We often imagine weekends as leisure time spent with family and friends.
The opposite was true for the people residing in Northern Luzon, Philippines as they spent their weekend tending to their loved ones’ safety as the Category 4 super typhoon Koppu (known locally as Lando) arrived, bringing widespread flooding and lashing winds.
The typhoon made landfall on Sunday in Casiguran, on the island of Luzon, with winds close to 200 km/h. Among the hardest-hit areas were the eastern coastal town of Baler, where significant building damage was reported and the inland city of Cabanatuan, about 100 kilometers north of Manila, where widespread flooding was reported and several rescues requested.
By Monday, Koppu left 12 people dead, several missing, 16,000 displaced and caused power outages in entire provinces. Two elderly farmers, Mario Abesamis, 54, and Pedro Tuarez, 65, died after being caught by flood waters as they tried to save their carabaos near Cabanatuan City, in Nueva Ecija.
Typhoon victims putting their lives on the line for the sake of their animals is a common challenge for disaster officials in the Philippines. Carabaos are more than pets for these farmers; as working animals play a vital role in cultivating the land people earn a living from, they consider them to be part of their families.
This shack blown across the road by #typhoon #Koppu #LandoPH http://t.co/LH69pf8xl5— James Reynolds (@James Reynolds)1445135002.0
[VIDEO] Residents attending to their submerged vehicles in Cabanatuan. #LandoPH http://t.co/fYpKw0dFCz | via @raphbosano— ABS-CBN News Channel (@ABS-CBN News Channel)1445172938.0
River overflowed in Maria Aurora, Aurora, causing a flash flood | via @Dennis_Datu #LandoPH http://t.co/HZfvi16A1O— ABS-CBN News (@ABS-CBN News)1445150659.0
Bangui windmill in Ilocos Norte amid #Lando #Koppu @cnnphilippines http://t.co/ACqUF7AltA— David Y. Santos (@David Y. Santos)1445137407.0
Heavy rains currently lashing Baler. Four barangays now flooded #LandoPh | @MrPaulGarcia #Koppu http://t.co/EW7YUHzXk3— CNN Philippines (@CNN Philippines)1445141708.0
Children in an evacuation shelter in northern Luzon aftermath fleeing homes because of threat of landslides #koppu http://t.co/33dAZoqHIe— Jon Donnison (@Jon Donnison)1445237893.0
A man and his pig stay afloat in floodwaters caused by Typhoon Koppu in the Philippines http://t.co/26zM3RZjMM http://t.co/IFNGyQ3h37— AFP news agency (@AFP news agency)1445233311.0
Appeal for Support
The government, aid agencies and humanitarian organizations are currently scrambling to respond to the destruction left in Koppu’s wake, appealing for volunteers and materials to support their response work.
Current needs include basic survival means, such as food, medicine, water supplies and sanitary kits for the displaced families who are currently staying in evacuation centers.
Click here to support the Citizens’ Disaster Response Center in providing assistance to the most affected, least served and most vulnerable sectors of the population.
The Imperative for Drastic Climate Action
The ever-increasing and intensifying storms that have wreaked havoc on the Philippines in the past decade are clear indications that the world has changed, and living with the spectre of extreme weather events has become a new normal for many people.
Communities are starting to make the connection between extreme weather and climate justice. For example, super typhoon Haiyan survivors came together in January of 2014 to establish the Alliance for Disaster Survivors in the Philippines (People Surge).
As we appeal for relief for those immediately affected by the typhoon, we reiterate our call for industrialized nations to put money on the table for adaptation, mitigation and forest protection in the negotiations of COP21, the upcoming climate conference in Paris. Answering this call could help countries that, like the Philippines, are most vulnerable and least prepared to deal with the impacts of catastrophic climate change.
With just a one-degree increase of human-caused global warming, we are already seeing storms that are more intense than ever before, which should serve as a serious warning about the dangers of global warming. We need to steer clear of the three-degree Celsius increase that we’d see if we allow the business of fossil fuel emissions to go on as usual. Business as usual will cost our people too much.
Two years after typhoon Haiyan hit Tacloban, survivors are still struggling for their dignity, rights and justice by campaigning for a rehabilitation program with people rather than big business at its core. They are also working to link their struggle with the global work of holding historic emitters accountable for their inequitable greenhouse gas contributions.
That is why People Surge is calling for global demonstrations and solidarity actions from October to December, to remind the Philippines government and world leaders meeting in Paris that our survival is not negotiable.
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Though made in large part of plastic, glass, ceramics, gold and copper, they also contain critical resources. The gallium used for LEDs and the camera flash, the tantalum in capacitors and indium that powers the display were all pulled from the ground — at a price for nature and people.
"Mining raw materials is always problematic, both with regard to human rights and ecology," said Melanie Müller, raw materials expert of the German think tank SWP. "Their production process is pretty toxic."
The gallium and indium in many phones comes from China or South Korea, the tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo or Rwanda. All in, such materials comprise less than ten grams of a phone's weight. But these grams finance an international mining industry that causes radioactive earth dumps, poisoned groundwater and Indigenous population displacement.
