Church opposes renewal of 50-year coal mining deal in central Philippines

MANILA, Philippines – The Catholic Church opposed the renewal of a coal mining contract on Semirara Island, in the central Philippines, citing its destructive effects on farmers and fisherfolk over the past five decades.

The Church lodged its opposition through a pastoral statement signed by Bishop Gerardo Alminaza of San Carlos. The 66-year-old bishop is also the president of Caritas Philippines, the social action arm of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines.

The 50-year coal mining contract of Semirara Mining and Power Corporation (SMPC) — issued in 1977 — is set to expire on July 14, 2027. The company is led by Isidro A. Consunji, who, along with his siblings, was classified by Forbes as the country’s fifth-richest man as of 2025.

The contract allows the Consunji-led SMPC to operate on Semirara Island, around 350 kilometers south of Manila, in the province of Antique. Composed of around 13,600 people, the island holds the country’s largest coal reserves, which SMPC has vowed to tap for “sustainable economic development.”

The Caritas Philippines president, however, said that coal mining on Semirara Island has come at a great price. This thrusts the Philippines into a “moral reckoning,” Alminaza said.

“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,” the bishop said.

Unfortunately, coal mining “reorganized the island around extraction,” putting land, sea, and labor “at the service of profit.” Decisions about the island were eventually made by institutions and boardrooms “far from the community.”

“Yes, employment was offered, but at what cost?” he said.

He noted that in the 1980s, seaweed farming supported about a third of the island’s population. When coal mining intensified, however, pollution followed. This led to the collapse of farms and to residents’ overnight loss of income.

“Coastal spaces were privatized, and access to the sea was taken from those who had depended on it for generations,” Alminaza said.

“This is not development. This is dispossession managed over time,” he added.

Such destruction of livelihoods, he said, eventually results in poverty. He voiced concern for the poor and the “common home” in view of the next generation, echoing the late Pope Francis’s landmark encyclical Laudato Si’.

Alminaza then called on the government not to extend Semirara’s coal operating contract, not to reissue it under another corporate name, and not to disguise the continuation of the contract as “reform.” Generally speaking, he sought “a decisive coal phaseout, beginning now.”

“We do not condemn workers who depend on mining. We condemn a system that forces people to choose between survival and destruction,” Alminaza said.

“The Church cannot bless an economy that survives by wounding the poor and exhausting creation,” the bishop emphasized. “We cannot keep calling sacrifice ‘progress.’ We cannot keep calling exploitation ‘development.’ We cannot keep postponing justice while harm accumulates,” he said.

Crux has sought SMPC’s comment on the Caritas Philippines pastoral statement but has not received a response as of posting time. The Catholic Church has long pushed for protecting the environment in the Philippines, an archipelago of 7,641 islands known for its biodiversity and enormous land and sea resources.

In a pastoral letter titled “What Is Happening to Our Beautiful Land?” in 1988, the bishops’ conference warned Filipinos against environmental collapse. “The destruction of any part of creation, especially the extinction of species, defaces the image of Christ which is etched in creation,” said the pastoral letter, which was eventually cited in Francis’s Laudato Si’ in 2015.