A Philippine environmental group warned that the government’s critical-minerals policy could accelerate mining across at least nine million hectares of prospective areas while weakening safeguards for Indigenous Peoples, local communities and environmental defenders.
The Center for Environmental Concerns-Philippines (CEC) said Executive Order No. 122 directs mineral exploration toward prospective deposits, freed-up mining tenements, offshore areas and government-owned mining assets for commercial development.
Executive Order No. 122, signed by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Aug. 18, established a national framework for developing the Philippines’ critical-minerals industry.
It identifies at least 9 million hectares of prospective mineral areas and directs the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, through the Mines and Geosciences Bureau, to carry out a national exploration and mineral reservation program.
The order also calls for streamlined mining applications through a virtual one-stop shop, allowing national and local permits and clearances to be processed simultaneously rather than sequentially.
In a policy brief titled Critical Minerals for Whom?, CEC said the order expands the government’s push to develop minerals considered strategic to clean energy, digital technologies, advanced manufacturing and defense.
CEC said the policy “deepens the liberalized, foreign-oriented, and extractive framework” established under the Philippine Mining Act of 1995, which it blamed for environmental destruction, displacement and human rights violations in mining-affected communities.
The group raised concerns over provisions that impose a “Use It or Lose It” policy on critical-mineral mining tenements and streamline the approval of mining applications.
Under the order, contractors that fall behind approved timelines, work programs or development commitments may face cancellation or other sanctions. CEC said mineral extraction should be guided by national needs rather than commercial timelines.
EO 122 also directs agencies to establish a virtual one-stop shop, replace sequential permitting with simultaneous processing and impose clearer timelines for approvals.
CEC warned that mining decisions involve ancestral domains, agricultural lands, forests, watersheds, biodiversity, water security and community livelihoods.
“Public consultation, FPIC, EIAs, scientific review, and local decision-making require sufficient time and should never be compressed merely to meet investment or project timelines,” the brief said.
The order also allows canceled, expired, relinquished, surrendered or otherwise freed-up mining tenements to be considered for designation as critical mineral reservations after their mineral potential is verified.
CEC said such areas could instead be prioritized for environmental rehabilitation or local livelihood development.
The group said expanded exploration could place greater pressure on communities whose lands and livelihoods overlap with mineral-rich areas.
Prospective mining areas may include ancestral domains, farms and agrarian reform communities, fishing grounds and coastal areas, forests, watersheds, biodiversity areas and residential communities, according to the brief.
CEC said accelerated exploration risks worsening land grabbing, displacement, loss of agricultural and fisheries livelihoods, water conflicts, community division and environmental degradation, particularly for Indigenous Peoples, peasants, fisherfolk and other rural communities.
The group also questioned the composition of the reorganized Mining Industry Coordinating Council.
EO 122 does not institutionalize representation for mining-affected communities, Indigenous Peoples’ organizations, workers, independent scientists, environmental groups or human rights organizations, the brief said.
“This exclusion reinforces a top-down approach in which policies are formulated and implemented by State institutions without the meaningful participation of those who bear the direct consequences of mineral extraction,” it said.
CEC called for affected communities to have guaranteed roles in decision-making, monitoring, evaluation, grievance resolution and accountability mechanisms.
“A critical-minerals policy developed without those who live on and depend upon mineral-rich lands perpetuates the top-down and weakly accountable governance that has characterized Philippine mining for decades,” the brief said.
The group also warned about framing critical-mineral development as a matter of national security and defense.
CEC said such language risks treating community opposition, environmental advocacy and the defense of ancestral domains as security threats rather than legitimate exercises of civil and political rights.
Citing Global Witness data published in 2025, the brief said 306 land and environmental defenders were killed in the Philippines from 2012 to 2024. About one-third of the documented killings were related to mining, it said.
CEC called for EO 122 to be revoked and the Philippine Mining Act of 1995 repealed.
It also urged the government to impose a moratorium on mining while a new framework is established, enact stronger protections for environmental defenders and require genuine free, prior and informed consent at every stage of mining, including exploration, extraction, water use, processing and mine closure.
