Save Zambales: PMCJ, local groups launch province-wide campaign to protect agri lands, watersheds, seascapes, and to fight against coal, mining, and extractives
- Media Communications
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
From high up its mountaintops to deep under its seas, Zambales is known for its breathtaking beauty, rich, natural wonders. Its land produces the sweetest century mangoes in the world, and boasts many natural resources needed for development. Its waters have nurtured people for centuries. However, its rich natural resources attracted greedy corporations, whose extractive activities, protected by the province’s powerful elites, have endangered the people and environment in the province.
Mining, logging and deforestation, quarrying, and the operation of a coal-fired power plant in Masinloc are major environmental and security disasters hindering the present and the future of Zambaleños, who are known for living in peaceful harmony with nature, by continuing to destroy the commons, and if unimpeded will eventually place the future of all Zambaleños at risk. These destructive activities have led to flooding, erosion of coastal areas, sea-level rise, contamination and destruction of water bodies, and coral reef damage, resulting in numerous fatalities and significant property damage in the province.
With global warming continually intensifying the climate crisis, these natural disasters will only get worse. When paired with unabated destructive human activities, the threat to human safety and environmental health becomes exponential. Philippine Movement for Climate Justice (PMCJ) and other local organizations thus recognize the need for affected people to stand up, resist, and speak out to defend their land and save Zambales.
The people of Zambales have the right to their land’s resources, health, and environmental balance. This inherent right, enshrined in our constitution, must be protected. PMCJ, together with allied groups and networks in Zambales, launched the Save Zambales campaign as a comprehensive call to stop the continuing destruction of the province, demand accountability to all those involved and responsible, and push for policies and programs that will protect and rehabilitate the agricultural lands, seascapes and marine, and watershed ecosystem of Zambales. This is building on the efforts of existing anti-mining, anti-coal, and agrarian reform initiatives operating in the province. This is building on the remaining hopes of the people of Zambales for a common, secured future.
This campaign aims not just to fight for access, ownership, and control of embattled agricultural lands but also to secure the ancestral lands of indigenous peoples, to protect municipal waters as commons, from wanton destruction of commercial fishers and vessels. The fishing grounds must remain a common resource to support the lives and livelihoods of Zambalenos, protected from the rapacious appetite of capitalist corporations.
The endeavor to Save Zambales is timely because of the recent flooding and agricultural damage costing 15 million pesos caused by the monsoon-intensified typhoon parade of Typhoons Crising, Dante, and Emong, with significant damage to the seawall in San Felipe and submerging 251.6 hectares of rice fields in Santa Cruz. It dumped a huge amount of rampaging water from the emaciated mountains, rendering the people in the lowlands and coastal towns helpless.
Mining has also created land conflicts in Sta. Cruz and Candelaria, with farmers complaining that the land and water sources near their homes and farms are contaminated because of the mining operations. Worse, this has reportedly left them without livelihood and security of tenure. According to the Global Forest Watch, the loss of tree cover in Zambales amounted to 5.79 kilohectares from 2001 to 2024, marking an unprecedented level of environmental degradation. Mining has contributed to this, poisoning the soil in forests and farms with heavy metals. Environmental groups also noted that Zambales faces dredging, reclamation, and quarrying of coastal areas. These abominations against nature have caused irreversible and countless damages to the natural resources and ecological balance of the province.
With such an aggressive push by exploitative forces who value profit more than people, there is no doubt that the Save Zambales campaign will face an uphill battle. But the Zambaleños’ resolve is strong and unwavering as they fight for life and the lands that have sustained them for generations. ###
FOR INQUIRIES:
Christian John P. Argallon
Junior Media and Communications Officer
Philippine Movement for Climate Justice
Sheila Abarra
Senior Media and Communications Officer
Philippine Movement for Climate Justice
Viber:+639916692356
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