𝐒𝐈𝐆𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐏𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍, 𝐑𝐄𝐉𝐄𝐂𝐓 𝐏𝐀𝐗 𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐂𝐀!
Signatory countries from the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, and Israel convened on December 11, 2025 to sign the Pax Silica Declaration, which has an emphasis on garnering compute, silicon, minerals, and energy as strategic assets. The Philippines’ joins as the initiative’s 13th signatory on April 16, 2026 with the national government, in collaboration with the US Trump Administration, releasing plans to construct an AI-native industrial acceleration hub in New Clark City, which will occupy parts of the neighboring municipalities of Capas and Bamban, Tarlac.
However, mounting concerns from residents and indigenous communities have pushed the project at the forefront of public scrutiny with the initiative expected to exacerbate the effects of a worsening climate crisis due to its mass consumption of water. This exorbitant consumption is contrasted, and given great emphasis, to our agricultural workforce’s growing lack of access to water that hampers the national food production. In context, the proposed “Economic Security Zone” covers over 1,620 hectares of arable land that is part of the ancestral domain of the local Ayta communities.
Accounts from affected residents have also revealed that local authorities have already approached them, requesting their immediate displacement for the construction of the initiative. Outside of the florid promises from the collaborating governments, a broader view of the initiative presents immense hunger, mass displacement of local Ayta communities from their ancestral domain, and the perpetual marginalization of indigenous communities and local farmers. The initiative’s emphasis on mining in acquisition of critical minerals translates to even more cases of development aggression, ecocide, and environmental destruction in a country already suffering from the corporate greed of international mining firms.
Pax Silica reeks of nothing but deception veiled as development for the capitalist plunder of our natural resources that is meant for our own mitigation and adaptation in combating the worsening climate crisis. The Climate Change Network for Community-based Initiatives enjoins the vehement condemnation of this blatant exploitation and calls for the immediate cessation of its construction.