26/08/2026
EO 122: A Mindanao-Sized Mining Frontier for the US Pax Silica
Nine million hectares.
That is roughly the size of Mindanao. For the Marcos administration, it represents the potential of the Philippines’ critical-minerals industry. But for millions of Filipinos, these are not simply mineral deposits waiting to be extracted. They are farms, forests, watersheds, ancestral territories, fishing grounds, homes, and livelihoods. So the question is not simply how much mineral wealth the Philippines can extract. It is who will control it, who will profit from it, and who will pay the price.
Marcos Jr signed EO 122 last August 18, 2026 focused on developing the Philippine’s critical minerals industry. What is not stated in the news is that the latest EO comes in the wake of the US-Philippines Critical Minerals Memorandum of Understanding which was signed on February 6 this year. The MOU seeks to support stable and resilient supply and value chains in critical minerals and rare earths particularly for the needs of the US. EO 122 is the domestic operationalization of the MOU and forms part of the basis for the Pax Silica initiative.
Nine million hectares is a massive mining frontier. The scale alone should concern us. Expanding mineral exploration and opening more areas to mining means putting more communities, agricultural lands, forests, watersheds, and coastal ecosystems in the path of extraction. The Philippines already faces food insecurity, landlessness, environmental destruction, and rural poverty. Turning more land and water over to mining can intensify competition for resources and threaten the livelihoods of communities that depend on them. Our farms cannot become collateral damage in a race for mineral investments.
The threat is even more serious for Indigenous Peoples and national minorities whose ancestral territories overlap with areas of mineral potential. The government can invoke free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), but FPIC cannot simply be a stamp of approval for mining projects. For years, communities have raised concerns about consultations being limited to selected individuals, pressure being exerted on communities to accept projects, and dissenting voices being subjected to intimidation and red-tagging. Consent is not genuine when people are pressured, divided, excluded, militarized and threatened for opposing a project. Ancestral communities must have the genuine power to determine what happens to their land.
Marcos Jr’s EO 122 seeks to streamline mining applications through a virtual one-stop shop and simultaneous processing of permits and regulatory clearances. The push to accelerate mining approvals treats regulatory processes as obstacles to investment, but environmental safeguards, scientific scrutiny, and community participation are not red tape. They are the mechanisms that allow people to question projects before irreversible damage is done. A faster permit is not progress if it means affected communities have less time and power to challenge a project.
The Marcos administration presents critical minerals as essential to renewable energy, batteries, electric vehicles, digital infrastructure, and the global clean-energy transition. But calling minerals “critical” does not make their extraction automatically just or sustainable. A “green economy” cannot be built by destroying forests, threatening watersheds, displacing Indigenous communities, undermining agriculture, and sacrificing poor communities. If the clean-energy transition simply shifts the environmental costs of extraction onto communities in the underdeveloped countries, then we must ask: Green for whom? Development for whom? The climate crisis must not become a blank check for corporations to extract more from our country. Industrialization for whom?
The government says critical minerals can help the Philippines industrialize by developing processing and downstream industries. But processing our minerals is not enough. Without strong requirements for Filipino ownership, technology transfer, domestic manufacturing, and technological development, we risk remaining what we have long been: a supplier of raw materials for industries and supply chains controlled by foreign monopoly capitalists. That is not genuine national industrialization. It is extractive development with a new label. The Philippines needs industries that create products, technologies, and decent jobs, not industries that dig up and ship out our natural wealth.
The push to privatize government-owned mining assets raises another fundamental question - if these minerals are supposedly critical to our national development, why should control over them be handed to private corporations? Strategic natural resources should serve the Filipino people, not become another source of wealth for corporations and political elites while communities bear the environmental and social costs. We need transparency over who controls these resources, who profits from them, and what the Filipino people actually gain.
EO 122, the US-Philippines MOU on critical minerals and the Pax Silica initiative all point to a grossly lopsided “development” model that will primarily benefit the US while leaving Filipinos with the the economic and social costs. Our minerals extracted, processed, then fed into the Pax Silica manufacturing hub to ensure that the US supply chain keeps running. All these, at the expense of sovereignty, the environment, and the domestic economy.
The Philippines needs national industrialization. We need domestic manufacturing. We need Filipino science and technology. We need decent jobs. We need renewable energy. Development should strengthen the productive capacity of the Filipino people, not make our country more attractive as a source of cheap raw materials for foreign supply chains. Our natural resources should serve Philippine agriculture, industry, workers, and communities.
Our farms are not mining sites.
Our mountains are not commodities.
Our ancestral domains are not empty spaces.
Our rivers are not expendable.
And our people will not be sacrificed for corporate profit.
Nine million hectares may be a mining opportunity to the Marcos administration and foreign investors, but for the Filipino people, it is a question of what kind of country we are building and leaving behind. We reject a development model that enriches a few while displacing communities, destroying ecosystems, and exporting our natural wealth.
No to a Mindanao-sized mining frontier.
Defend our land. Protect our communities. Uphold national sovereignty.
Fight for genuine national industrialization that serves the Filipino people, not foreign and corporate profit.
Junk EO 122 and the US-Philippines Critical Minerals Framework!
No to Pax Silica
