SAN SEBASTIAN COLLEGE - RECOLETOS MANILA

COLLEGE OF LAW

Synthesis of William Holden’s

Exemplifying Accumulation by Dispossession: Mining and Indigenous

Peoples in the Philippines

Natural Resources and Environmental Laws

(NREL) A.Y. 2018-2019

(Fridays, 7:30 pm to 9:30 pm)

Submitted by:

Bernadette Jane C. Sandoval

Submitted to:

Atty. Rodolfo Sabio

 The article uses Marx’s theoretical framework of ‘primitive accumulation’ and David Harvey’s concept

of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ to analyse how mining operations, currently, are taking over ancestral

‘tribal’ lands and destroying natural habitats, while divesting people of their properties and traditional means of

livelihood. Harvey’s concept of accumulation by dispossession; To Marx, primitive accumulation was a

temporary and transitory stage occurring as capitalism came to overtake feudalism and his discussion focused

largely on how it served to create a proletariat class of urban-industrial workers who would, ultimately,

overthrow capitalism. Mining investment flows into a jurisdiction can be induced, or accelerated, as the result

of changes effecting that jurisdiction’s risk and reward ranking relative to other potential targets for mining

investment (Bridge 2004). These efforts at mining sector liberalization have led to a palpable increase in

investment by corporations engaged in the extraction of nonferrous metals in the developing nations of the

world.

In the Philippines, indigenous peoples are considered to be those who have a historical continuity with

the pre-Islamic and pre-Hispanic society of the archipelago (Rood 1998). When Islam was introduced to the

archipelago in the fourteenth century, those who resisted Islam retreated to upland areas and continued their

pre-Islamic animist belief systems. Then, when Spain colonized the Philippines in the sixteenth century, they

retreated even further into upland areas to resist the Spanish. This historical process of indigenous retreat into

mountainous areas has generated ‘one of the basic correlations in the Philippines’, the fact that ‘indigenous

peoples tend to occupy uplands – since the lowlands were Islamized and Hispanized (Rood 1998, p. 138).

Indigenous people, who constitute approximately 15 per cent of the population, live primarily in upland rural

areas and engage in subsistence agro-forestry. The largest concentration of indigenous peoples as a percentage

of the population is in the Cordillera Administrative Region of the island of Luzon, who are collectively

referred to as Igorots. Approximately, one-third of all indigenous peoples in the Philippines are found in the

Cordillera zone (Anthrowatch 2005). The second largest concentration of indigenous peoples as a percentage of

the population (but largest total number) is on the island of Mindanao, who are collectively referred to as

Lumads, where approximately two thirds of all indigenous peoples in the Philippines are found (Anthrowatch

2005). According to Teresa Guia-Padilla (2005), the Executive Director of Anthrowatch (an NGO engaged in
activism on behalf of indigenous peoples), while the largest number of indigenous peoples is found on

Mindanao, the ratio of indigenous peoples to total population is lower due to the presence of Muslims and

Christian migrants from other parts of the archipelago.

The most immediate clash between the government’s aggressive promotion of mining and the

indigenous inhabitants of the lands where the mineral resources are found is the inconsistency between the law

promoting mining, the Mining Act, and the law codifying the rights of indigenous peoples, the Indigenous

Peoples Rights Act (IPRA). The Mining Act, as previously mentioned, is designed to provide mining companies

with unimpeded access to lands containing minerals. This is best demonstrated by the generous access

provisions of the FTAA, which provide a foreign corporation with 100 per cent foreign ownership for 25 years.

In sharp contrast to the Mining Act, IPRA has no role as a conduit for foreign direct investment, and serves as a

legislative response to Section 5 of Article XII of the 1987 Constitution of the Philippines which states: ‘The

State, subject to the provisions of this Constitution and national development policies and programs, shall

protect the rights of indigenous cultural communities to their ancestral lands to ensure their economic, social,

and cultural well-being.’ The 1987 Constitution was described by Karnow, as ‘a thick, turgid document that

defies easy comprehension’. It contains a number of provisions calling for legislation facilitating progressive

social reforms and it was not until 29 October 1997 that the Philippine Congress could fulfil the requirements of

Section 5 of Article XII and pass IPRA, a powerful statute providing for a wide range of indigenous peoples

rights such as the right to ancestral domain, the right to self-governance, and the right to cultural integrity

(Holden and Ingelson 2007).

These concerns about the environmental effects of mining are particularly acute among indigenous

people due to the overlap of mineral resources with their ancestral domain. This overlap is most prominent in

northern Luzon where mining companies in the Cordillera Administrative Region have fouled rivers and

endangered the environmental health and well-being of indigenous communities mine tailings spilled into and

poisoned the Abra River causing widespread siltation of upland rice terraces, thus, leading to diminished rice

production, which has deprived many indigenous peoples of their right to make a living and contributed to

rising poverty and health concerns in the region. This area is home to indigenous communities whose ancestors
include those who built the famous rice terraces of the Ifugao Mountains, which are hailed as ‘the eighth

wonder of the ancient world’ Mining projects in the Philippines are subjected to an environmental impact

assessment (EIA) as a precondition of their development but the EIA system for mining projects in the

Philippines has been described as a tokenism designed to make it appear as if mining projects are being

evaluated with respect to their environmental impacts when really there is no serious intent to do so.

