Please Join the Online Petition to Call on a Japanese Company to be Accountable for Environmental Damage in Palawan, the Philippines!
We call on everyone to join the letter demanding Sumitomo Metal Mining Corporation (SMM) tostop its irresponsible nickel mining and processing operations in the Philippines. For over a decade, the company continued to pollute the nearby river with toxic heavy metals including hexavalent chromium, a known carcinogen. The company is currently expanding its operations despite utterly failing to take meaningful measures to address the problem.
Communities including those of Indigenous Peoples in Palawan Province, residing in the vicinity of their HPAL processing plant and of the Rio Tuba nickel mining site to which SMM has business relations both in terms of investments and supply chains, have been exposed to years of health damage risk due to the pollution.
Furthermore, the mining expansion to Mt. Bulanjao has begun without offering any countermeasures to prevent water pollution from the new mining operations. It is clear as day that Indigenous Peoples and farmers, who depend on the rivers for domestic and agricultural water, will continue to suffer from such pollution over decades to come.
The company is producing battery materials which have been officially adopted by Tesla, the largest electric vehicle company in the U.S., as well as by Toyota Motor Corporation for their in-car batteries. With expectations of growing global demand for nickel in the context of efforts toward a decarbonized society, including the promotion of electric vehicles (EVs) and renewable energy, it is a situation that is far from a “just” energy transition if more local communities are harmed by the new mining expansion.
Thus, we ask for individual sign-ons to the letter demanding Sumitomo Metal Mining Co.,Ltd., to suspend all mining and processing operations in Palawan, until and unless effective and publicly verifiable countermeasures are developed and implemented to avoid destructive impacts on local communities.
Petition in English: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jcJi4VLEcGWd0mytxqrEqRW3B3gSOJXp/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=109698973652957232298&rtpof=true&sd=true
How SMM has failed to take effective measures against toxic water pollution in Palawan?: Please see a report by an expert who has collaborated with FoE Japan to conduct continuous water quality surveys from 2009 to date in Palawan.
Many thanks for your cooperation,
Environmental Legal Assistance Center (ELAC)
Legal Rights and Natural Resources Center (LRC) / FoE Philippines
Pacific Asia Resource Center (PARC)
Friends of the Earth Japan
Reference:
Video clip “Behind decarbonization technologies: What the expansion of Rio Tuba nickel mine will bring”:
