RIVERMAN’S VISTA: Belém COP 30 and Climate Justice in Mindanao

QUEZON CITY (MindaNews / 14 December) — The outcome of COP 30 in Belém marked a decisive shift toward centering justice and human rights in global climate action, a direction long demanded by frontline communities. Negotiators emphasized that emissions targets can no longer be separated from the lived realities of peoples who bear the heaviest burdens of climate change. Commitments on adaptation finance, safeguards for Indigenous Peoples, and stronger accountability measures signaled a growing recognition that vulnerability is shaped not only by geography but by history, inequality, and power.

This global direction resonates deeply in Mindanao. For decades, Lumad communities have stood at the frontlines of climate injustice, protecting forests, watersheds, and biodiversity while enduring displacement, militarization, and the erosion of their social institutions. What Belém affirms at the global level is what Mindanao has long known at the local level: climate justice is inseparable from human rights, land, and dignity.

Belém also underscored the importance of locally-led climate strategies that respect cultural identity and territorial governance. States acknowledged that forest guardianship, community-based resource management, and Indigenous knowledge systems are indispensable to global climate goals. These recognitions echo long struggles waged by Lumad communities to defend ancestral domains that sustain not only their livelihoods but the ecological stability of the entire island.

By grounding adaptation in justice, the Belém outcome advanced earlier commitments under the Paris Agreement and the Global Goal on Adaptation. It recognized that frontline communities carry deep expertise that must shape climate governance and emphasized the need for finance mechanisms that address unequal burdens rooted in historical responsibility. For Mindanao, this opens political and moral space to assert that climate policy must be built with, not imposed upon, Indigenous Peoples.

The Lumad in the frontlines of climate injustice

One of the most significant outcomes of Belém was the explicit call to end violence against environmental defenders and Indigenous activists. Delegates affirmed that climate action cannot flourish where fear, repression, and criminalization persist. This position speaks directly to the Philippine context, where Lumad leaders, teachers, and students have faced threats, forced evacuations, and militarization. Their experience makes clear that climate justice cannot advance without the protection of fundamental rights.

Indeed, the Lumad are among the most vulnerable communities in the Philippines not because of inherent fragility, but because they live in territories rich in forests, minerals, and biodiversity. These lands function as major carbon sinks and watersheds that support agriculture, cities, and river systems far beyond their boundaries. Yet the same territories attract mining, logging, and agro-industrial interests whose operations degrade ecosystems and intensify climate risks for all.

This tension was clearly articulated by Indigenous leadership in Mindanao. Allan T. Olubalang, Titay Bleyen of Timuay Justice and Governance, captured a worldview often ignored in mainstream climate policy when he said, “Understanding that land and rivers are not private property but entrusted responsibilities. We are stewards, not owners.” This principle challenges extractive and profit-driven approaches to land use and reframes climate action as an ethical obligation rooted in collective care, intergenerational responsibility, and respect for ancestral domains.

The closure of Lumad schools during the Duterte administration marked one of the most painful chapters in this history. These community-based learning centers were widely recognized as effective responses to rural poverty and environmental degradation because they integrated education with Indigenous knowledge, sustainable agriculture, and ecological stewardship. Their targeting revealed how education, land, and climate justice are deeply intertwined in Mindanao.

The Role of Faith Communities

The Catholic Church has been a central moral voice in Mindanao’s climate justice movement. The Mindanao Sulu Pastoral Conference has long linked ecological destruction with injustice and the violation of human dignity. Its pastoral statements affirm that environmental harm is a sin against creation and that Indigenous Peoples embody ways of living that respect the land as sacred. This tradition gives ethical clarity and institutional support to climate justice efforts that might otherwise be dismissed as merely political.

Archbishop Jose “Joe” Cabantan of the Archdiocese of Cagayan de Oro opened the Mindanao Climate Justice and Solidarity Conference by framing the climate emergency as a test of conscience as much as of policy. “We are not just facing an ecological crisis but a moral one. In moments of crisis, faith must lead us toward courage,” he said. He called on the Church to stand with communities facing displacement, militarization, and ecological destruction, stressing that accompaniment, not silence, must define the Church’s response.

In Bukidnon, Bishop Noel Pedregosa framed the climate struggle as a call to solidarity beyond any single institution or sector. “No single sector can face this crisis alone. We must stand together, Church, communities, and civil society, if we are to protect our common home,” he said. From the Diocese of Tandag, Bishop Raul Dael expressed the same urgency when he stated that protecting the environment is not an option but an imperative.

