PHILIPPINES Law and Practice Contributed by: Patricia A O Bunye and Rafael Raymundo A Evangelista, Cruz Marcelo & Tenefrancia
3. Climate Change, Energy Transition and Sustainable Development in Mining 3.1 Climate Change Effects
The DENR, in co-ordination with law enforce - ment agencies, consistently takes active meas - ures to combat illegal mining. In recent years, the government has employed satellite imagery to monitor compliance with mining and forest protection laws and to identify potential illegal mining activities. The DENR has also partnered with the Philippine Space Agency to develop and generate maps, systems and tools that fur - ther monitor forest areas using satellite remote sensing, artificial intelligence, and geographic information systems (GIS). 2.9 Good and Bad Examples of Community Relations/Consultation Impacting Mining Projects Good environmental and community relations around mining projects involve conducting stakeholder consultations in the form of meet - ings with the community, by co-ordinating with the local government units and local MGB offic - es, which results in the development of various projects in the community, such as providing vocational education and training programmes, contributing to the needs of local schools and developing local agricultural industries. These also include ensuring that the concerns of the affected communities are heard and promptly addressed. Bad examples involve bypassing or mishan - dling stakeholder engagement, which results in the mismanagement of the project’s SDMP and CDP, leading to a failure to uplift the welfare of the host communities, focusing on programmes that are not needed by the community or failing to implement programmes that would otherwise benefit the community.
The Climate Change Act requires the formulation of a Framework Strategy on Climate Change, which serves as the basis for a programme for climate change planning, research and devel - opment, extension and monitoring of activities to protect vulnerable communities from the adverse effects of climate change. A National Climate Change Action Plan shall also be formu - lated in accordance with this Framework. On 25 January 2019, the Climate Change Com - mission issued Resolution No 2019-001, entitled “A Resolution adopting the National Climate Risk Management Framework to address intensifying adverse impacts of climate change”, which was deemed necessary to harmonise and integrate various climate risk management efforts among sectors and stakeholders. It also functions to strengthen the country’s early action system in view of the increasing losses and damages from recurring extreme weather events. These factors are taken into consideration during the EIA process when applying for an ECC for min - ing projects. As a private initiative, the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines, to which the major mining companies in the country belong, has adopted a major climate change protocol to align with the global sustainability initiative: the Climate Change Protocol of the Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) initiative of the Mining Association of Canada (MAC). The DENR Secretary has likewise announced several initiatives on accelerating climate change action and delivery of the Philippines’
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