New carbon credit regulation in the Philippines is “a dangerous new frontier for carbon colonialism”
The Peoples Rising for Climate Justice - Philippines slammed the new regulation.
In the Philippines, the Department of Energy recently established regulations for generating, managing, and monitoring of carbon credits. The carbon credits can be traded in international, domestic, or voluntary carbon markets.
Climate justice activists in the Philippines have criticised the new regulations, which were drawn up without consultations with frontline communities, civil society groups, or independent environmental experts, and without debates in Congress.
Peoples Rising for Climate Justice — Philippines (PRCJ-PH), a network of grassroots organisations, put out statement describing the regulations as “illegitimate and anti-people”.
The Department of Energy published Department Circular No. DC2025-09-0018 on 10 October 2025, titled “Providing General Guidelines for the Generation, Management, and Monitoring of Carbon Credits in the Energy Sector”.
The circular specifically refers to Article 6, and the creation of International Transferred Mitigation Outcomes (ITMOs — as carbon credits are called under the Paris Agreement).
The Philippines is negotiating carbon trading deals with Singapore, Japan, and several European countries. The Philippines is negotiating a REDD deal with Singapore and anticipates signing the agreement early net year.
“Railroaded ahead of COP30”
PRCJ-PH calls the circular, “a glaring act of environmental deregulation pretending to be climate action, railroaded ahead of COP30 in Brazil in November”.
PRCJ-PH highlights that what the circular promotes as “eligible mitigation activities” includes mega-dams, large-scale solar and wind farms, waste-to-energy incinerators, and nuclear energy.
PRCJ-PH points out that,
These are the same projects that have displaced Indigenous Peoples, destroyed forests, polluted rivers, and militarized rural communities. Now, under the guise of “carbon credits,” these destructive undertakings will profit twice: from environmental exploitation and from selling off supposed “emission savings” to wealthy polluters abroad.
Coal-fired power plants
The regulations include the early retirement of coal-fired power plants as an eligible mitigation activity.
A recent report explains how using carbon offsets to retire coal plants risks increasing emissions. The report, by Reclaim Finance and the Center for Energy, Ecology and Development in the Philippines, points out that rather than reducing emissions, offsets move them from one place to another. Because the vast majority of offsets are bogus, the impact is to increase emissions globally.
PRCJ-PH highlights the fundamental problem with all carbon trading:
The DOE’s circular opens the door for foreign and local corporations to buy cheap offsets instead of reducing their own emissions. It allows polluters to greenwash business-as-usual operations while the Filipino people bear the brunt of environmental destruction and climate disasters.
PRCJ-PH’s statement is posted here in full:
DOE Circular on Carbon Markets Illegitimate, Undemocratic, and Dangerously Ushers Carbon Colonialism
People’s Rising for Climate Justice — Philippines
October 2025
Peoples Rising for Climate Justice — Philippines (PRCJ-PH), a national network of grassroots organizations for climate justice, denounces the Department of Energy’s Department Circular No. DC2025‑09‑0018 as an illegitimate and anti-people policy that seeks to establish a carbon credit system in the energy sector without Congressional debate or public accountability. This so-called “General Guidelines for the Generation, Management, and Monitoring of Carbon Credits” is a glaring act of environmental deregulation pretending to be climate action, railroaded ahead of COP30 in Brazil in November.
This circular is legally infirm. The DOE has no authority to create a carbon market or issue tradeable “Carbon Credit Certificates.” Only Congress has the constitutional power to establish new property rights, financial instruments, or taxation privileges. By arrogating unto itself this power, the DOE acts beyond its mandate - using administrative fiat to convert the nation’s collective climate assets into corporate commodities. International treaty commitments like the Paris Agreement cannot serve as blanket justification for such overreach, as they are not self-executory without enabling legislation.
Worse, this regulation was railroaded at the department level with little-to-no participation from frontline communities, civil society groups, or independent environmental experts. It sidelines the Climate Change Commission, the body legally mandated to coordinate national climate policy, and centralizes authority in energy bureaucrats who have long been beholden to corporate interests. This exclusion of public oversight betrays the very principles of climate justice and democratic policymaking.
The deeper danger of this circular lies in what it promotes as “eligible mitigation activities”: mega-dams, large-scale solar and wind farms, waste-to-energy incinerators, even nuclear energy. These are the same projects that have displaced indigenous peoples, destroyed forests, polluted rivers, and militarized rural communities. Now, under the guise of “carbon credits,” these destructive undertakings will profit twice: from environmental exploitation and from selling off supposed “emission savings” to wealthy polluters abroad.
This is not a path to decarbonization, but a dangerous new frontier for carbon colonialism. The DOE’s circular opens the door for foreign and local corporations to buy cheap offsets instead of reducing their own emissions. It allows polluters to greenwash business-as-usual operations while the Filipino people bear the brunt of environmental destruction and climate disasters. In the long run, it threatens our sovereignty over natural resources and undermines grassroots, non-market solutions led by indigenous peoples, farmers, and fisherfolk who act as real stewards of our environment. True to form, the Marcos Jr. administration is using the climate crisis to facilitate the all-out sell-out of our natural resources and national patrimony to the highest bidder, all for private profit while millions of Filipinos suffer from disasters wrought both by criminally corrupt and inept leaders and climate change.
PRCJ-PH demands the immediate revocation of this department circular. Any framework for carbon governance must be established through democratic legislation, not bureaucratic overreach. The Philippine people must not allow the atmosphere, forests, and rivers to be privatized and traded like stocks. We shall not stand by as energy corporations, in cahoots with corrupt local bureaucrats and big businessmen, profit two-fold from the plunder of our lands and financialization of what should be non-negotiable emissions reductions from the biggest and historical polluters.