WITH 53,000 hectares across 13 municipalities under threat from pending mining applications, and a 3,715-hectare mineral reservation already proposed, the province of Antique faces a reckoning. While mining interests promise jobs and revenue, history tells us that such promises are often short-lived — and the damage, irreversible. The call, therefore, by the Amlig Antique Alliance for a 50-year moratorium on mining is a demand for survival.
Mining may bring economic activity, but only for a few and only for a while. The communities left behind must deal with possible poisoned rivers, unstable mountainsides, lost agricultural land, and polluted air. In Antique, where watersheds supply drinking water and irrigation for 600,000 people, mining threatens nothing less than the lifeblood of the province.
The public good — clean water, food security, and a stable climate — far outweighs the narrow economic interests of mining firms. The experience of other regions in the country has shown that once the minerals are extracted, what follows is not prosperity, but poverty and displacement. Mining projects have triggered landslides, poisoned fisheries, and forced communities to abandon their ancestral homes — all in exchange for paltry royalties and jobs that vanish when the last vein of ore is tapped dry.
Antique is an ecological sanctuary, home to endangered species like the Dulungan hornbill and the Visayan spotted deer. Its mountains act as buffers against floods and typhoons, and its uplands are sacred to the Ati and Iraynun Bukidnon peoples. To mine these lands is not only to destroy the environment, but also to erode identity, culture, and public health.
Environment Secretary Raphael Lotilla, a son of Sibalom, must now decide whether to stand with his people or with the mining interests that already seek to curry favor. The stakes could not be higher.
The real wealth of Antique is not buried underground — it flows through its rivers, grows in its soil, and lives in its people. Antiqueños cannot allow that to be sacrificed for profit that benefits only a few. The cost of mining is too high, and the public cannot afford to pay it.
Let the call for a moratorium be the beginning of a broader conversation about what true development looks like — one that places people and the planet over plunder.
