Cities grow quickly in the Philippines, one of Southeast Asia’s emerging markets. Construction cranes hang over street corners like steel vines. Cars and motorcycles weave past rising condominiums and billboards for fast food giants. On any given day, the noise is constant: jackhammers, car horns, the hum of a place learning to move faster. This is daily life in Bacolod — a place bustling within a nation among the world’s most climate-vulnerable, where every typhoon, drought, and rising tide carves its mark on communities least responsible.

But just beyond the rush and heat sits the Capitol Park and Lagoon.

Step inside, and time loosens its grip. The breeze slows. The trees stand older. The air smells warm, slightly sweet, almost like the morning itself is exhaling.

At dawn, the sun folds slowly over the carabaos — two statues facing each other across the water. A jogger passes. Then another. Their sneakers tap gently against the brick.

To one side, the Negros Museum holds the island’s past on glass shelves: stories of sugar, resistance, and land.

Just beyond the trees, the white columns of the Negros Occidental Provincial Capitol rise — towering over the park and the people.

And somewhere beneath it all, Zumba music crackles to life. Loud, joyous, unbothered — just like the dancers, moving freely to the beat.

But in March 2019, the rhythm was different. Louder. Unignorable.

It was Ash Wednesday but instead of ashes on their foreheads, many carried placards and prayers.

The Lagoon became a stage for defiance. Two thousand students, parishioners, and youth leaders gathered here. They stood shoulder to shoulder beneath the canopy, banners in hand, hope in their chests. Some wore school uniforms. Others wore the dust of their commute. Most came with nothing but their voice.

It was the largest youth-led climate action in the country at the time.

At the center were two figures: Bishop Gerry Alminaza and Dr. Romana de los Reyes. Between them, a resolution. The governor had just declared the province coal-free.

It was a moment thick with sun, sweat, and certainty. What they held wasn’t just paper. It was years of organizing, praying, resisting.

Soil and Struggle

In Negros, everything begins with soil.

It is soil that sweetens the sugarcane, feeds the economy, and stains the hands of generations. Negros is the sugar capital of the Philippines — a land where wealth has always rested on the back of struggle.

Here, land is labor. Land is memory. Land is power.

Romana de los Reyes knew this from birth. She came from tenant farmers. The fields were her first classrooms. Harvest was never just a season — it was survival. In high school, her father would hand her and her sister a parcel of palay to thresh, letting them keep whatever they earned. For her, labor was not a plaything. It was life. It was dignity.

Her mother once told her there was no need for college. Like many girls then, she was expected to marry young. But Romana was stubborn. Even as a child, she imagined a different life.

Years later, she earned her PhD in anthropology from UC Berkeley, armed with grit, tenacity, and the lived truths of the people she came from.

The land shaped her. And eventually, it called her home.

In her office in Bago City, “Doc Romana,” as she is fondly called, keeps history alive. Old campaign photos curl at the edges. News clippings yellow with time. Copies of documents, letters, and protest paraphernalia sit neatly stacked. She has kept it all — labeled, filed, preserved. It is more than an archive. It is evidence of a life spent holding the line. A record not just of resistance, but of love: for place, for people, for a future yet to be harmed.

The room is dim and cool, the air thick with the quiet scent of old paper and sun-warmed wood.

And there she is — in cotton shorts and a simple shirt, feet planted firmly on the wooden floor, gaze unwavering. Authority radiates from her, not loud or forceful, but grounded, like soil that knows what it holds.

“No one can tell me that I am not worth it,” she said. “I never doubted my self-worth.”

In 1997, at 50 — still a decade away from retirement — she left behind a prestigious academic life to return to this city. Bago means “new” in Filipino. What Romana didn’t know was that coming home would mark the beginning of an entirely new fight. She didn’t yet see that she was stepping into a storm.

She didn’t even know what a coal plant was at first. But when her sister mentioned a proposal near their home, something ancient stirred in her chest. For days, she read everything she could find.

Coal was not just dirty; it was dangerous. It threatened the air, the water, the livelihoods of farmers and fishers. It promised profit, but at a price the people of Bago could not afford.

Romana’s response was simple: “No. You’re not going to have it here.”

From that point on, she moved with the clarity of conviction. She mobilized elite families, negotiated with city officials, and educated villages one by one.

From September to December, she visited half of Bago’s 24 villages. She spoke not as an outsider, but as someone who once tilled the land herself. At every stop, she laid out the facts: the threat to fishing, the health risks, the destruction of rice fields. The faces listening were often mothers, teachers, fish vendors. They understood what was at stake — not carbon, but children. Not emissions, but meals.

