π΅π Pax Silica in the Philippines: Who Gains, Who Pays, and What the Documents Actually Say
π΅π Pax Silica in the Philippines: Who Gains, Who Pays, and What the Documents Actually Say
When a project promises billions of dollars in investment, hundreds of thousands of jobs, advanced technology and a place for the Philippines in the global artificial-intelligence economy, it is tempting to call it progress before the first building has risen.
It is equally tempting to condemn it immediately as another foreign intrusion.
Neither response is sufficient.
Pax Silica must be examined according to what has actually been signed, what remains under negotiation, what the Philippine government promises, what foreign partners openly expect to receive—and what Filipino communities may be required to sacrifice.
The truth is neither a government press release nor a protest slogan. But when the documented benefits, risks and obligations are unequal, neutrality must not become an excuse for silence.
This article reflects publicly available information as of August 8, 2026. Because the binding framework and project agreements remain under negotiation, important terms may still change.
What Is Pax Silica?
Pax Silica is a United States-led international economic-security initiative launched in December 2025.
Its purpose is to build a trusted supply-chain network among participating countries covering:
Critical minerals
Semiconductors and electronics
Artificial-intelligence infrastructure
Advanced manufacturing
Energy
Logistics
Data and computing infrastructure
The Philippines signed the Pax Silica Declaration on April 16, 2026, becoming its thirteenth signatory at the time.
The declaration expresses broad commitments to cooperation, secure supply chains, private investment, technological development and economic security. Philippine officials have described it as non-binding.
That distinction is crucial.
The declaration does not by itself constitute a completed investment contract for the proposed Philippine industrial zone. The arrangements governing land, investors, incentives, infrastructure, environmental responsibility, personnel and legal jurisdiction are still being developed.
Pax Silica in the Philippines therefore involves two related but different matters:
The international initiative that the Philippines has already joined.
The proposed industrial hub in New Clark City whose binding operating terms have not yet been finalized.
Confusing the declaration with the unfinished project agreement makes the undertaking appear more settled than it actually is.
The Proposed Philippine Hub
The United States and the Philippines have announced plans to establish an approximately 4,000-acre, or 1,620-hectare, Economic Security Zone in New Clark City, Tarlac.
It would form part of the Luzon Economic Corridor, a wider Philippine-US-Japan initiative connecting Subic Bay, Clark, Metro Manila and Batangas through transportation, logistics, energy and industrial infrastructure.
The US State Department described the proposed zone as a staging point for allied manufacturing and for increasing production of inputs vital to American supply chains.
That wording deserves attention.
The project is promoted in the Philippines as a source of investment, technology, employment and industrial development. From the American perspective, it is also intended to secure materials and manufactured inputs required by the United States and its partners.
Those objectives are not automatically incompatible. A fair economic partnership can benefit everyone involved.
But the benefits are not automatically equal.
What Has the Philippines Offered?
An April 2026 BCDA proposal letter identified the 4,000-acre site and proposed establishing a Pax Silica Coordination Office.
According to the publicly reported contents of the proposal:
The first two years of the lease would be rent-free as a Philippine in-kind contribution.
Rental rates beginning in the third year remained subject to negotiation.
The precise boundaries and operating terms would be settled in a supplemental agreement.
Personnel arrangements would have to remain consistent with Philippine law.
When the agreement ended without renewal, the property and permanent improvements would revert to the Philippine government.
These are proposed terms, not necessarily the final agreement.
The two rent-free years may be defended as a development incentive while investors construct facilities that are not yet earning revenue. Nevertheless, the public must know the monetary value of the concession, who receives it and what enforceable investment is required in return.
A government contribution is not free merely because no cash is handed over. Land use, foregone rent, roads, utilities, tax incentives and administrative support all have value.
