Mindanao firm cited for environment-protection thrusts

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — A private company in South Cotabato had received a special award for having facilitated, along with the Blaan communities and local executives, the propagation of 1.6 million tree seedlings in four towns since 2017.

The lawyer Felix Alicer, regional executive director of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources-12, told reporters on Thursday, June 12, that the Sagittarius Mines Incorporated received the award last week during the 2nd Gawad Kalikasan ceremony at the Dream Weavers Hotel in Koronadal City in South Cotabato province.

Alicer said the mining firm, most known in Region 12 by its acronym SMI, is a staunch supporter of the DENR-12’s environment-protection thrusts in Central Mindanao.

He said the Gawad Kalikasan award for SMI was together received by its chief geologist, Willam Domasig, Joseph Palanca, corporate communications superintendent, and Abner Mendoza, Jr., public information specialist.

The SMI was contracted by the national government to operate, possibly starting 2027, the Tampakan Copper-Gold Project, encompassing Blaan tribal domains in four adjoining towns, Tampakan in South Cotabato, Columbio in Sultan Kudarat, Malungon in Sarangani and Kiblawan in Davao del Sur.

The Blaan tribal councils in Tampakan and in the three other towns that the project shall cover had provided the DENR-12 with a written free and prior consent for the upcoming mining venture.

“The conservation and management of natural resources cannot be done by us alone. It must be a collective effort by the local communities,” Alicer said.

Local officials, among them Vice Mayor Bai Naila Mamalinta of Columbio, Mayor Maria Theresa Constantino of Malungon, Mayor Joel Calma of Kiblawan and Domingo Collado, an appointed representative of the Blaans to the municipal council of Tampakan, separately confirmed on Thursday that their local governments units, the local communities and the SMI had planted no less than 1.6 million forest trees in their municipalities in the past eight years.

The four officials were quoted in radio reports as saying that their collective feat was achieved despite the SMI’s not even having mined for copper and gold yet in Tampakan town since the firm’s inception in South Cotabato about two decades ago.

“Let the award for the SMI be a reminder that our pursuit of excellence in responsible mining should be a continuing community effort, meant to empower more people and ensure that the future generations shall have a thriving, sound environment,” Alicer said.

He said officials of the DENR-12 and its personnel in South Cotabato are also aware that the  ethnic Blaans in the areas that the Tampakan Copper-Gold Project shall cover and the SMI had also initiated, in recent years, a series of river clean-up activities in Tampakan, only about 16 kilometers from Koronadal City where Region 12’s capitol is located.