Planned US tech hub in Philippines hit over environmental and Indigenous land concerns

Filed 1h ago · Via Mongabay · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Flight of the Bumblebee

Rimsky-Korsakov — U.S. Air Force Band · Public Domain

Photo: Ypsilon from Finland · CC0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. addressed an investors' forum in Manila for the Luzon Economic Corridor while hundreds of protesters outside were met with riot shields and batons, with activists reporting 27 injuries and five arrests. The forum promoted Pax Silica, a US-led semiconductor and AI supply chain pact that includes plans for a 1,620-hectare manufacturing hub in Central Luzon, overlapping ancestral land claimed by thousands of Aetas.

Officials from the Bases Conversion and Development Authority estimated the facility would need roughly 3 gigawatts of power, more electricity annually than the Philippines' entire service sector consumed in 2024, while insisting it would run mainly on solar. The agency also said the hub could need up to 300 million liters of water a day from a rainwater dam, a figure that critics note collides with farmers' irrigation needs during the dry season.

The BCDA initially said data centers were part of the plan, then had officials deny it in a later briefing even as a forum document listed data centers among planned infrastructure. Advocates also say the government has offered no details on how it will handle waste from planned mineral processing at the site.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Officials keep calling this an ‘additive’ that will only bring more power and more benefits, which is the kind of promise that sounds great until you ask who's giving up the water and the land to make it happen. A government that can't settle whether its own project includes data centers hasn't earned the benefit of the doubt on a 30-year waste plan. The people camped out on that land noticed the contradiction faster than the press office did.

Source: Read the original at Mongabay → Scored: Flight of the Bumblebee · Rimsky-Korsakov — U.S. Air Force Band · CC BY 4.0

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