Improving the Minahang Bayan Declaration Process : a first step towards achieving sustainability in Philippine Small-Scale Gold Mining Industry 6

ABSTRACT : Small - scale gold mining contributes significantly to the total value of gold mined in the country surpassing even thaqt of large - scale mining in recent years. With the attendant adverse environmental and socialproblems that this predominantly illegal operation also generates, the quest for sustainable small-scale mining has long been a concern for the government and other industry stakeholders. The introduction of Minahang Bayan or sites onshore, which is a regulatory mechanism that determines where small-scale mining operations are allowed, is viewed as a means to address this sustainability concern. It is the first step towards legalizing small-scale mining operations as mandated in Republic act No.7076, otherwise known as the People Small Scale Mining Act of 1991. As of December 2015 however, only three (3) Minahang Bayan have been declared since the law took effect in 1991. This study shows that the Minahang Bayan policy and implementation is fraught with several fundamental problems: 1) there are no commitments on processing times for several major steps 2) policy is silent on actions to be taken in case of process delays 3) the application process is open to alot of delays 4) petitioners and process owners are not very knowledgeable of the process 5) lack of access to monitoring application status and 6) quality checks in upstream process steps 56

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