Alberto was enjoying an evening out with friends in the small-town of Carmen last September, when unidentified assailants on a motorbike drove by and peppered them with bullets. He and his friend died on the spot.
The shooting saw Alberto and his friend become the latest victims of environmental defender killings in the Philippines – already the deadliest country in Asia for those speaking up for their land and environment. Murders linked to mining make up a third of all killings Global Witness has documented in the country.
Their deaths come as the Philippines jostles to position itself as a leading global producer of nickel and other critical minerals used in the energy transition. But a recent investigation by Global Witness and Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment (Kalikasan PNE) has laid bare the risks this poses to the country’s diverse Indigenous communities and to biodiversity.
As part of those investigations, we found that more than a quarter of the landmass earmarked for critical mineral mining clashes with Indigenous land, with those communities already having lost a staggering fifth of their delineated territory since the 1990s.
More than a quarter of critical mineral mining zones also clash with biodiversity zones, while one in five individual mining permits clashes, in some way, with land that is meant to be legally protected from mining.
We also documented an uptick in environmental defender killings carried out by the Philippine military, which is already the single biggest perpetrator of lethal attacks across the country. This means the country’s push to revive its mining sector will endanger frontline communities and the ecosystems they protect.
Indigenous communities are acutely vulnerable to the incursions of mining companies.
In total, Indigenous communities have lost an area of land bigger than Timor-Leste (or 2.2 million football fields) to mining in the Philippines over the past three decades. And this is likely to be a significant underestimate, as our analysis only looked at officially delineated Indigenous land, which represents around half of the total area of such land.
Communities have struggled to get official titles for their land, with the process often dragging on for years, if not decades. The state body tasked with overseeing this process, the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, has been accused of failing communities.
Despite being one of the first countries in the world to enshrine the rights of Indigenous communities to resist mining projects in law, in practice companies and authorities trample on this right.
Mining projects have been tarnished by allegations of corruption and influence-peddling, with communities frequently pitted against each other so that companies can obtain ‘free, prior and informed consent’ (FPIC). Recently, the government proposed fast-tracking the FPIC process along with other measures to speed up the permitting process.
Nearly two-thirds of all the Indigenous land claimed by mining companies for critical minerals is on Mindanao – a southern island long gripped by decades of civil conflict. For example, nearly all the killings linked to mining that Global Witness has documented in the Philippines since 2012 took place here.
Almost all the killings of Indigenous defenders happened here too. Mindanao is also home to the Philippines’ nickel mining hub, Caraga, which extracts ore worth hundreds of millions of pounds each year.
Indigenous campaigners have spoken of their fear of becoming “collateral damage” in the global hunt for ‘transition’ minerals.
The relationship between mining and killings is not accidental. Armed men, including military, paramilitary and private security forces, often guard mine sites, fuelling violence and reprisals. Extractive exploitation is also a flashpoint for a long–running conflict between communist insurgents and the armed forces.
Communities often find themselves smeared as terrorists or insurgents if they oppose mining projects. This practice – known as ‘red tagging’ — puts defenders at risk of being arrested, abducted or even killed. In fact, our analysis found that the military was the biggest culprit behind killings and arrests of environmental defenders in the Philippines, responsible for 64 out of 117 killings (56%) of Indigenous defenders that Global Witness documented between 2012 and 2023.
Similarly, the military was involved in more than 45% of recorded arrests of people identified as land or environmental defenders since 2017, according to data collected by Forum-Asia. And the Government, led by Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, has increasingly used anti-terror legislation against civil society organisations, with severe implications for marginalised communities.
Organisations critical of destructive industries like mining, such as Kalikasan PNE, have been red-tagged, and face the threat of asset freezes based on arbitrary government decisions. This weaponisation of anti-terror measures creates an environment where activists live in fear of surveillance, harassment, and arrest, stifling legitimate dissent and humanitarian work.
Abductions of defenders have reportedly skyrocketed under President Marcos. Global Witness recorded seven defender disappearances in 2023 alone. Most abductions reportedly happen in heavily militarised areas.
While the government has called on mining companies to protect biodiversity and empower communities, it is not clear how this will be implemented.
Mining can have devastating environmental impacts. Communities in the Philippines have watched their water sources turn red and their farmland poisoned from nickel tailings. Our analysis showed that since 2010 the country has lost forest cover three times the size of New York City in mining zones. This has stripped away the country’s resilience to climate-related catastrophes, including typhoons and floods.
We urgently need stronger protections for defenders and communities affected by mining in the Philippines. This must include passing a law to protect environmental defenders and rewriting the investment-friendly mining law in favour of communities and their rights.
Crucially, the Philippine government must end the militarisation of communities impacted by mining, especially Indigenous ones, and hold the military to account for harms against defenders. International companies and investors have obligations too. The EU, which is currently negotiating a free-trade agreement with the Philippines, must ensure that human rights and Indigenous protections are prioritised over its strategic interests in the country’s critical minerals.
International companies sourcing from or investing in the Philippines’ mineral sector should adopt a zero-tolerance approach to reprisals. They should also commit to not sourcing minerals extracted in protected or key biodiversity areas, nor places where communities have opposed mining operations.
The world needs critical minerals to facilitate a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. But this transition cannot come at the expense of frontline communities and the people most exposed to the impacts of climate change. Defenders in the Philippines know this better than most.
You can read Global Witness and Kalikasan PNE’s report on critical mineral mining in the Philippines here.
Hanna Hindström is a Senior Investigator at Global Witness, covering human rights, the environment and climate justice.
Ana Celestial is a representative of the Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment, a nationwide environmental campaign centre advocating for grassroots environmental justice in the Philippines.
Read more:
- Opinion
- By Oscar Berglund
- 21 February, 2025
