When the Fight Fractures — Mining, Manipulation, and the Broken Writ

This story was first featured in ELAC's 2024 Annual Report.

The unraveling began in late 2023, but by early 2024, the effects were undeniable: a once-powerful legal petition—the Writ of Kalikasan against Ipilan Nickel Corporation (INC) in Brooke’s Point—had quietly collapsed. Originally granted by the Supreme Court to compel government and corporate actors to respond to environmental threats, the case lost traction after two key petitioners, Julhadi and Dulay, reportedly reached settlements with the mining company. IP leaders who consistently opposed mining attempted to intervene in the petition but were denied the opportunity to do so by the court. Without their participation, the case was dismissed. The forest, again, stood undefended.

But the betrayal wasn’t a mystery—it was manufactured.

This wasn’t simply a story of people changing their minds. It was about how extractive industries use Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds not as tools for accountability, but as weapons of persuasion. Vulnerable Indigenous Peoples (IPs)—facing hunger, illness, and lack of services—were approached with offers: small infrastructure projects, scholarships, relief goods, and cash. In a province where needs are urgent and support is scarce, these gestures seemed generous. But they came with strings.

CSR became the currency for division. Mining companies, sometimes with the complicity of local actors, facilitated the creation of parallel Indigenous Political Structures (IPS)—new leadership groups composed of those more amenable to mining operations. These IPS groups were granted formal recognition, giving the appearance of consent. Communities that once stood together were fractured.

This was especially true in Brooke’s Point. Once a bastion of unified IP resistance, it became a flashpoint for conflicting claims, divided councils, and frayed kinship. The collective resistance to destructive extractive projects weakened—not because people had forgotten their rights or their land, but because poverty is powerful, and systems are designed to exploit it.

But this is not the failure of the IPs. It is the failure of a system that allows mining corporations to buy silence instead of paying proper taxes, that rewards division and punishes solidarity, and that turns “consultation” into a checklist for compliance.

In Palawan—a narrow island with fragile ecosystems and steep forested watersheds—mining is not just dangerous. It is irreversible. The damage is not abstract: tailings flow into rivers. Sediment clouds coral reefs. Indigenous sacred grounds where spirits still dwell and families still harvest, are cleared for roads and test drills.

Yet, amidst this fracturing, not all was lost.

Still, despite everything, there is resistance. Some IP leaders still stand firm, their names erased from company signboards and their communities besieged. But they endure. And with them, ELAC continues to walk.

There is a deeper question beneath this story. If human consciousness is capable of grasping suffering, if we understand the disasters, the famine, the floods—why do we continue to destroy? Why don’t we see what’s coming?

"There are none so blind as those who will not see.

The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know."

Maybe it’s because some still choose not to see. Or maybe, for those in power, destruction is not a cost—it is a calculation.

But for those who live on this land, whose roots are in the soil and whose names are etched into mountains and rivers, the destruction is never abstract. It is felt. It is feared. And it must be stopped.