“With the forests being converted into plantations and logging permitted by the government, the area has been denuded up to a point wherein a mere rain shower could cause a catastrophic landslide,” Ridon said in another statement. The youth legislator finds it “appalling” that the Aquino government just sits idly while foreign companies are exploiting and plundering our natural resources.
Based on government data, the Aquino administration has a hand at abetting the ongoing plunder of Philippine natural resources. It granted mining permits covering 945,660 hectares of lands. It also granted an environmental compliance certificate to notorious mining company Xstrata.
Ridon accuses the Aquino government of being “a puppet of large foreign investors that does not care if our natural resources are pillaged to the point of utter destruction.”
According to Clemente Bautista of Kalikasan-PNE, the Aquino administration has also aggravated the fragile state of our marine and coastal ecosystems.
Aquino “has done nothing substantial to address the impending reclamation of 38,000 hectares of foreshore areas, which covers 10 percent of important habitats such as seagrass expanses and mangrove forests,” Bautista said.
“Anywhere you look – from formerly verdant mountains to seas that used to teem with biodiversity – foreign companies are exploiting our natural resources up to the point of destruction,” Ridon warned.
Aquino a ‘total failure’ at protecting the environment
Progressive groups under the Kalikasan network decried the Aquino administration’s encouragement of foreign companies to plunder our resources. This, the Aquino government does “by continually implementing destructive policies in the guise of attracting foreign investment,” said Terry Ridon who is also an environmental lawyer.
Ridon was referring to the continued implementation of laws such as the Mining Act of 1995. Critics blame this for having fast-tracked and legitimized the operations of large-scale mining in the Philippines.
Far from what the DENR paints as a government trying to regain the environment this country has lost, the Aquino government is, in fact, “complicit in the wanton destruction of the environment.” The Aquino government’s policies only serve to satiate the greed for profit of foreign monopoly capitalists, critics say.
Laws, such as Aquino’s EO 79, have previously been criticized for upping the ante in favour of the Mining Act of 1995, giving more latitude for big companies to exploit the country’s minerals and natural resources, rapidly denuding remaining forest cover and leveling mountains to give way to open-pit mining. One big proof of it, the Kalikasan Network has previously said, was the issuance of an environmental compliance certificate in favor of mining giant Xstrata-SMI, reportedly one of the largest and most destructive mining ventures in Southeast Asia.
The mining giant’s operation has already been the object of mass condemnation and protests in the Socsksargen, North Cotabato and Davao del Sur areas. But instead of listening to the people, Aquino has mobilized the full force of its armed forces in Mindanao, calling it as “investment defense forces” bent on protecting these giant companies. As a result, Lumad environmental defenders in Mindanao were compelled to declare a tribal war and lay their lives on the line in defense of their ancestral lands.
Progressive groups have also criticized Aquino’s response to the power crisis in Mindanao. His government has been handing over the operation of the power industry to privately-owned power producers, which also plan to put up massive pollution-causing coal-fired and diesel plants instead of developing cheap, clean and renewable energy sources.
Overall, there is no reason for the Aquino government to celebrate Earth Day or its so-called achievements for the environment, Kalikasan PNE said. It concluded that in protecting the environment, Aquino is “a total failure.” 
