“They will leave a problem of acid mine drainage there in the open pit, in the waste rock facility, in the tailings ponds. It’s a permanent footprint. It’s a perpetual footprint,” said Bishop Cirilo Casicas of the Diocese of Marbel in South Cotabato. The Catholic Church has been an active voice against the mine for many years.
Rene Pamplona, the programme coordinator of civil society organisation Convergence of Initiatives for Environmental Justice (CIEJ) and the national chair of Alyansa Tigil Mina – the Alliance Against Mining in the Philippines – has also long campaigned against the project and aims to prevent Tampakan from operating.
“We will not allow them to turn even a single stone in our mountains. To the last man and to the last drop of blood that we have, we’ll engage them on the ground or in the technical and legal arena. So, that is how important it is,” he said.
Ownership of the project – under the umbrella of the developer SMI – has shifted several times; finally, when Australian firm Glencore withdrew in 2015 citing regulatory uncertainty, it came under the control of Indophil Resources Philippines, linked to the Sy family, one of the Philippines’ most powerful business families.
Amid a nationwide ban on open-pit mining enforced in 2017, the project appeared doomed. But in 2021, a new lifeline emerged under Duterte when the national government reversed the ban, even though a local ban technically remained in place.
By 2023, when copper prices surged as the metal’s utility increased, Tampakan’s allure had also risen.
It once again returned to the headlines as the cornerstone of the Philippine government’s ambition to become a critical minerals supplier.
Reports emerged in 2024 that Chinalco, a Chinese state-owned metals giant, was considering a stake in the project’s holding structure, reportedly valued around US$2 billion. No deal has been publicly confirmed.
Despite the lack of clarity over ownership, at the mining site, SMI signs and infrastructure suggest the project appears imminent.
Yet even with approval from the national government to proceed, locally, the mine remains heavily contested and deeply divisive.
Tampakan could anchor a generation’s worth of highly valuable, sought-after copper. It could potentially open up the industry to more exploration, something Pamplona said he fears.
“If you open Tampakan, nothing will stop other mining areas from operating as well,” he said.
“We have to defend our last frontier. We have to defend our watershed. We have to defend our life support system in this region.”
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