Fr Raymond Montero-Ambray of the Diocese of Tandag has consistently linked Indigenous ecological knowledge with climate resilience and social justice. His work with church-based ecology initiatives emphasizes that Indigenous worldviews offer practical frameworks for sustainable living and environmental care, and that sidelining these perspectives weakens both climate policy and community resilience.

At the Mindanao Climate Justice and Solidarity Conference in Malaybalay, Fr Reynaldo Raluto, Chair of the Integral Ecology Ministry of the Diocese of Malaybalay, situated climate justice within a broader moral and social framework. He warned that environmental destruction cannot be separated from social harm, stating, “When we destroy the environment, we also destroy the relationships of people. Ecological advocacy must also confront dehumanizing poverty and social injustice.”

Alongside the Catholic Church, Protestant churches in Mindanao have played a crucial and often underrecognized role. The Iglesia Filipina Independiente and the United Methodist Church have long provided sanctuary, accompaniment, and advocacy for Lumad communities facing displacement and violence. IFI dioceses and Methodist conferences have supported Lumad schools, hosted evacuation centers during militarization, and consistently raised climate justice and ancestral land rights in national and international church forums. Their traditions of liberation theology and social holiness reinforce the understanding that faith demands active solidarity with communities defending land and life.

Local Pathways After Belém

The Mindanao Climate Justice Resource Facility shows how the justice commitments affirmed in Belém acquire meaning only when translated into grounded local work. Its efforts focus on convening, documentation, capacity building, and solidarity among Mindanao communities rather than international advocacy. By creating spaces where Lumad, Moro, church workers, youth leaders, lawyers, and civil society can jointly analyze climate impacts and rights violations, the Facility helps shape shared agendas rooted in lived experience.

An important extension of this work has been engagement with legal education. In partnership with the UP College of Law Institute of Human Rights, the Facility helped bring Mindanao’s frontline realities into national legal and human rights spaces through the exhibit “Memory, Rights, and Resistance.” By situating stories of land, displacement, and climate injustice within UP Law, the collaboration underscored that climate justice is inseparable from constitutional rights, accountability, and the ethical formation of future lawyers.

Complementing these efforts, the Samdhana Institute has sustained long-term accompaniment of Lumad communities across Bukidnon, Agusan, Davao, and CARAGA. Its work emphasizes support for Lumad schools, ancestral domain claimants, women leaders, and youth organizers through small grants, legal assistance, and organizational strengthening, particularly in contexts shaped by mining and militarization. Samdhana’s support for sanctuary spaces and evacuation centers during periods of displacement reflects an approach to climate resilience grounded in safety, dignity, and cultural continuity.

A Mindanao Perspective

From a Mindanao perspective, the significance of Belém also lies in the convergence of Indigenous and Moro insights on justice and governance. Moro scholar and peace advocate Prof. Rufa Cagoco-Guiam has long emphasized that climate impacts are never purely environmental. As she has stated, “There is no such thing as purely ‘natural’ disaster; disasters become deadly because of inequality, exclusion and bad governance.” Her insight mirrors the Belém consensus that vulnerability is socially produced and that climate risk is amplified by political marginalization, weak institutions, and the denial of community voice, particularly in conflict-affected and autonomous regions such as the Bangsamoro.

Belém does not create the climate justice movement in Mindanao. It validates it. The challenge now is whether the Philippine government will translate international commitments into policies that protect ancestral domains, respect Moro self-governance, end violence against environmental defenders, and invest in community-led adaptation. For Mindanao, climate justice will not be measured by the language of agreements signed abroad, but by whether the lives, lands, and futures of its peoples are finally treated as central to the nation’s response to the climate crisis.

[MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Dean Antonio Gabriel La Viña is Associate Director of Manila Observatory where he heads the Klima Center. He is also a professor of law, philosophy, politics and governance in several universities. He has been a human rights lawyer for 35 years and a member of the Free Legal Assistance Group. He is currently the managing partner of La Viña Zarate and Associates, a development and social change progressive law firm that provides legal assistance to the youth student sector, Lumad and other Indigenous Peoples, desaparecidos and their families, political detainees, communities affected by climate and environmental justice, etc.
Dean Tony is a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague and Chair of the Jurisprudence and Legal Philosophy Department of the Philippine Judicial Academy. He is founding president of the Movement Against Disinformation and the founding chairs of the Mindanao Climate Justice Resource Facility and the Mindanao Center for Scholarships, Sports, and Spirituality (MCS³)]