The Government’s Economic Projections
BCDA has presented enormous estimates for the project at full development:
Approximately US$10 billion in initial investment
Possible eventual investment of US$40 billion to US$70 billion
Between 130,000 and 190,000 direct jobs
Between 500,000 and 800,000 indirect and induced jobs
Approximately ₱60 billion in lease income over 25 years
Between ₱68 billion and ₱75 billion in potential annual withholding taxes
As much as US$200 billion in exports
A possible contribution equivalent to around 10 percent of Philippine gross domestic product
These are extraordinary numbers.
But they are projections, not secured results.
As of August 8, 2026, no publicly available final agreement identifies enough committed investors, factories, capital expenditures or binding employment obligations to establish that these outcomes will occur.
Some employment estimates are based on multiplier effects. The largest figures therefore include jobs expected to arise through construction, suppliers, transport, services and increased consumer spending—not only people directly employed inside the zone.
Economic modeling is a legitimate planning tool. But projections must not be reported as accomplished facts.
“Could create” is not the same as “will create.”
The Genuine Economic Opportunity
The Philippines already has a substantial semiconductor and electronics industry. Filipino workers have long been involved in semiconductor assembly, testing and packaging.
These activities provide employment and export income, but they generally capture less value than:
Semiconductor research and development
Chip design
Wafer fabrication
Advanced-material production
Semiconductor-equipment manufacturing
Intellectual-property ownership
Senior engineering and technology management
Pax Silica could help the Philippines move upward in this value chain.
It could create better-paid work for Filipino engineers, scientists, technicians, programmers and manufacturing specialists. It could help domestic suppliers enter more advanced industries and give highly trained Filipinos a reason to build their careers at home.
The government also argues that Philippine critical minerals could be processed locally instead of being exported mainly in raw or partly processed form.
That is potentially a significant advantage.
But bringing a foreign-owned processing plant into the Philippines does not automatically give Filipinos control of the technology, products or profits.
If foreign companies retain the patents, research, management and highest-value functions while the Philippines provides land, minerals, electricity, water and comparatively inexpensive labor, the country may remain near the lower end of the value chain—only on a larger scale.
Manufacturing Hub or Data-Center Hub?
Official descriptions have not been completely consistent regarding data centers.
In July 2026, Department of Trade and Industry Undersecretary Ceferino Rodolfo said:
“This is not about building a data center here in the Philippines. This is about manufacturing components.”
However, the Board of Investments’ own Pax Silica information page refers to the role of “AI, data centers, and advanced manufacturing.” Other government descriptions have also included data centers among the possible industries.
Officials may mean that manufacturing will be the main activity while some data infrastructure will also be constructed.
But this cannot remain vague.
A semiconductor assembly plant, a wafer-fabrication facility, a mineral-processing plant and a hyperscale AI data center have very different requirements. Their water use, electricity demand, pollution risks and employment potential cannot be discussed as though they were interchangeable.
Before the final agreement is signed, the government must disclose:
Which industries are actually being invited
How many major facilities are contemplated
Whether hyperscale AI data centers are included
What each facility will consume
How many permanent jobs each will realistically create
Which companies will receive tax, land, power or water incentives
The Electricity Question
A potential power requirement of up to 3 gigawatts has been discussed for a fully developed hub.
A gigawatt measures power demand or generating capacity. It is not electricity consumed “per day.” Three gigawatts would be equivalent to the output of several large power plants and would represent a substantial addition to demand on the Luzon grid.
It remains unclear whether this is a firm engineering requirement, an upper-limit scenario or an estimate based on a particular mix of factories and data centers.
The Philippines already has some of the region’s most expensive electricity. Adding highly power-intensive industries without first constructing adequate generation and transmission capacity could:
Increase competition for existing electricity
Put upward pressure on consumer rates
Increase the risk of shortages
Require expensive grid expansion
Increase dependence on coal or imported gas
Shift infrastructure costs to ordinary consumers
The project’s electricity will not appear from nowhere.
The public must know what new generation will be required, who will finance it, what fuels it will use and whether households will subsidize the necessary transmission and grid upgrades.
