Pass the People’s Mining Bill! Advance a Pro-People and Pro-Environment Mining Policy!

We welcome the refiling of the People’s Mining Bill (HB 8248) by the Makabayan bloc, together with environmental groups and mining-affected communities. This proposed measure is a long-overdue alternative to the Philippine Mining Act of 1995, which, for 31 years, has allowed the plunder of our lands, the destruction of ecosystems, and the displacement of Indigenous communities across the country.

The devastating consequences of this law are evident in communities such as Dupax del Norte in Nueva Vizcaya, where residents continue to resist the operations of large-scale mining corporations like Woggle Corporation and FCF Minerals Corporation despite repression, arrests, and the violent dispersal of people’s barricades defending their land and livelihood. In the Cordillera and across other Indigenous territories in the country—including parts of Mindanao, Palawan, and the Sierra Madre—communities face manipulated Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) processes, militarization, and the systematic violation of Indigenous Peoples’ rights to make way for mining projects.

For decades, the Philippine Mining Act of 1995 has opened the country’s mineral resources to foreign corporations, allowing up to 100% foreign ownership while sacrificing the welfare of the Filipino, including Indigenous Peoples, and the environment. Across the archipelago, Indigenous and other mining-impacted communities continue to bear the social, cultural, and ecological costs of mining operations that dispossess them of their ancestral lands and threaten their sources of livelihood.

Last February 4, the Marcos Jr. administration signed a memorandum of understanding with the United States to “boost cooperation on critical minerals,” a move that further entrenches foreign control over the country’s mineral resources. Under the guise of “energy transition” and “strategic mineral supply chains,” this understanding accelerates the expansion of large-scale mining projects in ancestral lands to serve the geopolitical and industrial needs of the United States and its allies. Instead of addressing the long-standing environmental destruction and rights violations caused by mining, this agreement threatens to deepen the same extractive policies that have dispossessed Indigenous Peoples of their lands and livelihoods. Indigenous Peoples already bear the ill effects of the current framework of the mining industry in the Philippines. Now, because of this agreement, Marcos Jr. is opening up indigenous communities to further exploitation and abuse.

The People’s Mining Bill offers a fundamentally different framework—one that places the interests of communities, environmental protection, and national industrial development above corporate profit. It recognizes the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities to genuine control over their lands and resources.

We stand with the communities who have long resisted destructive mining projects and call on lawmakers to pass the People’s Mining Bill. After 31 years of plunder and destruction under the Philippine Mining Act of 1995, it is time to scrap this anti-people law and advance a mining policy that truly serves the Filipino people and respects Indigenous rights.

Defend ancestral lands. Stop corporate plunder. Pass the People’s Mining Bill!

Reference: Beverly Longid, national convener