Whose Development? Mining, Local Resistance, and Development Agendas

Abstract

Local resistance to mining’s negative impacts on development In the 1960s, villagers on the small island of Marinduque in the Philippines lived mainly on subsistence fishing and farming with copra, bananas, and marine products as their main sources of trade and income, until 1969 when the opening of a world-class copper mining operation co-owned and managed by Canada’s Placer Dome¹ raised new expectations for economic prosperity in the region. However, nearly 30 years of large-scale open-pit mining in the mountains of Marinduque instead became a lesson learned by communities throughout the Philippines of how mining can erode the very basis of economic sustainability and development.