After nearly two decades of resistance, an Indigenous community in the southern Philippines secured a historic legal victory when the country’s Supreme Court issued a rare environmental protection order against a nickel mining operation in one of Southeast Asia’s most biodiverse landscapes. The ruling handed the Pala’wan people of Brooke’s Point, Palawan, a powerful tool in their long fight to protect their ancestral domain and the forests of Mount Mantalingahan.
At a glance
- Writ of kalikasan: On August 16, 2023 C.E., the Philippine Supreme Court issued this rare legal remedy — reserved for environmental threats affecting multiple cities or provinces — against the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the Mines and Geosciences Bureau, Ipilan Nickel Corporation, and Celestial Mining.
- Mount Mantalingahan Protected Landscape: This 120,457-hectare range, nominated for UNESCO World Heritage status, is considered sacred by the Pala’wan people and serves as a critical watershed for five municipalities — yet roughly 80% of the mining concession falls within its core zone.
- Indigenous land rights: On the same day as the Supreme Court ruling, the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples issued a separate cease-and-desist order against the mining companies, to remain in effect until they could prove they had secured free, prior, and informed consent from affected communities.
Eighteen years of refusal
The Pala’wan people have been saying no since 2005 C.E. Celestial Mining had held a production-sharing agreement with the national government since 1993 C.E., but the community never consented. Exploration proceeded from 2006 C.E. to 2009 C.E., and by 2017 C.E., mining crews had cut around 7,000 trees inside the concession area.
Then-mayor Mary Jean Feliciano ordered operations to stop. The company kept going. In 2021 C.E., Feliciano was suspended from office after the mining firm complained she had abused her authority. Municipal requests to the Mines and Geosciences Bureau went unanswered. The national environment ministry extended the mineral agreement through 2025 C.E.
For a community fighting not just a corporation but layers of federal inaction, the Supreme Court’s decision to act felt extraordinary. “That writ of kalikasan has given hope to me, to us, because for a long time, it seemed like we had lost all hope,” Feliciano, now serving as vice mayor, told Mongabay.
Why the writ matters
The writ of kalikasan — “kalikasan” means nature in Filipino — is one of the world’s more unusual legal instruments. It exists to protect Filipinos’ constitutional right to a balanced and healthy environment, and courts typically reserve it for situations where harm threatens residents across multiple provinces or cities.
Lawyer Grizelda Mayo-Anda, executive director of the Environmental Legal Assistance Center in Palawan, called the court’s decision “unprecedented.” She believes the Supreme Court may have recognized that the five municipalities covered by the protected landscape were equivalent in scale to cities — a legal interpretation that could open the door for future cases across the province.
“The issuance of the writ of kalikasan could establish precedents for Palawan,” Mayo-Anda said. Other communities facing extractive threats, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, may now cite this ruling to defend Palawan’s forests.
A landscape under pressure
The stakes reach beyond one community’s home. Biodiversity scientist Aldrin Mallari points out that Typhoon Rai in 2021 C.E. destroyed 126,000 hectares of northern Palawan’s forests, fragmenting wildlife habitat into isolated pockets. Southern Palawan’s forests — the very area around Mantalingahan — now carry even greater responsibility as a source of seeds, wildlife movement, and genetic diversity for the whole island.
Without connected habitat, wildlife populations in those isolated fragments begin to interbreed, producing unhealthy offspring and eventually declining. Mining in the south, Mallari argues, would accelerate exactly that outcome. The writ, he said, is “an affirmation that even within the judiciary, the right of nature to exist is given importance.”
The Pala’wan people have also documented flooding and contamination of fishing areas in Brooke’s Point that they link to mining activity — harms the Supreme Court cited explicitly in its ruling.
What comes next
The writ is a beginning, not an ending. Activists describe it as the first phase of a longer court process they hope will ultimately cancel the mining project entirely. The court set a 10-day deadline for agencies and companies to respond, and all parties submitted filings — but the court was in recess when the Mongabay report was published, and no date for the next hearing had been set.
Ipilan Nickel Corporation maintains that its operations predate the 1997 C.E. Indigenous People’s Rights Act consent requirements, and that the protected area designation preserves existing mining contracts. The company says it does not operate in areas that overlap with the protected range and remains “actively engaged with all stakeholders.”
That dispute will play out in future hearings. But for a community that spent 18 years being ignored by the agencies meant to protect them, having the highest court in the Philippines formally acknowledge their concerns is itself a milestone — one that Feliciano described as proof that “there is still a government agency we can turn to, one that will listen to us.”
Read more
For more on this story, see: Mongabay
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Ghana establishes a landmark marine protected area at Cape Three Points
- Indigenous land rights momentum reaches COP30 — 160 million hectares and counting
- The Good News for Humankind archive on indigenous rights
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