Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment condemns the Marcos Jr. administration’s aggressive push for a $34-billion artificial intelligence infrastructure expansion, with Clark and Bataan positioned as its primary anchors, even as communities across the country continue to reject the US-led Pax Silica agenda and its drive to place Philippine resources at the service of foreign interests. This massive expansion is being pushed without addressing the people’s urgent needs amid a deepening global economic crisis and worsening drought brought by a Super El Niño. The government is advancing an energy- and water-intensive AI industry that places Philippine natural resources and public infrastructure at the disposal of US and multinational corporations, further entrenching the country’s subordination to imperialist interests.
This September, the government launched its US$34.4-billion Philippines AI+ Infrastructure Masterplan 2026–2033, which aims to turn the country into a major AI infrastructure hub in Southeast Asia. The plan calls for a 30-fold expansion of AI data-center capacity, from 50 megawatts today to 1.5 gigawatts by 2033, with around 400 MW targeted by 2030. Of the $34.4 billion needed, $13.5 billion is expected to come from public funds and $21 billion from private investors. The plan also means a huge increase in the country’s demand for electricity and water. The government expects the AI industry to operate around 152,000 GPUs, which are powerful computer chips that generate enormous amounts of heat and require constant cooling. As the plan aims to get 40% of the electricity for AI from renewable sources by 2033, it also identifies natural gas as a near-term source of additional power and considers nuclear power as a possible long-term source. In 2024, the Bataan provincial government, the Asian Development Bank, government agencies, and private-sector representatives were already exploring the conversion of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) complex into a massive data center. Now, the PAIIM identifies Clark and Bataan as the main areas for this development, while Batangas-Aurora, Subic, Calabarzon, and eventually Cebu, Iloilo, Davao, and Cagayan de Oro will serve as other nodes.
The scale of this expansion is immense as AI data centers require enormous and continuous supplies of electricity and water, as well as land, minerals, transmission and telecommunications systems. The masterplan itself identifies energy and water as core requirements of the country’s AI infrastructure build-up. Two US-based hyperscalers, whose names are not publicly disclosed, are already examining Philippine sites, with each reportedly considering around 200 MW of initial capacity.
However, as the country is consistently facing a climate-induced crisis on water supply, the water demand of the project aggravates the conditions. Data centers use water primarily for cooling the immense heat generated by thousands of servers, as 75–90% of data centers worldwide rely on water-based cooling. Large hyperscale facilities can consume around 1 to 5 million gallons of water per day under peak conditions.
The Environmental and Energy Study Institute estimates that data centers can evaporate around 1.8 liters of water for every kilowatt-hour of computing energy used. Using this estimate, a 200-MW data center operating continuously could evaporate around 8.6 million liters of water every day. At the government’s planned 1.5-GW national AI data-center capacity, this could reach around 64.8 million liters of water every day. This is roughly equivalent to the daily water consumption of approximately 600,000 to 1.35 million people in Metro Manila every day.
This is further compounded by the urgency of the country’s worsening El Niño conditions and their already documented impact on agriculture, further worsening its projected impact. The Department of Agriculture reported that El Niño was already affecting 14 of the Philippines’ 18 regions, with agricultural damage reaching approximately P6.87 billion, covering 249,028 hectares and affecting more than 223,000 farmers.
The crisis is expected to deepen as DOST-PAGASA warns that Super El Niño could intensify toward the end of 2026 and persist into the first half of 2027, increasing the risk of below-normal rainfall, dry spells, and drought. Several provinces are already experiencing drought or dry spell conditions, including Bataan that is projected to receive below-normal rainfall. Therefore, who gets priority access to water when water itself is in short supply?
This is unfolding alongside the rapid build-up of the Luzon Economic Corridor and the Pax Silica initiative, where major foreign and Philippine conglomerates and industrial-estate developers are already investing heavily, as corporate expansion is expected to accelerate. Government officials said in May 2026 that more than 20 companies had expressed interest in investing in the Luzon Economic Corridor’s emerging AI and industrial ecosystem, including more than a dozen US companies, several of them billion-dollar firms.
The Philippines is continuously being reduced to a resource base and labor pool for US-led supply chains for corporate profit and the interests of US imperialism to secure strategic technologies and strengthen the attempt to dominate against China amid intensifying inter-imperialist contradiction. The costs of it all are passed on to ordinary Filipinos, as the ongoing US-Iran war has already contributed to disruptions in global oil supplies and successive fuel-price increases in the Philippines, raising transportation costs and placing additional burdens on workers, commuters, and consumers.
Kalikasan vehemently condemns how the Marcos Jr. administration willingly surrenders Philippine resources to US interests, in the face of communities confronting displacement, environmental destruction, resource depletion, water scarcity, expensive electricity, and inadequate public services. This subordination to the US is being entrenched as Marcos Jr. and the US push forward the Luzon Economic Corridor, Pax Silica, critical-mineral extraction, and AI and technology investments, all packaged behind bogus narratives of “green transition” and “industrialization.” The Filipino people and the nation’s patrimony are not commodities for imperialist plunder. What the Philippines needs is genuine national industrialization to develop its domestic productive capacity and industries according to the needs of the Filipino people, under national control, rather than one that reduces the country to a playground, resource base, and cheap labor pool for foreign corporations and imperialist powers.
