10/02/2026
Marcos Jr. Nails Coffin on National Patrimony with US-Philippines Critical Minerals Deal
Statement of Kalikasan People's Network for the Environment (Kalikasan PNE) on the Philippines-U.S. Critical Minerals MOU
February 8, 2026
The Marcos Jr. administration has once again betrayed the Filipino people. The signing of the Memorandum of Understanding on critical minerals between Environment Secretary Raphael Lotilla and U.S. Undersecretary Jacob Helberg on February 4, 2026, is nothing less than a brazen sell-out of our national patrimony. This is a treasonous act that flings open the gates of our mountains, watersheds, and ancestral lands to intensified imperialist extraction.
We have long warned that this regime would herald the deepened liberalization of our mining sector. This MOU is another nail driven into the coffin of our sovereignty. It is designed not for Filipino development but, by Washington's own admission, to "reinforce supply chains and bolster American interests and employment". This agreement glaringly serves the U.S. empire's scramble for nickel, copper, and cobalt, and not the welfare of the communities who will be displaced, poisoned, and militarized to extract them.
Who truly benefits from current Philippine mining? The sector contributes a pathetic less than 1% of GDP and employs barely 0.5% of the national workforce. Over 90% of our nickel ores are shipped abroad as cheap raw material. Our mineral wealth is bleeding outward towards foreign mining conglomerates, to elite comprador capitalists, and to the corrupt bureaucrat class that rubber-stamps every destructive permit. What is left behind are devastated mountains, dead rivers, dried-up wells, and shattered communities.
The people of Dupax del Norte know this truth in their bones. Today, residents of Barangay Bitnong are bravely barricading against Woggle Mining Corporation, defending over 3,000 hectares of ancestral land threatened by gold and copper extraction. In Didipio, the Tuwali-Ifugao people endured decades of OceanaGold's plunder with a demolished mountain, a dozen water sources dried up, violent dispersals, and 29 barricaders arrested during the pandemic. Their resistance is seared into the history of this struggle.
30 years since the passage of the Philippine Mining Act of 1995 (RA 7942), we have seen three decades of destruction, displacement, and death dressed up as "development". This neoliberal law allowed 100% foreign ownership of mining operations, slashed taxes for corporations, and delivered nothing to the Filipino people but misery.
And the cost is measured in blood. Global Witness and Kalikasan PNE's own joint investigation confirms the Philippines is Asia's deadliest country for land and environmental defenders for 12 consecutive years, with over 300 documented killings. One-third of these crimes are linked directly to mining. The Philippine military is the single biggest perpetrator of lethal attacks against defenders. Indigenous peoples have lost an area of land larger than Timor-Leste, equivalent to a fifth of their delineated territory, to mining in just three decades. Marcos Jr. has only deepened this reign of impunity.
Kalikasan PNE stands unequivocally with the people of Dupax del Norte, with the Kankanaey and Ibaloy of Benguet, the Tagbanua of Palawan, the defenders of Samar, and the communities across the Caraga region and elsewhere who continue to resist large-scale mining at the risk of their lives. Your barricades are the frontlines of national sovereignty.
We call on all Filipinos: Unite against imperialist large-scale plunder and extractivism. Resist the Marcos Jr. regime's wholesale surrender of our lands, waters, and futures to foreign capital. The mountains and rivers of this archipelago belong to the people, not to Washington, not to transnational mining corporations, and certainly not to the traitor in MalacaΓ±ang.
Defend our patrimony! Resist extractivism! Junk the Philippine Mining Act of 1995! Marcos Singilin!