Filipino consumers must not be required to accept higher electricity bills so foreign investors can receive reliable and preferential industrial power.
The Water Question
A full-scale hub has also been associated with possible demand of approximately 130 million liters of water per day.
Semiconductor manufacturing can require large amounts of ultra-pure water. Certain data-center cooling systems are water-intensive. Mineral processing may add further demand.
BCDA says the project will avoid relying primarily on groundwater. It proposes collecting rainwater through dams, reservoirs or impounding facilities, with possible surplus water shared with nearby communities.
That is a potentially useful proposal. It is not yet proof of adequate year-round supply.
The required studies must answer:
How much rainfall can realistically be captured?
What happens during El NiΓ±o or an extended drought?
Will rivers or watersheds used by farmers be affected?
How much industrial water will be recycled?
What chemicals will enter the wastewater?
Where will treated wastewater be discharged?
Who will pay for the water infrastructure?
Who receives priority when water becomes scarce?
A reservoir may help surrounding communities. It may also alter downstream flows, affect farms, fragment habitat or submerge land.
The word “rainwater” does not make a large industrial water system environmentally harmless.
Mining: Keeping the Value—or Keeping the Damage?
The Philippines has deposits of nickel, copper, chromite, cobalt and other minerals used in electronics, batteries, energy systems and advanced manufacturing.
The government says Pax Silica will help the country move away from exporting raw minerals by creating domestic processing industries.
That could create jobs and retain more economic value.
It could also expand the environmental footprint of mining and refining:
Forest loss and habitat destruction
Soil erosion and river sedimentation
Acid mine drainage
Heavy-metal contamination
Tailings and hazardous waste
High water and energy consumption
Carbon emissions from refining and smelting
Damage to farms, fisheries and community water sources
The processing facilities may be built in New Clark City, while the mines supplying them operate in other provinces. A clean-looking industrial zone in Tarlac could therefore depend on environmental damage borne by distant communities.
Environmental accounting must follow the supply chain from extraction to finished component. It cannot stop at the boundary of the economic zone.
What Indonesia Actually Did With Its Nickel
Indonesia provides one of the clearest examples of both the promise and danger of mineral “downstreaming.”
A misleading version circulating online says Indonesia banned nickel mining because China refused to build smelters locally.
That is not what happened.
Indonesia continued mining nickel. What it banned was the export of unprocessed nickel ore.
The Indonesian government first imposed restrictions in 2014, temporarily relaxed part of the policy, and fully reinstated its raw-ore export ban in January 2020.
Its message to foreign buyers was effectively:
If you want Indonesian nickel, you must process it in Indonesia.
China did not refuse.
Chinese companies responded by investing heavily in Indonesian smelters, refineries, industrial parks and battery-material facilities. Chinese capital and technology became central to the rapid expansion of Indonesia’s nickel-processing industry.
Indonesia’s policy was therefore not the result of China rejecting local smelting. It was a deliberate national strategy that used control of the mineral resource to compel companies to build processing capacity inside Indonesia.
Why the Philippines Became a Leading Nickel-Ore Supplier
When Indonesia stopped exporting raw nickel ore, Chinese smelters still required feedstock.
The Philippines consequently became China’s largest foreign supplier of nickel ore and one of the world’s leading exporters of unprocessed nickel.
This does not mean the Philippines overtook Indonesia as the world’s largest nickel producer or holder of nickel resources. Indonesia remains the dominant global producer.
The Philippines became especially important as a supplier of raw ore because Indonesia had withdrawn its own raw ore from the international market.
The contrast is revealing:
| Indonesia | Philippines |
|---|---|
| Continued mining nickel | Continued mining nickel |
| Prohibited raw-ore exports | Continued exporting much of its raw ore |
| Required processing inside Indonesia | Sent much of its ore abroad for processing |
| Attracted foreign smelters and refineries | Became a major supplier to foreign smelters |
| Captured more processing and export value | Captured mainly mining and raw-export value |
This is precisely the economic weakness Pax Silica claims it can correct.
