MINDANAO, Philippines — For about two decades now, members of the B’laan ethnic group have combed the forest-clad slopes of Mount Matutum from September to January, seeking out the beans…
SAMAL ISLAND, Philippines — Its official name, the Island Garden City of Samal, tells you all you need to know about this bucolic township off the coast of the southern…
MINDANAO, Philippines – In the wake of deadly floods and landslides caused by Typhoon Nalgae last month, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has ordered tree planting be included in flood…
MINDANAO, Philippines — In the remote mountain village of Ned, on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, the arrival of heavy machinery signals that development is underway on a controversial,…
TAMPAKAN, Philippines — In a move celebrated by anti-mining activists, local officials in the southern Philippine municipality of Tampakan have canceled the business permit for a controversial copper and gold…
MINDANAO, Philippines – Legislators in the southern Philippine province of South Cotabato moved this week to overturn a 12-year-old provincial ban on open-pit mining that has for years stalled the…
TAMPAKAN, Philippines — For nearly a decade, Nora Sukal was the public face of Indigenous opposition to the Tampakan project, a planned gold and copper mine on Blaan tribal land…
MINDANAO, Philippines — For environmental groups in the Philippines, 2021 went out with a big blow: on Dec. 23, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) reversed a 4-year-old…
In the 1980s, when the Philippines’ Energy Development Corporation, or EDC, began developing plans for a geothermal energy plant near Mount Apo, a dormant volcano on the southern island of…
MINDANAO, Philippines — Mount Apo, a protected area on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, is threatened by small-scale illegal mining, which remains a lingering problem elsewhere in the resource-rich…
COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Martin Pineda describes Liguasan Marsh on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao as a no-man’s land that “strongly reeks with gas.” Pineda is a member of…
MINDANAO, Philippines — Maggots are considered gross since they thrive best in stinky, decaying organic matter such as animal waste and plants. The mere sight of them in a household…
MINDANAO, Philippines — Rising 2,064 meters, or nearly 6,800 feet, above sea level, Mount Busa is the tallest peak in the Philippines’ Sarangani province and home to one of the…
MINDANAO, Philippines — Four years ago, villagers in the town of Labason in the southern Philippines’ Zamboanga Peninsula woke up to a spectacle they never thought could happen in these…
MINDANAO, Philippines — Efforts to conserve the critically endangered Philippine eagle, one of the rarest raptors in the world, soared high even amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the global havoc…
SARANGANI, Philippines — Half a decade ago, the curiosity of a 10-year-old boy helped ignite a love affair with birds that have swept up his village and helped bolster support…
SOUTH COTABATO, Philippines — A court in the Philippines has dealt another setback to the company looking to mine Southeast Asia’s largest untapped deposits of copper and gold, ruling to…
MINDANAO, Philippines — In his 52 years, Vicente Bandojo says, he has never been admitted to a hospital or consulted a medical doctor for any ailment that afflicted him. Bandojo…
SOUTH COTABATO, Philippines — Officials in the southern Philippines have canceled a $5.9 billion project to exploit Southeast Asia’s largest known undeveloped copper and gold reserves, but have left open…
MINDANAO, Philippines — For centuries, a giant Philippine rosewood tree has stood as an iconic landmark along a stretch of the Pan-Philippine Highway that runs outside the rustic southern town…
DAVAO, Philippines – On August 4, 2018, a fisherman found an endangered green turtle (Chelonia mydas) floating weakly in the Davao Gulf, a diverse marine ecosystem and rich fishing ground spanning 308,000…
MINDANAO, Philippines — In September 2006, Victor Danyan looked out over the corporate coffee plantation that had taken over his tribe’s land in the village of Ned, on the southern…
MANILA, Philippines — Freedom Island is drowning in garbage. The last coastal frontier in the Philippine capital provides refuge to migratory birds and a thick mangrove forest there serves as…
Bong S. Sarmiento is a journalist based in the southern Philippines.
