The Philippines ranks as the second largest producer of nickel and the world’s leading exporter of raw nickel ore. Yet the same mining operations that feed global supply chains are reshaping—and in many cases devastating—the land, water, and communities where extraction takes place. Nickel mining in the Caraga Region, the country’s most concentrated mining zone, has touched nearly every aspect of daily life for residents: the air they breathe, the water they drink, the soil they farm, and the safety they expect from their own government.
These numbers only hint at the scale. A 2025 report by Climate Rights International drew on interviews with 57 residents and workers living near nickel mines in Dinagat Island and Surigao del Sur. What they described is a slow-moving crisis that accelerates every time a typhoon hits—and the Philippines gets hit often.
What Mining Does to Land, Water, and People
The Caraga Region alone hosts 23 operating nickel mines—more than any other region in the country. Mining and exploration already cover roughly one-fifth of the Philippine landmass, and nearly half of all mining tenements overlap ecological zones that the Philippine Mining Act of 1995 intended to protect. In Surigao del Sur, 70 percent of nickel mining areas and 80 percent of copper mining areas intersect with key biodiversity hotspots. Rivers in these areas have run red from extraction runoff, contaminating water sources that farming communities depend on.
Who Bears the Cost, Who Collects the Value
About 26 percent of mining zones are located within ancestral domains, primarily in Mindanao and northern Luzon. Indigenous peoples, who have used traditional ecological knowledge to sustain forests that make up three-fourths of their 14 million hectares of land, accounted for nearly half of the 17 environmental defenders killed or forcibly disappeared from 2012 to 2023 in cases linked to mining. The Philippines remains the deadliest country in the world for environmental defenders.
Despite the wealth nickel mining generates for companies, residents in Dinagat Island reported receiving inadequate compensation for the use of their land, destruction of their crops, or use of their homes and other structures. Many nickel mining companies in the Caraga Region have ties to active and former politicians, politically connected families, and wealthy businesspeople—links that complicate accountability.
Global demand for nickel is expected to increase roughly 60 percent by 2040 in a scenario aligned with the Paris Agreement climate goals—driven largely by electric vehicle batteries, mobile phones, turbines, and other green technologies. More than 90 percent of Philippine nickel ore exports go to China, where the raw ore is processed. From 2023 to 2024, nickel ore exports to Indonesia surged by more than 4,000 percent as Indonesian smelters faced shortages. The contradiction is sharp: minerals mined for the green energy transition are leaving a toxic footprint on the communities that supply them.
When the Fine Print Determines Survival
Beyond the headline figures, several specific dynamics determine how badly a given community gets affected.
Water Pollution Has No Downstream Boundary
Fisherfolk in Dinagat Island and Surigao del Sur described how mining-related water pollution has harmed fisheries to the point where continuing to fish is difficult or impossible. Farmers reported that mining has made farming much harder—and in some cases impossible—due to loss of farmland, frequent flooding of fields from mining-choked rivers, and dust and water pollution from nearby operations. Rice farming is especially vulnerable because it occupies lowland areas that flood and collect silt.
Health Problems Without a Diagnosis
Residents living near nickel mines reported concerns that recently developed respiratory and skin ailments are linked to pollution from nearby operations. Dust from mining activities, combined with contaminated water, creates a cumulative exposure that is hard to measure but impossible to avoid when the nearest drinking water source runs red.
Compensation That Doesn’t Compensate
Even when mining companies provide payments for land use, residents described amounts that did not cover the actual value of destroyed crops, damaged homes, or disrupted livelihoods. With powerful political and economic interests backing many mining operations, individual communities have limited leverage to negotiate or seek redress.
Violence as a Feature, Not a Bug
Multiple interviewees knew individuals whose killings they believe were linked to anti-mining activities or who had experienced attacks, harassment, or intimidation themselves. Some have faced Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation—legal actions designed to silence activism by burying targets in legal costs. The Philippines’ status as the most dangerous country in Asia for environmental defenders is not abstract; it is enforced case by case.
What Can Be Done About It
The report makes clear that different actors have different levers. None are quick fixes, but each addresses a distinct part of the problem.
For Mining Companies: Remediation and Transparency
The Climate Rights International report recommends that nickel companies take immediate steps to remedy water and air pollution caused by their operations and properly dispose of mine waste to minimize environmental pollution. The Philippine Nickel Industry Association has stated that caring for the environment is a cornerstone of its members’ operations, noting that as of December 2024, PNIA members spent P1.1 billion on environmental programs, including 35.1 million trees planted across 14,612 hectares. Whether these programs match the scale of the damage—230,000 hectares of tree cover lost in just over a decade—remains an open question.
For Battery and EV Companies: Supply Chain Leverage
Electric vehicle and battery manufacturers that directly or indirectly source nickel from the Philippines have a role the report describes as underutilized. These companies can use their purchasing power to require suppliers to end rights abuses, clean up water and air pollution, and protect the right to a healthy environment. Without this pressure from the top of the supply chain, local accountability mechanisms are often too weak to force change.
For Communities: Documentation and Collective Action
For residents in mining areas, documentation of environmental damage, health impacts, and inadequate compensation creates a record that can support legal claims and advocacy. Indigenous groups have called for stricter FPIC implementation, genuine consultations, military withdrawal from ancestral lands, and centering indigenous knowledge in conservation efforts. These demands are grounded in the same traditional ecological knowledge that has sustained forests for generations—knowledge that mining operations are systematically destroying.
For Government: Enforcement and Accountability
The Philippine Mining Act of 1995 prohibits mining in legally protected areas, yet about half of all mining tenements overlap ecological zones. Enforcement of existing law—rather than new legislation—would address many of the documented abuses. Carlos Conde, a Filipino rights advocate, noted that the CRI report highlights the suffering of mostly poor Filipinos near nickel mining communities, compounded by negligence and inaction by national and local governments.
Frequently Asked Questions
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What This Means Going Forward
The tension between mining for the green transition and the destruction mining causes on the ground is not going to resolve itself. A 60 percent increase in global nickel demand by 2040 means more pressure on the Caraga Region and other mining zones, not less. For every ton of nickel shipped to China or Indonesia, there is a cost borne by communities that is not reflected in the price of a battery. The question is whether the companies, governments, and consumers at the other end of the supply chain will treat that cost as someone else’s problem—or as part of the real price of transition.
If this was useful, you might also want to read how grassroots groups across the Philippines are organizing against pollution.
Sources
Tackling plastic pollution in the Philippines — A look at another major environmental challenge facing the country and the policy responses being tested.
“Broken Promises:” Philippines Nickel Mining Causes Rights Abuses and Increases Climate Vulnerability. Climate Rights International, November 2025.
A case of greenwashing: How PH energy transition comes at cost of lives, biodiversity. Philstar.com, December 2024.
Mining under fire as Philippines battered by storms. SunStar, December 2024.
