18/01/2026
PASTORAL STATEMENT
January 18, 2026
๐๐จ๐๐ฅ, ๐๐จ๐ง๐ฌ๐๐ข๐๐ง๐๐, ๐๐ง๐ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐๐จ๐ฌ๐ญ ๐๐๐ข๐ ๐๐ฒ ๐๐จ๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ง๐ข๐ญ๐ข๐๐ฌ
As the government reviews the coal operating contract on Semirara Island ahead of its 2027 expiration, our country stands before a moral reckoningโone that demands discernment rooted in truth, justice, and care for life.
This decision is not merely technical or neutral. It will reveal whose lives matter, whose voices count, and what kind of future we are willing to accept.
On Semirara, a seaweed farmer once watched black coal particles settle on his growing lines, knowing that months of labor and his familyโs only income were being quietly erased. Repeated across the island in many forms, this experience tells us more about coal than any balance sheet ever will.
His story is not an exception. It is a pattern.
Semirara has paid the price for decades
Semirara hosts the largest open-pit coal mine in the Philippines. It is also an island of extraordinary life, being home to nearly all known mangrove species in the country, and once sustained by fishing, seaweed farming, and healthy coastal ecosystems.
Coal mining reorganized the island around extraction, with land, sea, and labor placed at the service of profit. Decisions about Semirara were made far from the communityโ by institutions and boardrooms that would never breathe its air, drink its water, or raise children on its shores.
Yes, employment was offered, but what cost.
Traditional livelihoods were weakened.
Ecosystems were degraded.
Dependency replaced self-determination.
After decades of extraction and billions in profit, many families remain poor, exposed to risk, and uncertain about tomorrow.
This is not development. This is dispossession managed over time.
When livelihoods are destroyed, poverty is manufactured
The experience of Semiraraโs seaweed farmers exposes how this system works.
In the 1980s, seaweed farming supported nearly a third of the islandโs population with positive benefits of improving food security, keeping children in school, and encouraging communities to protect coral reefs from destructive fishing.
When coal operations intensified, pollution followed.
Coal particulates and wastewater damaged aquaculture areas.
Farms collapsed.
Families lost their income overnight.
Others were forced to relocate at great personal cost.
Coastal spaces were privatized, and access to the sea was taken from those who had depended on it for generations.
Poverty did not arrive by chance: It was produced by policy choices treating community livelihoods as expendable.
These outcomes were not unforeseen; they were tolerated.
Coalโs defenders speak of necessity; people live the consequences.
Coal is repeatedly justified as essential to national development and energy security.
Yet the reality tells a different story.
The Philippines remains heavily dependent on imported coal while electricity prices remain high. Market volatility thus determines household bills, not coal taxes. Corporations pass costs on to consumers while protecting their profits, even in years of record production.
Energy security that depends on imported coal is neither secure nor just.
In truth, what is defended as necessity is convenience for those who do not bear the cost.
Who are the poor, the common home, and the next generation?
When we speak of the poor, we speak of fisherfolk whose waters are polluted, farmers whose land is degraded, workers exposed to danger, families displaced from coastal spaces, and communities excluded from decisions that shape their lives.
Poverty here is not only lack of income. It is lack of power.
When we speak of the common home, we speak of mangroves that shield coastlines, seas that feed families, coral reefs and marine life that sustain biodiversity. These are not commodities. They are shared goods.
To destroy them for private gain is to rob the many for the benefit of the few.
When we speak of the next generation, we speak of children who inherit poisoned waters, unstable livelihoods, and an economy built on exhaustion rather than care.
To wound one is to betray them all.
A clear and uncompromising call
We therefore speak plainly.
Do not extend the coal operating contract on Semirara.
Do not reissue it under another corporate name.
Do not disguise continuation as reform.
Any extension, reissuance, or rebranding violates the spirit of ecological responsibility and the rights of affected communities.
Ending coal is not extreme. Continuing it is reckless.
We call for a decisive coal phaseout, beginning now, rooted in policies that defend human dignity, ecological integrity, and the common good.
A just transition cannot mean temporary assistance while destruction continues. It must restore livelihoods, compensate losses, protect land and sea, and invest in renewable energy that serves communities, not merely replaces one form of extraction with another.
A just transition must be realโmeasurable, time-bound, community-led, and publicly accountable.
Justice, spoken with urgency
We do not condemn workers who depend on mining. We condemn a system that forces people to choose between survival and destruction.
The Church cannot bless an economy that survives by wounding the poor and exhausting creation.
We cannot keep calling sacrifice โprogress.โ
We cannot keep calling exploitation โdevelopment.โ
We cannot keep postponing justice while harm accumulates.
Semirara exposes a truth we must no longer avoid: a society that tolerates the suffering of the poor, the destruction of the land, and the theft of the future has lost its moral direction.
The time to end coal in the Philippines is now.
To delay is to choose harm.
To act is to choose life.
(Sgd.)
+ Most Rev. Gerardo A. Alminaza, D.D
Bishop of San Carlos
President, Caritas Philippines
