MANILA—-An international human rights group has urged the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to permanently revoke the environmental clearance it issued to a Norwegian mining project on Mindoro island.

The Foodfirst Information and Action Network (FIAN), which has consultative status at the United Nations, said the Mindoro Nickel Project, whose clearance to mine is temporarily canceled, infringes on the people’s right to food.

“As a State Party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Philippine government has the obligation to respect and protect the right to food of its population by guaranteeing the existing access of farmers to their rice fields,” said FIAN International secretary general Flavio Valente.

Civil society groups and the local governments of Mindoro have strongly opposed Intex Resources’ nickel mine project, which covers around 9,000 hectares in Sablayan, Occidental Mindoro and 3,000 hectares in the municipalities of Victoria, Pola and Socorro in Oriental Mindoro.

They said the project encompasses two critical watershed areas of the island—-the Aglubang and Mag-asawang Tubig watersheds—-which irrigate about 50,000 hectares of rice lands in the towns of Victoria, Naujan and Calapan.

Valente said, “The destruction of the watersheds will have an adverse impact on the livelihood and the right to food of the rice farmers and farm workers in these areas.”

The Mangyans, too, are opposed to the nickel mine, saying it encroaches on their ancestral domain.

The provincial governments of Oriental and Occidental Mindoro have separately passed an ordinance banning large-scale mining for 25 years.

On November 25, then Environment Secretary Lito Atienza ordered a temporary revocation of the nickel project’s environmental compliance certificate following an 11-day protest fast staged by 25 Mindorenos.

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