Our Global Campaign

The push for 100 percent “renewable” energy, initiated by the global North, has led to extreme environmental destruction, numerous human rights violations, and violence in the global South. This idea of an energy transition from fossil fuel to “renewable” energy is designed to continue powering industries that are mainly the leading cause of global ecological destruction. A “renewable” energy future will require large-scale critical, or transition, minerals and metals to build the infrastructure, which will lead to massive and extreme extractivism, particularly in the Global South. Because it is still designed to exploit natural resources, which only provide short-term benefits to a few people, it will not help to save the planet.

 This is why the mining industry in the global south is expanding and becoming more aggressive. From land-based mining, they are now targeting to operate offshore mining in different municipal waters that directly destroy coastal environments and affect coastal communities. This is also why the International Seabed Authority is pushing hard to open various sites for deep-sea mining in the Asia Pacific Region.

Climate change mitigation projects such as hydroelectric dams, wind turbines, and solar panel farms mostly penetrate into Indigenous People’s Ancestral Domains, Forest, and Coastal Areas, which leads to community displacement, loss of livelihood, loss of culture, environmental destruction, and human rights violations for those who resist, defending their communities and asserting their rights. Marketed as a solution, it often prioritizes profit over people and ecosystems. We must resist greenwashing and fight for a just energy transition.

According to the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia, Indonesia, a major producer of nickel, holds about 25% of the world’s nickel reserves. In 2020, the country produced 760,000 metric tons of nickel and is focusing on expanding downstream industries such as refining and electric vehicle (EV) battery production. The Philippines, the world’s second-largest nickel producer, contributed approximately 280,000 metric tons of nickel in 2021, along with significant quantities of copper, gold, and other critical metals for electronics and renewable energy technologies. Viet Nam has substantial reserves of tungsten and rare earth elements, though production and refinement are still in the early stages. Malaysia plays a key role in rare earth processing, while Thailand, though smaller in the critical minerals sector, has notable tin reserves and a growing electronics manufacturing base.

According to UNDP’s, Asia-Pacific is the most disaster-prone region in the world. With its extensive coastlines, low-lying territories, and many small island states, the Region is highly susceptible to rising sea levels and weather extremes, such as drought, flooding and typhoons.

Based  on climate trends and projections of the new IPCC AR6 report, Asia and the Pacific will be faced with more heat extremes, marine heatwaves, erratic rainfall, and rising sea levels, with major impacts on people’s lives and livelihood, especially the poorest and the marginalized.

Half of Asia-Pacific’s population (about 2.4 billion people) live in low-lying coastal areas. Climate change has the potential to devastate countless coastal communities across the region. To protect lives and livelihoods, we must limit global temperature increases to below 1.5°C through climate mitigation and implement climate change adaptation strategies.

But in reality, what’s happening in Global South, particularly in the Philippines, contradicted their objective. According to UNDP, the Philippine share of global GHG emissions is 0.48%. Yet, we are at number 121 in the climate vulnerable index ranking, which means a higher number means a higher vulnerability to climate change. But even though the Philippines has low global carbon participation, the Philippine  Government is more focused on Climate Mitigation projects where most of the hosted communities only get injustice for those projects. We also became part of the global critical minerals supply chain that required us to open more mining sites, which is also happening in other Asia Pacific countries. 

The global north and other developed countries that significantly contribute to global carbon emissions are pushing their agenda that Renewable Energy will save the planet, but it will be at the cost of third-world countries. 

There is a global climate emergency, and we should stop using fossil fuels. But we can never defend our planet by blowing up mountains and digging our seas and oceans. There will never be a just energy transition if these mitigation projects and mining sites that are penetrating communities bring acts of violence, poverty, hunger, displacement, and environmental destruction. 

If renewable energy was designed for massive use and its main concern is the economy, then it was probably designed and propagated to save the industry and not the planet. 

Blue Earth Defense will launch a general campaign to fight back against the dominant narrative that the RE will save the planet and expose how violent and destructive this technology is to different communities of Asia Pacific, particularly in the Philippines.