Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment on new DENR secretary Raphael Lotilla
Statement
May 27, 2025
President Marcos Jr.’s appointment of Raphael Lotilla as Secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) bodes ill for the Filipino people, especially those already facing plunder, dispossession, militarization, and dislocation at the hands of big business. Lotilla’s track record speaks for itself: after his stint at the Department of Energy (DOE) where he championed and secured the interests of energy conglomerates, he now stands poised to do the same at the DENR.
Now, as DENR chief, Lotilla is poised to accelerate the same brand of neoliberal “development”—greenwashed energy projects, fast-tracked infrastructure, and intensified resource extraction—that has long dispossessed peasant, indigenous, and working-class communities while devastating our ecosystems. Lotilla served as an independent director of the Aboitiz Power Corp.—one of the country’s largest power conglomerates notorious for land-grabbing and land use conversion for environmentally destructive solar farm projects.
Lotilla’s legacy as a key architect of the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (EPIRA), and his controversial tenure at the Department of Energy—where he greenlit the expansion of a coal plant owned by his former corporate affiliate in violation of a national coal moratorium—expose a clear pattern of pro-corporate, anti-people policy-making. He also paved the way for the wholesale privatization of our energy sector, resulting in skyrocketing electricity prices and diminished public control. If this legacy continues at the DENR, we face the real danger of more greenwashed “development” that sacrifices ecosystems and communities in favor of profit, while deepening the hardship of the poor and vulnerable.
Under former DENR chief Ma. Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga, we witnessed a wave of greenwashing: the illusion of environmental reform used to fast-track destructive reclamation, mining, and energy projects. Her administration entrenched a governance model that excluded genuine people’s participation, shielded big business interests, and enabled continued militarization and attacks against environmental defenders
Kalikasan challenges Lotilla directly — If he truly seeks to serve the Filipino people, he must break decisively from the corporate-dominated legacy that has long plagued the DENR. He must center the needs of marginalized communities, uphold environmental justice, and immediately halt the fast-tracking of destructive projects disguised as “clean energy.” A just transition cannot be built on land grabs, displacement, and militarization. It must be grounded in ecological sustainability, democratic control over our natural resources, and respect for people’s rights.
We challenge Secretary Lotilla to prove his leadership will not be business as usual. He must guarantee robust environmental and social safeguards, ensure meaningful community participation, and uphold full transparency and accountability in all DENR programs and policies. The Filipino people demand a genuinely people-centered, ecological, and just transition. Stop destructive projects. Uphold the rights of defenders and marginalized communities.
