez as head of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) by the powerful Commission on Appointments (CA) last week, the government will still pursue the multistakeholders review by the Mining Industry Coordinating Council (MICC) of all mining operations in the country. 

The Department of Finance (DOF) said it is respecting the decision of the bicameral CA on the appointment of Lopez, but it will not affect the upcoming MICC review.

“The Commission on Appointments is acting within its constitutional mandate, and so we respect the judgment,” said Undersecretary Bayani Agabin, who heads the DOF Legal Affairs and the Revenue Integrity Protection Service (RIPS) and represents Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III in the MICC.

As the respective heads of the DOF and DENR, Dominguez and Lopez co-chair the MICC, which was created in 2012 by then-President Benigno Aquino III under Executive Order No. 79 as the interagency body mandated to institute reforms in the Philippine mining sector and craft policies and guidelines to ensure environmental protection and responsible mining in the utilization of mineral resources.

Agabin was reacting to the CA’s decision in its May 4 executive session to reject Lopez’s appointment as DENR chief.

Regarding the multistakeholders review that the MICC decided in February to conduct in Resolution No. 6 that was signed by both Dominguez and Lopez, Agabin said: “Definitely it will continue, because it’s the mandate of the MICC to do just that, regardless of who’s in the DENR.”

“The MICC will continue with its mandate to review the existing mining operations,” Agabin said.

“In fact a meeting of the subcommittee to vet the members of the technical review team will push through tomorrow (Thursday),” he added.

“However, the meeting of the MICC itself, which was originally scheduled today (Thursday), was reset,” Agabin said.

As agreed upon in its February 20 meeting, the MICC is hiring independent experts to reassess the operations of not just of the 28 mines shuttered or suspended earlier by the DENR, but of all 311 mining contracts in the country, in keeping with the directive of President Duterte himself to come up with such a comprehensive review during a Cabinet meeting in February.

Acting on that order for a reassessment of the 2016 audit done by the DENR that led to the closure or suspension of the 28 mines, “the Council subsequently held two meeting that resulted in (1) the unanimous adoption of MICC Resolution No. 6 providing for a multistakeholder review of all mining operations, and (2) an agreement to seek a P50-million allocation from the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to fund this activity over a three-month period,” said DOF Assistant Secretary and spokesman Paola Alvarez in an earlier statement.

“In fact, Secretary Lopez was present at the first MICC meeting held on February 9, in which she signed with her council co-chairperson, Secretary Dominguez, this MICC resolution that her personal lawyer, Christian Monsod, had helped draft in that same gathering,” she said.

Alvarez said the MICC-approved review of all mining operations was ordered by President Duterte no less during the Cabinet meeting on February 7, and that Lopez herself formally approved such an MICC review by signing MICC Resolution No. 6 during the council’s meeting on February 9.

She noted that the then-Environment secretary herself ikewise green-lighted the MICC request to the DBM for a P50-million funding support for the planned MICC review during the follow-up MICC meeting on February 20, as “the council would need to hire a sufficient number of private experts from different fields to review the technical, legal, social, environmental and economic aspects of all 311 mining contracts in the country.”

Alvarez recalled that the MICC is mandated under EO 79 to review all mining-related rules and regulations, issuances and agreements, and was ordered convened by the President in the February 7 Cabinet meeting to discuss and reassess the DENR’s audit last year.

In the February 7 Cabinet meeting, President Duterte directed the DOF and DENR to convene the MICC on February 9 and to invite the Solicitor General, Chief Presidential Legal Counsel and the Justice Secretary to the meeting, so that they could comprehensively discuss the results of the DENR audit and Lopez’s recommendation to close down 23 mines and suspend the operations of five others.

She said that Environment Undersecretary for Legal Affairs Maria Paz Luna, who had attended the subsequent MICC and its Technical Working Group (TWG) meetings on Lopez’s behalf, even volunteered to make available for MICC review the DENR audit report last year that served as basis for the 28 closure and suspension orders.

Also earlier, Agabin said that in response to President Duterte’s directive during the February 7 Cabinet meeting, “the MICC determined that there was a need to conduct a comprehensive review of the mining operations, given the technical nature of the DENR audit and the number of mines involved in the closure and suspension orders.”

He said the framework, process, and methodology of undertaking the review was approved by the MICC’s TWG in a February 20 meeting, in which “Secretary Lopez’s representative, DENR Undersecretary Luna, provided several inputs and agreed to the conduct of the review and its framework.”

“In fact, it was Undersecretary Luna who volunteered to make the audit report done by the DENR on the 28 mining operations available to the multistakeholder technical review teams, and joined the other members of the TWG in adopting the framework for the review,” Agabin added.

In the March 3 meeting of the MICC, Agabin said the framework for the review was presented to the entire MICC body, and “again Undersecretary Luna was present and even gave further inputs. After discussions during the March 3 meeting, the framework was unanimously agreed upon and adopted by the MICC.”

Agabin noted that during the MICC and TWG meetings, it was learned that the DENR audit was not a multistakeholder review, as required under EO 79, as it was done by only four personnel from the DENR and a third-party expert.

Also, none of the 20 departments and agencies represented in the MICC was consulted by the DENR, Agabin said. “Even Isabela Vice Gov. Antonio Albano, representing the Ulap (Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines), disclosed during the last MICC meeting on March 3 that the LGUs (local government units) of the areas hosting the affected mines were never consulted by the DENR,” he added.

Agabin said the audit team created under DENR Memorandum Order No. 2016- 01 is not a multistakeholder team, as required by EO 79. “Section 3 of that DENR memo states that its audit team was composed only of a third party expert and one officer each from the DENR Central Office, its Regional Office, Mines and Geosciences Bureau and Environmental Management Bureau,” Agabin said.