The Southeast Asian Working Group on Climate and Energy, composed of members of civil society organizations and people’s movements across Southeast Asia, denounced what they claimed to be an evident collusion between leaders of ASEAN, East Asia, and the United States of America, in their push for the coal agenda within the climate-vulnerable region of Southeast Asia.

Environment and climate advocates, as well as members of grassroot communities, lauded the Department of Environment and Natural Resource’s (DENR) closure of 23 mining operations situated in functional watersheds and suspension of 5 mining firms, as of Tuesday, January 31, 2017.

Civil society organizations and environmental advocates expressed alarm at the administration’s plan to revive the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP).

Environment and climate advocates challenged President Rodrigo Duterte to demand accountability from developed countries, in light of the president’s recent tirade against these countries’ huge contribution to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that caused the current climate challenges the global community faces today less than two weeks before the 22nd Conference of Parties (COP) in Morocco. The international gathering of country-parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) serves as a forum to tackle climate change and addressing its impacts.