The Philippines must redefine its position in the global minerals value chain by crafting its own list of critical minerals and updating its resource maps to attract long-term investments in downstream industries, said geologist Graciano Yumul Jr. during the opening Wednesday of the Mining Philippines 2025 Conference and Exhibition at the Grand Hyatt Manila.
Yumul, who serves as director at Cordillera Exploration Co. Inc. and Newminco Pacific Mining Corp., said the country should no longer rely on imported definitions of “critical minerals” but instead identify those essential to its own industrial and energy needs.
“Each country defines its own critical mineral trove,” he said, emphasizing that the Philippines must decide whether it will develop minerals for domestic industrialization or continue exporting them as raw commodities.
He proposed updating the nation’s mineral prospectivity maps to reflect new geological data and previously untapped deposits such as massive sulfides, magnetite skarn and iron oxide copper gold (IOCG) systems.
These include potential sources of gallium, germanium and rare earth elements—vital components in renewable energy and digital technologies.
Yumul also called for stronger fiscal and regulatory incentives to encourage value-adding projects and attract technology partners with shared environmental and development goals.
He identified three forces shaping the industry’s future: the green transition, rapid digital transformation and the “human capital transfiguration” —a generational shift demanding new technical skills and workplace dynamics.
He warned that developing nations like the Philippines, with a younger but less-trained workforce, must accelerate learning and development to compete globally.
“Defining our own critical mineral list, updating maps, enabling value addition, and ad-dressing skills gaps — these are the pillars that will future-proof our mining industry,” Yumul said, urging collaboration across government, industry and academia to ensure the country’s mineral wealth supports sustainable industrial growth.
Nomura Research Institute (NRI) Manila has urged the Philippine mining industry to begin measuring, tracking and reducing its carbon emissions as part of the country’s transition toward a low-carbon economy.
Speaking at the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines’ Mining Philippines 2025 Con-ference, Jonas Marie Dumdum, NRI senior consultant, said the minerals extraction sector contributes up to 8 percent of global carbon emissions, most of which come from the value chain or so-called “Scope 3” emissions covering processing, transport and distribution.
“While mining’s total emissions are lower than those of other heavy industries, its downstream impact across the value chain makes decarbonization a critical agenda,” Dumdum said, citing studies from the Carbon Disclosure Project.
He noted that several new and pending regulations will soon make greenhouse gas (GHG) measurement and disclosure mandatory for mining companies.
Among these are the 2020 Philippine Mineral Reporting Code, the DENR’s upcoming DAO integrating the UN Sustainable Development Goals into mining social programs, and the Philippines’ Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement, which commits to a 75 percent emissions reduction and avoidance by 2030.
Pending laws such as the Low Carbon Economy Investment Act and the Climate Ac-countability (CLIMA) Act could also introduce emission caps, carbon credit trading and penalties for greenwashing and non-compliance.
Dumdum warned that the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and Securities and Exchange Commission are tightening sustainability reporting rules to align with international standards, including IFRS S1 and S2, which will soon cover both listed and large non-listed corporations.
He also pointed out that “greenwashing”—the act of misleading the public about a company’s environmental performance—has been formally defined and penalized under Philippine financial regulations.
To prepare, NRI recommended that mining firms conduct value chain analyses to iden-tify emission sources, adopt data systems for monitoring and verification, and establish reduction targets in coordination with regulators and stakeholders.
