It is mango tree inspection time in the countryside and on the mountains of Zambales, where the indigenous Aeta farmers live and plant cassava, ube, and other fruits and vegetables. They are subsistence farmers living off what they grow and harvest. The mango harvest will be in May and the mangoes they grow will be harvested and brought to processing factories in Bulacan to make organic-certified mango puree for shipment to Germany. These farmers and their families benefit and receive fair trade prices for their pico and carabao mangoes, and sometimes for their apple mangoes, too.
Certifiers conduct inspections of the farmers’ mango trees to see if these — and the whole area they farm on — comply with European Union organic regulations. These are very strict and ensure that no chemicals like flower-inducers, synthetic fertilizers or insecticides are present. It took many years for the Aeta farmers working with the Profairtrade Development Enterprise, also known as Preda Fair Trade, to convert this area in the uplands of Zambales and meet high organic standards.
The area is about 50 kilometers from Botolan in the north to Dinalupihan in the south. During the rainy season, volunteers join the farmers to plant grafted mango saplings, calamansi bushes, and rambutan fruit trees supplied by Preda Fair Trade and its partner environmental organizations dedicated to tree planting with economic benefits. Reaching EU organic certification standards is a great achievement for these Indigenous people (IP). This guarantees that they have a steady market for their organic mango puree. They are hoping for buyers of their cassava and ube, which can grow in abundance and be processed into flour. Cassava, especially those certified as organic, is an important source of fiber and starch-resistant, and is a gluten-free alternative to wheat flour. It can be used to fortify bread or other baked goods. Cassava also fortifies food, providing the body with energy, especially for athletes and other active people. Beside organic certification, it is produced under Preda Fair Trade’s ethical standards.
The farmers have organized themselves into an association of 630 farmers from 16 communities. Besides receiving fair trade prices, bonus payments and tree saplings to restore the environment, they also receive clean water supply systems as part of profit-sharing and other development benefits. The Aetas claim the mountains as their ancestral lands. Preda Fair Trade, over the past years, assisted communities to receive land certificates declaring their ancestral land rights.
Rights challenged
Around the world, the rights of IPs to their ancestral lands are being challenged by the encroachment of mining companies and land grabbers who are supported by corrupt politicians and other officials. As the world moves away from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy, the demand for precious minerals is growing at a fast pace. The Philippines is now all the more the focus of international mining corporations since China has banned the export of its minerals to the United States.
The Philippines has lifted the nine-year ban on open-pit mining, the most destructive mining activity that is destroying the biodiversity in indigenous communities and biodiversity hotspots due to mineral exploitation. Human rights violations against IPs and environmental defenders are a severe downside of the transition to renewable energy. Hundreds of people have been killed defending their land and forests, mostly in Mindanao, where the IP there, collectively known as the Lumads, own ancestral lands. The military has been responsible for many killings, according to a Global Witness investigation.
Global Witness is an international agency that has documented the killings of defenders, and has linked one third of their deaths to the mining industry. It said that since 2012, the Philippines had been marked as the most dangerous country in Asia for such dedicated land-rights advocates. One fifth of IPs’ ancestral lands have been lost to mining corporations to date, the agency said in a December 2024 report titled “How the Militarization of Mining Threatens Indigenous Defenders in the Philippines.” The right of IPs to give or withhold “free, prior and informed consent” to any mining enterprise has not been respected in many areas where mining is active. The law is supposed to be followed, of course, but is ignored and circumvented by greed and power. There is nothing fair in the mining trade.
The Philippines is losing its reputation as an environmentally protected paradise as hundreds of mining corporations scar the land and destroy the environment. The people who benefit are the rich Filipino elite, their international mining partners and corrupt politicians who get the presumed huge payoff to approve mining permits and exploration licenses. With such signed documents, mining firms do what they like, ravaging the environment with impunity.
Since 2010, the Philippines has lost 230,000 hectares of forest cover to mining activity. Philippine law bans mining activity in legally protected areas, such as critical watersheds, old-growth forests and wildlife sanctuaries. However, corrupt government officials have given at least one-in-five mining permits that encroach on these protected lands.
The only glimmer of hope seen is that the 17-percent tariff on Philippine goods exported to the US, including these minerals, may slow their extraction and outbound shipment rate and save our environment. But without a true commitment by the government that has the power to stop the environmental destruction, as documented by Global Witness, there is little hope that the rights of IPs would be respected and environmental destruction would end.
So long as the Philippines is ruled by an immoral oligarchy that is hellbent on enriching itself to the detriment of ordinary Filipinos, the nation will remain as Asia’s fifth-poorest. It will only be when a truly enlightened populace stops voting for political dynasties and elects their own true representatives would society become one where there is greater equality.
