06/11/2025
Gina Lopez never needed political power...
Born into privilege, she could have lived a comfortable, uncontroversial life. Instead, she chose the opposite — hardship, activism, and service.
From her years doing mission work in India and Africa to leading ABS-CBN Foundation’s environmental and child-welfare programs, Lopez built a reputation as a rare figure in Philippine public life: an official who actually meant what she said.
When Rodrigo Duterte appointed her as Secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in 2016, many believed it marked the beginning of a long-overdue reckoning for the country’s destructive mining industry.
Lopez arrived at the DENR like a force of nature...
In less than a year, she ordered the closure or suspension of 23 mining operations, cancelled 75 mining contracts inside watershed areas, and imposed a landmark ban on new open-pit mines.
She confronted politically connected companies that had carved mountains into wastelands and poisoned rivers in the name of profit. She insisted that the environment was not a playground for the rich, declaring, “The environment is for the people, not for business interests.”
She empowered Indigenous communities and poor farmers to fight for land that was being stripped beneath their feet.
In a country where environmental policy is routinely traded for campaign donations and favors, Lopez was an anomaly — a cabinet official willing to lose her job to do that job.
Her crusade earned her enemies quickly. Mining magnates mobilized. Lobbyists went to work. Politicians aligned with extractive industries closed ranks.
The pressure campaign was aggressive and well-funded, and the backlash soon reached Malacañang.
Duterte initially spoke warmly of Lopez, praising her passion and expressing regret when the Commission on Appointments removed her in May 2017.
Yet his regret was laced with resignation and, in hindsight, complicity. “This is a democracy… lobby money talks. I cannot control everything,” he said after her rejection.
It was a stunning admission from a president who built his entire persona on fearlessness — a man who publicly threatened drug suspects, oligarchs, and even world leaders now shrugging at the political forces that crushed a woman he himself appointed to fight them.
Duterte’s frustration eventually surfaced in blunt language. Speaking to Philippine Military Academy alumni in February 2017, he complained, “Kay Gina Lopez… patay na tayo nito ngayon. Ang gulo na.”
The remark was revealing.
Rather than condemning the mining companies that had ravaged communities for decades, he lamented the “chaos” caused by Lopez’s attempt to hold them accountable.
The president who campaigned under “Tapang at Malasakit” — courage and compassion — showed neither when it came to defending the one cabinet member who embodied both.
When the moment came to stand with her against powerful interests, Duterte stepped aside.
He allowed her to be politically executed in public, and in doing so, surrendered the environmental future of the nation to the very industry she challenged.
The betrayal did not end with her removal.
It deepened through policy reversals.
The open-pit mining ban she imposed was undone months later.
Mines she had closed or suspended were revived. Under her successor, Roy Cimatu, the DENR retreated from Lopez’s uncompromising stance and eased back into the familiar rhythm of appeasing industry players.
By 2019, it was clear that Lopez’s reforms had not only been halted — they were being dismantled piece by piece.
The final insult arrived when Duterte later lifted the moratorium on new mining projects, an act that buried her legacy under soil turned to ore for export.
Today, the consequences of that failure are visible in flood-soaked cities, dead rivers, and vanishing forests. Typhoon Tino’s devastation offered a grim reminder of what Lopez had tried to prevent.
The deadly floods were not a natural disaster alone — they were the direct outcome of weakened environmental protections, deforested mountains, silted waterways, and ghost flood-control projects built during the Duterte years.
Lopez warned that destroying watersheds and exploiting land would lead to national tragedy.
She was right.
The country is now living in the disaster she fought to stop — one storm at a time.
Gina Lopez died in 2019, leaving behind a legacy that outshines those who undermined her.
She was the rare official who placed Filipinos, not politicians or billionaires, at the center of environmental policy.
She dared to challenge a system built on plunder, and she paid for it. Remembering her means more than posting tributes.
It demands the courage to confront the leaders who folded in the face of corporate pressure, and the political machine that allowed a public servant of her integrity to be sacrificed.
If the Philippines had listened to Gina Lopez, the nation might not be mourning drowned towns and lives lost to climate-charged storms.
Honoring her legacy now requires accountability — and the uncomfortable admission that the wrong side won when Duterte let her fall.
- JLB 🇵🇭
