Good morning. Thank you very much to the Philippine Nickel Industry Association for the kind invitation to speak with you today about our shared responsibility in the path towards nickel mining competitiveness, but also development, and sustainability.

The DENR has been given the very complex task of all protection and enhancement of our environment, but also the sustainable and responsible use of our natural resources.

Minerals are part of our daily lives and they are used in one form or another across all industries. They are needed to build an industrialized and digital society, and they are required for us to fully transform to clean energy and mitigate climate change towards building a resilient and low carbon future.

The global clean energy transition involves the deployment of renewable energy, energy storage, and other new technologies. These projects are highly mineral-intensive and accelerated adoption of such technologies will significantly increase the demand for critical minerals such as nickel. What this means is that the Philippines is in a unique position to be an important player in the global clean energy market in our low carbon future and it is also a critical partner in the achievement of the goals of our international agreements on climate, on the SDGs, on water, on health and biodiversity.

The DENR believes that a resilient and sustainable mining industry can support our country’s economic and social development. By investing in our social and environmental protections, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and disaster risk reduction, the mining industry can advance multiple development pathways.

President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. stated that those who extract our natural resources must follow the law. The DENR is guided by this directive and we affirm our commitment towards responsible mining through the implementation of pro-people, pro-environment, and science-based policies and programs.

Starting in 2024, through the DENR-Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB), and a new office for Integrated Environmental Science, we will be concentrating on two priority activities:

1) The first is on the extensive government-led exploration of critical minerals. We are directing MGB to concentrate efforts on mineral exploration in the coming year. This effort will be augmented by technical support coming from our foreign development partners including the Australian Government and the US Geological Survey.

2) Secondly, we wish to promote and enable mineral processing, which is the key topic for today’s discussion, I believe. Particularly for laterite deposits; process nickel, and recover other minerals such as iron, cobalt, and rare earth minerals.

Both strategies aim to maximize the value of our mineral resources that the Philippines is endowed with and utilize these towards our own energy transition and economic development. In this light, we hope to simplify our approach to managing resource development, the subject for brief discussion that we had earlier at the table. We abide by the mitigation hierarchy which starts with the avoidance of all possible environmental impact. If this cannot be done, the next option would be to minimize these impacts to a negligible level. The third option is to rehabilitate all disturbed areas and finally, for truly unavoidable disruptions, we must invest in offsets, compensatory actions and investments in adjacent high-value ecosystems and areas to achieve no net loss or net positive gain in terms of our ecosystems.

The mining industry has had its share of challenges this past years. There has to be a shift in perspective so that the public can perceive you all as vital to rural community development and to our country’s progress as a whole. What we hope to do today is to engage in a constructive discussion on how we can collaborate to ensure responsible mining and how to effectively communicate its contributions towards a low carbon, inclusive and resilient nation. This begins with a mindset that specifically addresses the resilience of people and environment, and a commitment to being a champion for environmental integrity while simultaneously contributing to economic and social progress.

I hope that we can work together to raise awareness of this industry’s vital contributions to the development of our country. This shift starts with building trust between government and the mining sector. We will have to calibrate the regulator–regulated relationship and begin regarding each other as partners in development. Trust is not built with companies trying to skirt or even break the law, nor would putting more stringent guidelines, alone, work. Ideally, there should be more self-governance and responsibility with such organizations like PNIA. As representatives of the sector, you are in the best position to uphold compliance among its members and this industry in terms of building that trust that is needed.

Related to this, we hope to revise the Sustainable Development and Management Program (SDMP) and make it more responsive to the needs of communities. We aim to formalize small-scale miners and include them as members of the responsible mining industry. Finally, we hope to have a more positive and dynamic relationship with individual mining companies moving forward, and this can only be done by continuing open conversations, and conducting regular sectoral interaction, such as today’s conference.

Before I close, if I may, I wish to contribute two points to the set of key recommendations from the PNIA:
First, we trust that this initiative will support and emphasize the need for a whole of government approach to the achievement of the SDGs and the targets of the Philippine Development Plan. This requires advancing convergence and coherence between departmental priorities and national-local implementation, and we’re very glad to see that the key departments are here, present today. Both the DOF and the DTI, we suggest in fact a greater involvement of the DILG, and even the NCIP. Second, I hope that the industry as a whole will actively incorporate geo strategic intelligence in its roadmap and performance metrics. This should include benchmarking not only the industry’s market performance on critical minerals but its contributions to environmental and economic stability, and the pursuit of peace and security nationally, regionally and globally.

Thank you very much once again to the PNIA and I look forward to rich discussions today.