Freespirit
What about ecological footprints?
Social and environmental scientists define ecological footprints as the total area required to produce food and fibre consumed and assimilate waste. Reduced to its simplest form it means, all used resources become waste. Further translated by another scientist, it means, that for us to sustain what we have now, we need two and a half planet earths to do so.
If this be the yardstick to measure how much the Semirara Mining Company owes the people of Antique and the rest of the living world, their hundreds of millions is but a pittance.
I had the chance to read and digest the contents of the marine bio survey that the DENR conducted before the Semirara coal mining started in the island. Hazel, the marine biologist who undertook the survey is a friend and to this day she holds close to her heart the vibrant life and biodiversity she saw underwater and above that island. It made her an environmetal activist overnight and a disgruntled marine biologist too.
From her album, one could see what she says are class A coral reefs one of few remaining in the country then. The reefs teem with life where fish abound even close to the shores.Under the sea and against the blue waters is ablaze of colorscoming from its rich marine life. An inventory of these species runs into a thick document. All that is totally gone now, buried under heaps of soil and sand and other mining debris and Hazel's bio-marine survey is but a requiem to a robust life that could have been.
Of course, there is no point crowing about it as more than a decade had passed. Still, no amount of millions can ever recover this irreversible demise. Semirara mining owes Antique millions. But it also owes the people and the rest of the planet something more that is beyond the pecuniary interest of commerce.