The Indonesian Success
Indonesia’s policy attracted enormous foreign investment and rapidly expanded domestic smelting.
Its nickel export earnings rose dramatically as it moved from selling raw ore toward selling processed nickel products. Indonesia became the world’s largest producer of mined and refined nickel and established itself as a major part of the global electric-vehicle supply chain.
Indonesia demonstrated an important principle:
A country possessing a valuable natural resource can use access to that resource as bargaining power.
Instead of simply asking foreign companies to process nickel locally, Indonesia made domestic processing a condition of access to its ore.
The Philippines has discussed a similar ban on exports of raw nickel, but the proposed prohibition was removed from legislation in 2025 following industry opposition.
Pax Silica is now being presented as another route toward local processing—one based on attracting investors through an international partnership rather than compelling downstream investment through an export ban.
Whether that produces equivalent bargaining power is uncertain.
The Indonesian Warning
Indonesia’s experience is not an uncomplicated success.
Although processing takes place on Indonesian soil, Chinese-linked companies control a large portion of the country’s nickel-processing capacity. Chinese firms brought the capital, smelting technology, management networks and access to downstream markets.
Indonesia retained more physical processing and export value, but it also created a new dependence.
Instead of depending mainly upon foreign buyers of raw ore, it became heavily dependent upon foreign-owned processing industries operating within Indonesia.
The environmental costs have also been severe.
Reports and studies have documented:
Extensive deforestation
Damage to coastal and marine ecosystems
Pollution affecting nearby communities
Large industrial parks powered substantially by coal
High greenhouse-gas emissions
Hazardous working conditions
Land conflicts and pressure on Indigenous communities
Rapid extraction encouraged by expanding processing capacity
Local processing can therefore produce more national income while also accelerating environmental destruction.
A mineral does not become environmentally clean simply because it will be used in an electric vehicle, renewable-energy system or artificial-intelligence facility.
The Lesson for Pax Silica
The Philippines should learn from both sides of Indonesia’s experience.
The country should not remain merely a supplier of raw minerals. Exporting low-value ore while importing high-value technology is a poor long-term industrial strategy.
But the alternative must not be limited to this:
Filipino minerals are mined and processed in the Philippines, but the factories, technology, decisions and profits remain under foreign control.
The better objective is:
Minerals are responsibly extracted and processed in the Philippines while Filipino skills, industries, ownership, technology and public revenue grow with them.
Pax Silica must therefore answer questions that go beyond the physical location of the factories:
Who will own the processing facilities?
Who owns the technology?
Who owns the patents and resulting intellectual property?
Will Filipino companies hold meaningful equity?
Will Filipino engineers eventually manage and design the processes?
Where will profits be recorded and taxed?
Who controls production during a geopolitical crisis?
Are processed minerals reserved for foreign supply chains?
Will the Philippines develop its own downstream industries?
Who will pay for environmental damage and mine rehabilitation?
A foreign-owned smelter standing on Philippine soil is not automatically a Filipino industry.
Physical location is not the same as national control.
New Clark City, Farmers and the Aeta
The most serious humanitarian issue concerns farmers and Aeta communities in and around New Clark City.
BCDA says the proposed site is public land titled to the authority. It maintains that no registered Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title covers the designated area and denies claims that tens of thousands of people will be displaced by Pax Silica itself.
Community advocates present a different account.
Disputes involving Aeta occupation, farming and displacement in the wider New Clark City development existed years before Pax Silica was proposed. Some Aeta families maintain that their ancestors occupied and used these lands long before contemporary government titles and development plans.
This raises an important legal and moral point:
The absence of a completed ancestral-domain title does not necessarily prove the absence of ancestral occupation or Indigenous rights.
The Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act recognizes rights arising from native title. Ancestral occupation does not begin only when the government completes a Certificate of Ancestral Domain Title.
The process must establish transparently:
Which Indigenous communities traditionally occupied or used the land
Whether ancestral-domain claims are pending
How affected farmers and households were counted
Whether customary or informal land users were excluded
Whether free, prior and informed consent is required
What consultations have occurred
What compensation and relocation are being offered
Whether replacement livelihoods are permanent and culturally appropriate
A factory job is not automatically equivalent to a farm, ancestral landscape or independent livelihood.
“Urban farming” cannot simply be declared an adequate substitute for land, culture, community and food security.
Environmental Compliance Is Necessary—but Not Sufficient
BCDA says the project will comply with Philippine environmental law and that its components will obtain Environmental Compliance Certificates.
That is necessary.
But an Environmental Compliance Certificate does not mean a project has no harmful effects. It means impacts have been evaluated and conditions imposed for their management.
The government must require a cumulative environmental assessment of the entire development—not only separate studies for individual factories, roads, reservoirs, transmission lines, power plants and mines.
Examining each component separately can hide the combined effect on:
Water
Electricity
Air quality
Waste generation
Traffic
Biodiversity
Agricultural land
Indigenous communities
Surrounding towns
Mineral-producing provinces
The Indonesian experience makes this cumulative assessment even more important. Building more processing capacity can stimulate more extraction, producing environmental consequences far beyond the industrial zone itself.
The 99-Year Lease
Foreign investors may qualify for land leases lasting up to 99 years under Republic Act No. 12252, the amended Investors’ Lease Act.
A lease does not legally transfer Philippine ownership or sovereignty.
But 99 years is several generations. It can give a lessee practical control over land long after the officials who approved the agreement—and the citizens who first debated it—are gone.
Every major lease should include:
Public disclosure of the complete agreement
Identification of the true beneficial owners
Definite investment and construction deadlines
Use-it-or-lose-it provisions
Limits on transfer and speculative subleasing
Periodic performance reviews
Local employment and training obligations
Environmental restoration bonds
Liability for contamination and abandonment
Government access for inspection and law enforcement
Termination rights for serious violations
Reversion of land and improvements to the Philippines
No exemption from Philippine law
The land must not be controlled for generations on the basis of promises that investors are never legally required to fulfill.
Diplomatic Immunity: What Was Said, Denied and Rejected
The question of diplomatic immunity has caused understandable alarm.
In May 2026, BCDA President Joshua Bingcang told reporters that the United States had requested that the proposed zone operate under American law with diplomatic immunity for US personnel. Bingcang said the Philippines rejected the request.
US Undersecretary of State Jacob Helberg subsequently disputed that characterization. He said the United States had not sought diplomatic immunity and that remarks concerning legal certainty for investors had been taken out of context.
These accounts conflict.
The published Pax Silica Declaration and BCDA proposal letter do not grant diplomatic immunity or place the zone under American law. Philippine officials have continued to insist that no immunity will be granted and that the zone will remain under Philippine jurisdiction.
Therefore, it would be inaccurate to say diplomatic immunity has been granted.
But it would also be inaccurate to pretend the issue never arose. The head of BCDA publicly described it as an American request, while the American official denied requesting it.
The final agreement must state unmistakably that every investor, official, contractor and worker inside the zone remains subject to Philippine criminal, civil, labor, tax and environmental law.
No commercial investment requires an enclave beyond the reach of Philippine courts and regulators.
Why the Former US Bases Cannot Be Left Out
For many Filipinos, the combination of American strategic interests, immunity, foreign control and a 99-year lease will revive memories of the former US military bases.
That reaction is neither irrational nor irrelevant.
Clark originated as Fort Stotsenburg in 1903 during the American colonial period. Except during the Japanese occupation, the United States used Clark for most of the twentieth century until 1991.
The wider Clark military reservation and later development areas extended across a large Central Luzon landscape associated with what are now Angeles, Mabalacat, Porac, Capas and Bamban.
