CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY (MindaNews/16 Sept) — The biggest alliance of environmentalists in the country has chided the Mindanao Business Conference (MinBizCon), which gathers some 500 business leaders of the island starting Friday, for its expressed plan to focus on luring investment in the sectors of agribusiness, mining and energy.
In a press conference called by Alyansa Tigil Mina (ATM), a coalition of 270 green organizations, Carl Cesar Rebuta of the Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center-Kasama sa Kalikasan (LRC-KsK) said these investments almost always translate to human rights violations.
“The common denominator of these three sectors, aside from profit, is that these projects always encroach on ancestral domains of the indigenous peoples,” Rebuta said.
He added that investments should be geared towards self-sufficiency and not only as source for raw materials and market extension.
“Mineral extraction should be for the purpose of national industrialization and to develop the agriculture sector.