MANILA, Philippines—-Modern technology has exposed several threats brought by mining to Palawan’s rich environment that could also affect the lives of several indigenous peoples living in the province, a group supporting ethnic groups said on Friday.

Citing a study by the Unesco on the threats of mining in Palawan, the group Ancestral Land/Domain Watch (ALDAW) said that the presence of mining companies poses a threat to the lives of local people in the province.

The study revealed that of the 1.47 million hectares of Palawan, as much as 50 percent of the land is being occupied by 354 mining tenements. The mining sites also occupy more than 90 percent of indigenous peoples’ lands, ALDAW national coordinator Artiso Mandawa said.

“Presently, there is only one existing Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title (CADT) in the province and we have recorded 10 CADT applications being processed and about 60 percent of the IP ancestral domains have yet to be applied for delineation process,” said Mandawa.

“Mining operations in the province poses serious threats to IP communities in asserting their rights to land,” he added.

The study used the technology known as “geo-tagging,” where a global positioning system connected to a digital camera was used to mark specific areas in Palawan that would show the adverse impacts of mining on the province.

The study covered the Bulanjao range, the hinterlands of Ipilan (Brooke’s Point Municipality) and around the eastern side of the Gantong range.

The study was conducted by experts from the Centre for Biocultural Diversity (CBCD) of the University of Kent in the United Kingdom headed by Dr. Dario Novellino, a CBCD anthropologist and Visiting Research Associate of the Institute of Philippine Culture of the Ateneo de Manila University, and ALDAW.

The study revealed that several mining explorations in the province were situated in areas known to be “Core Zones” of maximum protection.

Novellino said that under the Ecological Critical Areas Network (ECAN) Guidelines of the Strategic Environmental Plan for Palawan (Republic Act 7611), “core zones” are defined as “areas above 1,000 meters in elevation, virgin forests or primary growth forests, areas with steep gradient (above 50 percent slope), and critically threatened/endangered habitats and habitats of rare endangered species or habitats of Palawan local endemic species of flora and fauna.”

Particularly, the study revealed that at Brooke’s Point Municipality, affected areas of mining include a watershed area known to provide potable water to the local indigenous communities.

“Their sustenance totally depends on the available forest resources, and it consists of a heterogeneous economy where sustainable swidden cultivation is integrated with foraging and the collection of non-timber forest products (NTFPs),” Novellino said.

“The geo-tagged images have revealed that the Mineral Production Sharing Agreement (MPSA) areas of MacroAsia Corporation overlap not only with the traditional territory of the local indigenous communities but also with the ‘Core Zones’ of maximum protection,” he added.

Groups have expressed alarm over the results of the geo-tagging study.

Haribon executive director Blaz Tabaranza said that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources should act quickly on the results of this study.

“The government must take the recommendations of the research seriously, or we might face a potential ecological crisis in one of the last frontiers of biodiversity in the Philippines,” Tabaranza said.