Corporate Mining, Sustainable Development, and Human Rights of the Indigenous People in the Philippines

• In Event: 4367 - Section on Asia and Asian America Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: 2. Economic Sociology

Abstract

This paper is based on my fieldwork in the Philippines during my Fulbright Fellowhsip in the Fall of 2017 to study the impact of corporate mining on the indigenous people in the Philippines. It argues that sustainable development must be anchores on a human rights regime, but the experience of the indigenous people with corporate mining shows a wide disjuncture between human rights and what sustainable development should be. The Philippine Mining Act of 1995 that liberalized the entry of transnational corporations in corporate and premised on neoliberal ideology of development has led to the violations of indigenous people's rights. The paper uses the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People as a framework in analyzing the experience of the indigenous people -- which proves useful in demonstrating the interconnectedness of these rights and how nthese rights are fundamental for the survival of the indigenous people and the urgency of coming up with development policies that integrates human rights and the principles of sustainable development that respects indigenous knowledge and worldviews and which takes into consideration their experience.

Author

• Ligaya Lindio McGovern, Indiana University Kokomo