The Real Looters Wear Barongs

How can a government beg for climate aid with one hand while holding a chainsaw with the other? We are told to grieve over typhoons, rising seas, and lost lives, yet behind these tragedies are not just weather patterns but deliberate choices. Choices made by a state that claims to protect the people while selling off their lands, choking their rivers, and cutting down the last of their forests. Climate collapse in the Philippines is not just a natural disaster, it is a crime scene. The masterminds sit in high offices, signing mining deals, and collecting profits while the masses are left to drown, burn, and bury their dead.

Cartoon by Kaiser Aaron Caya/The Communicator

Just this year, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. renewed his push for the passage of the Mining Fiscal Reform Bill, hailing it as a key to a “sustainable and vibrant” mining industry. Without a doubt, the rationalization of the Mining Fiscal Regime is cloaked in sweet promises of sustainability, value addition, and national progress. Make no mistake: this is an open door for intensified plunder under the guise of reform. 

It is a calculated move to legalize and systematize the exploitation of our natural resources for foreign and comprador interests. While Marcos smiles beside mining executives and congratulates them for “embodying what it means to create value,” the people of Pakil, Laguna are bracing themselves against the felling of 3,700 trees to make way for the Ahunan Dam. These forests, part of the life-giving Sierra Madre range, are home not only to endangered species but also to the lives, culture, and survival of indigenous communities. 

This contradiction of asking for international funds to “address loss and damage” while enabling extractive and destructive activities reveals deep-rooted contradictions. It is apparent that this isn’t just poor planning—it’s state-sponsored sabotage. Under the Marcos-Duterte regime, development is not measured by the welfare of the masses but by the profits of the ruling class and foreign investors. 

So, we must ask—what value are we truly creating when the cost is irreparable loss? What more must we sacrifice when over 200,000 hectares of our land, mostly indigenous and agricultural territories, have already been scarred by large-scale mining? When we’ve already lost 1.42 million hectares of tree cover? Must we wait for an irreversible climate catastrophe worse than the six back-to-back typhoons that ravaged the country in 2024 before we realize that we are hurtling toward collapse—not by natural fate, but by deliberate exploitation?

Today, the government frames mining and mega-infrastructure as necessities for progress, yet what they advance is the same imperialist agenda that has historically treated the Philippines as nothing more than a resource colony. Let us not be fooled by the state’s rehearsed performances at climate summits or its flowery language about “swift, accessible, and human-centered” aid. These narratives are a smokescreen, masking the violent machinery of imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism. 

Worse, this very same government that touts environmental awards and global partnerships routinely unleashes fascist violence upon defenders of the environment. We continuously see news of brutal killings of Lumad leaders, farmers, indigenous rights advocates, and environmental defenders that are certainly not anomalies but are state-sanctioned acts to silence resistance and protect capital. As forests are cleared and rivers are dammed, so too are voices stifled with bullets and threats. 

However, in a bright light, some revolutionary forces have taken their fight for the masses further by sabotaging the equipment of large comprador firms, not out of mindless violence but as a last resort to halt irreversible ecological destruction. These actions, while contentious to some, are undeniably more effective in defending the environment than any ribbon-cutting ceremony or empty sustainability promise. Meanwhile, the corporations continuously walk free, armed with permits, backed by military escorts, and celebrated by the regime. 

It is evident that these greenwashing projects are not for the people; they are for the elite, the corporations, and their imperialist patrons. The Loss and Damage Fund may sound like a lifeline, but if the state continues to accommodate imperialist demands and capitalist interests, no amount of foreign aid can repair what they themselves are willfully destroying. 

The climate crisis is real, yes, but its devastation is magnified by exploitation, dependency, and greed. Our cities are modernized at the expense of rural life, and the ancestral lands are privatized in the name of investment. This blueprint we follow is not the one we made, it is the one imposed by foreign powers—blindly mimicked by a state desperate to please its imperialist masters. This is climate imperialism—and we must resist it.

To ask for climate aid while selling out our lands to the highest bidder is not just hypocrisy—it is betrayal. It is time to stop romanticizing this state as a victim of climate change. The true victims are the people, the forests, the mountains, the rivers, the indigenous communities pushed out of their homes, the farmers who lose their soil, and the activists silenced by force. The government is not acting in ignorance—it is acting in allegiance. To the capital. To imperialist domination. To itself.

If the government truly wanted to address climate change, it would protect our forests, stop displacing indigenous communities, ban large-scale mining, and hold foreign corporations accountable. But it won’t—because it serves not the people but the ruling class. Band-aid solutions like the Loss and Damage Fund may patch a wound, but they do nothing to stop the bleeding. Real change lies not in repair but in prevention. Not in foreign aid, but in national liberation. Until we end the political dynasty-driven system that thrives on oppression and extraction, no fund—no matter how large—can save us.

Development that kills our forests, our waters, and our people is not progress—it is plunder. Let us expose the hypocrisy of a government that demands aid while it destroys the remains for our future. Let us fight for a truly just and sovereign nation where our lands are not sold, our voices are not silenced, and our lives are not collateral for someone else’s profit. Rise. Resist. Serve the people.

Article: Caira Figues