The discordant melody of mining (First part)

If mining had music, its melody would be discordant where what popular tunes might be in direct contradiction with its libretto, the notes and the cleft, the specific details that comprise its music violently divergent and contradictory resulting in a cacophony of noise, painful and excruciating.

For the anti-mining advocates, include here vocal and media-savvy mining critics from rabid tree-huggers on one end and well-intentioned environmentalists on the other, to the passionate religious conscripted to the distant boondocks there ministering to the spiritual and holistic needs of some of the physically poorest and most corporally destitute in the remotest parts of the Philippines, mining is an unnecessary bane. A principal part of their common rant is that mining’s attendant costs are prices much too high to pay by those who live off the land and subsist on primitive fauna and flora. Tearing up, drilling into or excavating the hillside might simply be costs of goods sold for the mining company measured in pesos and dollars and recouped and paid from gross revenues so that there might be remnant incomes, but it is the totality of life itself to the forest dweller.

Rather than have the earth, its valleys and mountains excavated and exploited in the name of economic development, mining’s critics would rather that it quite simply bear its fruits naturally, whether farmed or gathered, and from those feed its poor.

There is commonplace logic here. Perhaps, as a foundation for principles, the perspective is a tad too simplistic but, on its upside, in its simplicity, there is a certain attraction that makes such base logic easily understood.

Allow us, if you will, to start our discussion with a persistent publicly held cliché. The public’s typical perspective on mining is that this industry is old, ancient, even primitive. Helped in no small manner by simplistic one-dimensional thinking in a world of easily manipulated media that constantly tailor fit their soundbites to the lowest common denominator, the resultant bias against mining is created thus.

Note the imagery that constantly perpetuates in our minds, rightly or wrongly. It involves greedily extracting from dark gaping holes violently drilled or blasted out of what would have been idyllic, peaceful and pristine earth and green, fragrant and scenic mountainsides. Through media, the mind-conditioned public also sees mining as filthy, mud-caked and dirty with the conjured stereotype of the mining worker as black-faced like a subterranean coal miner, shirtless and naked and, once again, as in the cliché coal miner, a lowly member of the societal minority, albeit this one condemned by circumstance and slowly dying from the lack of oxygen or fresh air on one extreme,, and the continuous inhalation of a profusion of fumes, poisons and other toxic gases, on the other.

Recent developments on the global stage, however, compel us to listen to such negativity with a finer, more discerning ear. Here is where the cacophony begins and the divergence starts. When Indonesia recently decided to limit its exports of nickel only to processed products as against raw ore, the resulting global shortage opened opportunities for the Philippines mining industry and brought to light the misconceptions the Filipino public and its government had on mining.

The other global development that forces us to rethink our traditional position is the rapid industrialization of Asia, China in particular, and other growth markets that create new demand for mining and metals. This has drastically changed mining’s supply-chain economics.

The third global factor concerns the traditional focus on environmentalism where such focus is increasingly directed toward extractive industries like mining but is also challenged by the aberrant realities of economies that must industrialize or die.

Next week we will flesh each of these out against the economic data and from there see whether the resulting melody is music or simply the painful sound of an economy screeching to a halt. To be concluded next week