This was not empty land without a human history.
Research has recorded repeated displacement of Aeta communities from traditional lands around Clark. Communities surrounding the bases also lived with social, environmental and jurisdictional consequences that were not shared equally with those benefiting from American military power.
On September 16, 1991, the Philippine Senate voted 12–11 against a proposed treaty extending the American military presence. That historic vote led to the end of the permanent US bases arrangement.
Pax Silica is not a military-bases treaty.
The proposed zone is not officially a foreign military installation, and no published agreement makes it American territory.
But the project stands within a landscape already shaped by American military use, base conversion, Indigenous displacement and national disputes over sovereignty.
History does not prove that Pax Silica will repeat the bases.
It proves that extraordinary scrutiny is justified.
The Historical Parallel—and Its Limits
Calling Pax Silica “another American military base” would go beyond the existing evidence.
The more accurate parallel is this:
Both the former bases and Pax Silica involve a powerful foreign country seeking long-term strategic benefits from a large area of Philippine land.
The former bases provided military projection. Pax Silica seeks secure minerals, technology inputs and allied manufacturing capacity.
Economic security is not the same as military occupation. But neither is it politically neutral. The United States openly describes economic security as national security.
The Philippines must therefore determine whether participation strengthens its industrial independence or makes it more dependent on foreign governments and corporations.
Who Clearly Benefits?
The United States has openly described the zone as a way to increase production of inputs vital to American supply chains.
The United States and other participating countries may gain:
Secure access to critical minerals and electronic components
Manufacturing capacity outside China
A trusted production location in Southeast Asia
Greater resilience against geopolitical disruption
Opportunities for their technology companies
Influence over semiconductor and AI supply chains
A stronger strategic position in the Indo-Pacific
These are not hidden motives. They are part of the initiative’s declared purpose.
Partner countries are acting in their own national interests.
The Philippines must do the same.
The essential question is whether the country receives a fair and durable share—or carries the most extractive and resource-intensive parts of the arrangement while the highest-value benefits flow elsewhere.
What Must Be Guaranteed for Filipinos?
Pax Silica can become advantageous if the final agreements guarantee that:
High-value research, engineering, design and manufacturing occur in the Philippines.
Filipino workers receive funded training.
Filipino companies gain meaningful supply contracts and equity opportunities.
Technology transfer is measurable and enforceable.
Philippine institutions develop intellectual property and technical expertise.
Local processing retains substantial value and tax revenue in the country.
Mining and refining follow strict environmental and community protections.
New power and water capacity is built before industrial demand arrives.
Investors pay the true cost of the infrastructure and resources they consume.
Households and farms retain priority access to essential water and electricity.
Indigenous rights and free, prior and informed consent are respected.
Farmers and affected communities receive fair compensation and lasting livelihoods.
Environmental studies cover cumulative and supply-chain effects.
Tax and land incentives are transparent and conditional on performance.
Long leases contain enforceable public-interest safeguards.
Everyone inside the zone remains subject to Philippine law.
Employment and revenue projections are independently reviewed.
Contracts and environmental reports are available to the public.
Without these protections, the Philippines could repeat a familiar arrangement:
The country provides the land.
Philippine mines provide the minerals.
Filipino communities carry the disruption.
Filipino consumers compete for water and electricity.
Filipino workers perform the production work.
Foreign companies retain the technology, strategic control and largest profits.
That would not be technological independence. It would be resource dependency dressed for the AI age.
Is Pax Silica Good or Bad for the Philippines?
As of August 8, 2026, the final answer has not yet been determined.
Pax Silica is not inherently evil. It offers a genuine opportunity to develop higher-value industries, create skilled employment and strengthen Philippine technological capacity.
But it is not automatically good merely because its presentation contains the words AI, semiconductors, investment and hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Indonesia proved that a resource-rich country can use its minerals to compel local processing.