Environmental Damage: 'Nature Has Been Overexploited'
The problem is that modern technologies don't work without what are known as critical raw materials. Collectively, solar panels, drones, 3D printers and smartphone contain as many as 30 of these different elements sourced from around the globe. A prime example is lithium from Chile, which is essential in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles.
"No one, not even within the industry, would deny that mining lithium causes enormous environmental damage," Müller explained, in reference to the artificial lakes companies create when flushing the metal out of underground brine reservoirs. "The process uses vast amounts of water, so you end up with these huge flooded areas where the lithium settles."
This means of extraction results in the destruction and contamination of the natural water system. Unique plants and animals lose access to groundwater and watering holes. There have also been reports of freshwater becoming salinated due to extensive acidic waste water during lithium mining.
But lithium is not the only raw material that causes damage. Securing just one ton of rare earth elements produces 2,000 tons of toxic waste, and has devastated large regions of China, said Günther Hilpert, head of the Asia Research Division of the German think tank SWP.
He says companies there have adopted a process of spraying acid over the mining areas in order to separate the rare earths from other ores, and that mined areas are often abandoned after excavation.
"They are no longer viable for agricultural use," Hilpert said. "Nature has been overexploited."
China is not the only country with low environmental mining standards and poor resource governance. In Madagascar, for example, a thriving illegal gem and metal mining sector has been linked to rainforest depletion and destruction of natural lemur habitats.
States like Madagascar, Rwanda and the DRC score poorly on the Environmental Performance Index that ranks 180 countries for their effort on factors including conservation, air quality, waste management and emissions. Environmentalists are therefore particularly concerned that these countries are mining highly toxic materials like beryllium, tantalum and cobalt.
But it is not only nature that suffers from the extraction of high-demand critical raw materials.
"It is a dirty, toxic, partly radioactive industry," Hilpert said. "China, for example, has never really cared about human rights when it comes to achieving production targets."
Dirty, Toxic, Radioactive: Working in the Mining Sector
One of the most extreme examples is Baotou, a Chinese city in Inner Mongolia, where rare earth mining poisoned surrounding farms and nearby villages, causing thousands of people to leave the area.
In 2012, The Guardian described a toxic lake created in conjunction with rare earth mining as "a murky expanse of water, in which no fish or algae can survive. The shore is coated with a black crust, so thick you can walk on it. Into this huge, 10 sq km tailings pond nearby factories discharge water loaded with chemicals used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world."
Local residents reported health issues including aching legs, diabetes, osteoporosis and chest problems, The Guardian wrote.
South Africa has also been held up for turning a blind eye to the health impacts of mining.
"The platinum sector in South Africa has been criticized for performing very poorly on human rights — even within the raw materials sector," Müller said.
In 2012, security forces killed 34 miners who had been protesting poor working conditions and low wages at a mine owned by the British company Lonmin. What became known as the "Marikana massacre" triggered several spontaneous strikes across the country's mining sector.
Müller says miners can still face exposure to acid drainage — a frequent byproduct of platinum mining — that can cause chemical burns and severe lung damage. Though this can be prevented by a careful waste system.
Some progress was made in 2016 when the South African government announced plans to make mining companies pay $800 million (€679 million) for recycling acid mine water. But they didn't all comply. In 2020, activists sued Australian-owned mining company Mintails and the government to cover the cost of environmental cleanup.
Another massive issue around mining is water consumption. Since the extraction of critical raw materials is very water intensive, drought prone countries such as South Africa, have witnessed an increase in conflicts over supply.
For years, industry, government and the South African public debated – without a clear agreement – whether companies should get privileged access to water and how much the population may suffer from shortages.
Mining in Brazil: Replacing Nature, People, Land Rights
Beyond the direct health and environmental impact of mining toxic substances, quarrying critical raw materials destroys livelihoods, as developments in Brazil demonstrate.
"Brazil is the major worldwide niobium producer and reserves in [the state of] Minas Gerais would last more than 200 years [at the current rate of demand]," said Juliana Siqueira-Gay, environmental engineer and Ph.D. student at the University of São Paulo.
While the overall number of niobium mining requests is stagnating, the share of claims for Indigenous land has skyrocketed from 3 to 36 percent within one year. If granted, 23 percent of the Amazon forest and the homeland of 222 Indigenous groups could fall victim to deforestation in the name of mining, a study by Siqueira-Gay finds.
In early 2020, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro signed a bill which would allow corporations to develop areas populated by Indigenous communities in the future. The law has not yet entered into force, but "this policy could have long-lasting negative effects on Brazil's socio-biodiversity," said Siqueira-Gay.
One example are the niobium reserves in Seis Lagos, in Brazil's northeast, which could be quarried to build electrolytic capacitors for smartphones.
"They overlap the Balaio Indigenous land and it would cause major impacts in Indigenous communities by clearing forests responsible for providing food, raw materials and regulating the local climate," Siqueira-Gay explained.
She says scientific good practice guidelines offer a blueprint for sustainable mining that adheres to human rights and protects forests. Quarries in South America — and especially Brazil — funded by multilaterial banks like the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group have to follow these guidelines, Siqueira-Gay said.
They force companies to develop sustainable water supply, minimize acid exposure and re-vegetate mined surfaces. "First, negative impacts must be avoided, then minimized and at last compensated — not the other way around."
Reposted with permission from DW.