Neoliberalism would eliminate the regulatory functions of the state and promote the denationalization

and privatization of its goods and services. Instead of the state, it favours using the market to determine

distribution and stimulation. The invisible hand of the market is to take care of the movement of resources, the

growth in productivity, the renovation of technology, and the reinforcement of comparative advantages.

However, once the state is reduced and weakened, the national economy's capacity to withstand external

economic pressures is diminished, because only the state could have sufficient control over resources and

regulatory mechanisms to soften the blow. To attenuate the negative social consequences of the model,

neoliberals have designed certain instruments and escape valves, such as the negotiation of conflict (firm or

flexible, according to the case), the growth of the informal economy, and programs of social assistance which

are more propagandistic than effective.

The reformulation of the world economy according to the new interests and needs of the great capitalist

corporations is explained by proponents of neoliberalism as the natural result of historical evolution, a process

all countries must inevitably join. This logic is used to justify the denationalization of states in the dominated

countries of the South, with the pretext that it is the cost they must pay to form part of this new world order,

which supposedly offers interdependence among all nations.

The concepts of sovereignty, development, social justice and democracy have also been redefined. The

so-called new “interdependence” among nations sets the limits for national sovereignty. Development is

conceived of as a goal which all countries can achieve if they join in the neoliberal process (it's just a question

of time and sacrifice). Social justice becomes a function of the opportunities created by individual effort, while

democracy is a universal value with no class or political qualifications whatsoever.

 From neoliberalism grows neo-marginality, euphemistically called the informal economy. This change

of name seeks to categorize the causes, the attributes and the perspectives of this enormous sector of society that

the model generates. It is an escape valve in which private and familial solutions replace social ones. In reality,

the informal economy is one of the most prominent and harmful effects of neoliberalism, both in its human

dimensions and its economic, ideological and political ones.

Since full employment is excluded from the model, this “informal” route is designed not only to

compensate for the steep rise in unemployment, but to thwart the efforts of the working class to resist, by

pressuring the most exploited to seek out private solutions. The model preaches that informal workers stand at

the base of a ladder of bourgeois accumulation. Now they have to resolve as individuals their problems of

health, education and social security. Neoliberal ideology has inverted people’s expectations. Before, poor

people considered themselves wage earners, and their hope lay in the power of their class. Now, informal

workers are told to believe that they are or can become part of the bourgeoisie.

Accumulation by dispossession has risen rapidly under neoliberalism, or so Harvey (2006) suggests, and

the impacts of mining upon the indigenous peoples of the Philippines exemplify accumulation by dispossession

occurring as a result of a neoliberal policy initiative undertaken by a government ‘long reputed to be among the

most pliant in Asia to the neoliberal prescriptions’ (Quimpo, 2009). The efforts of the government to encourage

investment by multinational mining corporations bear all the hallmarks of neoliberalism. Under conditions of

neoliberalism multilateral agencies ‘look inside’ countries and assess polices (McCarthy 2007).

All of these great tasks will require a state that is clearly legitimate in the eyes of the majority of the

population, and capable of taking sweeping measures, firmly defending them, concentrating resources, creating

programs, and directing development in all its dimensions. It is not a question of indiscriminate state

intervention in the neither economy nor forced protectionism, which in the past often served only to transfer

resources to private businessmen. The state should remain at the helm of the economy, so as to be in a position

to resolve the basic problems of education, health care, mass transit and housing for the poor, along with

pursuing specialized development policies in the areas of science and technology. Such a conception supposes,
of course, that the state and civil society would share essentially the same interests. This in turn must be assured

by means of a democratic system based on popular and national sovereignty.

The fundamental of the program which seeks to overcome neoliberalism with real development, equality

and national independence rests on the political and social forces capable of opposing and defeating the

economic and political actors who sustain and reproduce the current system of domination. Herein lays the

challenge we must take up. In many ways, the aggressive militarization of mining areas because the indigenous

inhabitants of them could be recruited into the NPA is a self-fulfilling prophesy. ‘Struggles against primitive

accumulation could provide the seedbed of discontent for insurgent movements’ (Harvey 2006, p. 165). The

militarization of areas prior to mining projects further contributes to the ‘social terrain’ utilized by the NPA in

its recruitment. With mining threatening to destroy the environment relied upon

by indigenous peoples for subsistence and with militarization crushing all peaceful forms of resistance, the

appeal of armed groups, such as the NPA, can only grow. The term accumulation by dispossession may often be

referred to by a term frequently used in the Philippines: ‘development aggression’ simultaneous growth in

social movements reacting against this market orientation. In summary, and conclusion, primitive accumulation

was a series of violent struggles from which capitalism emerged.

The effect of neoliberal-induced mining upon the indigenous peoples of the Philippines provides a

specific example of this. As the twenty-first century unfolds, and assuming that neoliberalism retains its

hegemonic stature, other examples of accumulation by dispossession can be gleaned. The accumulation by

dispossession thesis is equal to the task of looking at the impact of unwanted forms of development on

indigenous communities with their own unique counter-reactions and resistance movements, resulting from

interactions taking place locally and beyond.