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The Mindanao situation [ See Mindanao Map | Return to List of Projects ] The mere mention of Mindanao conjures vision of a difficult place to do business because the people object to it. The Mindanao people has been done before and this time they do not trust rhetoric. It does not matter if it is coming from the National government or a large muti-national mining company with good intentions. Historically most all companies who gained wealth from Mindanao logging and mining heydays took advantage of its resources, environment and its people. It is a master and slave relationship. The masters got rich and the people lost out. Their resources is now gone, the environment left in ruins and the and generation is left poor and disillusioned. The impact of Transmigration A fresh approach is necessary. The transmigration model returns control and wealth to the local residents. The inclusion of the Local Government in the partnership could be a solution to an open relationship between the Mindanao people and the National government. Mindanao: Logging Haydays are over Mindanao was the center of logging operation in the Philippines that lasted for 30 years. Mindanao now has no forest reserve left. The mountains are remnants of the old logging days. The logging operations was replaced by gold copper mining in 1970's-1980's. Most of them have marginal reserves and were closed when copper and gold prices dipped. Mindanao: Mining Haydays are over In 1990's till 1998, there was a wave of renewed interest in the Mindanao gold deposits. Various Australian and American companies were involved in gold exploration in Mindanao. Sovereign risk and the increasing opposition from local communities dampened this enthusiasm. The combination in the fall of gold prices, gold mining anomalies in Indonesia and the financial meltdown in Asia resulted to these companies pulling out from Philippine operations. There is however an active small mining industry working on high grade gold ores and processing them using crude ball milling operation. The tailings from the crude milling are bought and re-processed in North Davao to recover left over gold values. There are 30 mills along Apokon River and the tailings are dumped together with the mercury and cyanide to the water system. This is an environmental problem.
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