It also proved that local processing can remain foreign-controlled and can multiply environmental destruction.
The strategic benefits sought by the United States and other partner countries are already clearly defined: secure supply chains, access to materials and additional allied manufacturing capacity.
The Philippine benefits remain dependent on contracts still being negotiated, investments not yet fully committed and safeguards not yet scientifically demonstrated.
The government must not ask the public to trust the project first and read the binding details later. The details are precisely where the national interest will either be protected or surrendered.
Pax Silica should not be rejected merely because foreigners will benefit.
It should not be accepted merely because officials promise that Filipinos will benefit too.
It should proceed only when the evidence and contracts demonstrate that the Philippines will not merely host the project, provide its resources and carry its risks—but will own a meaningful part of the knowledge, industry and prosperity it creates.
The Philippines is not simply a location on someone else’s supply-chain map.
It is our land, our water, our energy, our minerals, our workforce and our future.
The burden of proof belongs to those asking the Filipino people to commit them for the next 99 years.
References
Board of Investments, Philippines. “Pax Silica Declaration,” signed April 16, 2026.
Read the signed declarationBoard of Investments, Philippines. “Discussion on Pax Silica and the AI-Native Industrial Acceleration Hub.”
Official information page and documentsUnited States Department of State. “Pax Silica.”
Official initiative pageUnited States Department of State. “The United States and the Philippines Launch Plans for 4,000-Acre Economic Security Zone,” April 16, 2026.
Archived official releasePhilippine News Agency. “PH Joins US-led Pax Silica; Plan for Industrial Hub in Luzon Unveiled,” April 17, 2026.
Read the reportReuters. “Philippines, US to Build Industrial Hub to Strengthen Supply Chain Security,” April 17, 2026.
Read the reportReuters. “US, Philippines to Reach Deal on Economic Security Zone,” May 21, 2026.
Read the reportPhilstar.com. “US Official Says Immunity for Pax Silica Clark Hub ‘Taken Out of Context,’” May 26, 2026.
Read the conflicting accountsPhilstar.com. “Pax Silica Investors May Lease New Clark Land for 99 Years—BCDA,” July 24, 2026.
Read the reportGMA News. “Explainer: What Is Pax Silica and Why Are People Worried?” July 22, 2026.
Read the explainerPhilippine News Agency. “Planned Pax Silica Project Heeds National, International Laws: BCDA,” July 23, 2026.
Read the reportInternational Energy Agency. “Prohibition of the Export of Nickel Ore.”
Read the Indonesian policy summaryCarnegie Endowment for International Peace. “How Indonesia Used Chinese Industrial Investments to Turn Nickel Into the New Gold,” April 2023.
Read the analysisUS Geological Survey. “Nickel Statistics and Information.”
View official nickel dataAssociated Press. “Indonesia Tightens Control on Nickel as the US and China Scramble for Critical Minerals,” 2026.
Read the reportWorld Bank. “Export Ban and Domestic Value Added in Indonesia.”
View the policy analysisBases Conversion and Development Authority. “New Clark City Will Be the Most Inclusive and Sustainable City in the Country,” July 8, 2019.
Read BCDA’s positionUST Law Review. “New Clark City: Built on the Shadows of Our Ancestors,” September 24, 2020.
Read the discussionAl Jazeera. “A Filipino Tribe Fights to Stay as a ‘Smart City’ Rises on a Former US Base,” December 30, 2025.
Read the reportPhilippine Social Science Council. “The Impact of the United States Military Bases on the Aetas.”
Read the historical researchPhilippine Studies/Ateneo de Manila University. “The Historic Senate Vote of 16 September 1991.”
Read the historical studyRepublic Act No. 8371. Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act of 1997.
Read the lawRepublic Act No. 12252. Amended Investors’ Lease Act, September 3, 2025.
Read the lawPresidential Decree No. 1586. Philippine Environmental Impact Statement System.
Read the law
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