By January 1998, the city had seen enough.

Twenty thousand people filled the streets of Bago. Soon after, the city council formally rejected the coal plant.

Silence and Thunder

Romana thought that was the end.

But the proponents moved their target to a nearby city: Silay.

By then, she was wary. “I feared for my life,” she said, but still agreed to help.

Silay was different. Resistance came from within the ranks of the city’s elite. Women with influence and inheritance rallied quietly, then swiftly. Within two months, they had convinced the city council to say no.

But the fight was far from over. The coal proponents shifted their sights again — this time to Pulupandan.

Pulupandan was smaller, poorer, and closer to the sea — prime for coal shipments. Unlike in Bago or Silay, the proposed coal plant here was already granted an Environmental Compliance Certificate. For most communities, that would have been the end.

But Romana, now seasoned and resolute, refused to surrender.

She wrote letters to editors. She published commentaries in newspapers. She challenged policies line by line. The pushback was fierce — the threats, louder. But she never flinched.

“You need to be thick-skinned,” she said.

She believed that winning required creativity. They made posters, pins, neck tags. They turned Christmas caroling into protest songs. Jeepneys carried placards through town. They used every angle — humor, prayer, culture — to make people care.

The churches became sanctuaries. Catholic, Protestant, and Aglipayan clergy opened parish halls for meetings. Priests stood at the back of rallies in silent blessing before fading into the crowd.

But it was the women who held the fight together. Romana called them stubborn, and said it with love.

They cooked breakfast, sent their children to school, and marched. Lightning rallies, they called them. Standing in silence outside the municipal hall, holding placards that read No to Coal. Before noon, they would be back home cooking lunch. Sunday nights were for prayer vigils. In their quiet, they were thunder.

She remembers how ready they were to lie down on the streets if construction trucks came. They were ready to die there, if that’s what it would take to keep the coal plant from rising.

“For the women, it was a fight for their lives. For the lives of their children and their children’s children,” she said. “They fought hard. Really fought hard. Because they were defending their futures.”

Pulupandan’s resistance was not flashy, but it was fierce. And it worked. The ECC was revoked.

When asked what kept her going throughout the almost five-year-battle, she didn’t hesitate: “I never doubted the worthiness of the fight.”

In 2012, her name carried enough weight that when Cadiz City proposed its own coal plant, she and a woman leader from Pulupandan were invited to speak. They warned of coal’s dangers, joined a protest, and soon after, the proponent quietly withdrew.

Years later, the women still gather. They eat. They laugh. They remember the rallies, the fear, the stubborn joy of resistance.

They tease each other about how brave they sounded at the microphone. They relive the tears, the speeches, the mothers, professionals, and fish vendors who spoke truth to power.

Underneath the laughter is something sacred: knowledge that together, they kept coal from poisoning their soil.

“I think to win, you just have to use all angles,” Romana said. “And I think there are so many leaders. If given space, more leaders will emerge. We need them to win the fight against climate change. No one person can save the world.”

Today, at 78, surrounded by books and billboards from the past, she now dreams of turning this archive into a museum. “Whatever help is welcome,” she smiled.

When asked what gives her hope, she didn’t hesitate: “The youth. I cannot understand all their activities,” she laughed softly. “But they’re the ones in touch with the future. My role is to support them. To remind them to be persistent. Because there’s no substitute for tenacity and stubbornness to win a battle.”

She smiles, surrounded by memories. By faith. By proof that women can change the world. And she says it herself, but even the room knows:

It was all worth it.

Seeds and Spirit

San Carlos City sits gently on Negros Island, nestled between its eastern and western provinces. Over 130,000 people live here. Framed by sea and mountain, it is lined with rolling hills, sugarcane fields, and coastal shorelines.

It is not a destination found on most tourist itineraries. San Carlos rarely makes the headlines — known only to some as the hometown of a famous boxer or as the place where an actress settled after marrying a local politician. Yet this city holds its own economic importance.

Strategically nestled between two boom towns — Bacolod to the west and Cebu just across the strait to the east — San Carlos connects regions by both land and sea.

It also hosts Negros Occidental’s first special economic zone, created to spur development and attract investments. Part of it is now a solar farm — a quiet symbol of progress that, in a town like this, feels just a little out of place.

San Carlos is a haven for those who want to embrace the slow life. Here, everything is close-knit. It is the kind of place where people recognize each other — by name, by face, or by the way they smile in greeting.

Big private cars, buses, and jeepneys roam its streets, but it is the red tricycles that catch the eye. They weave through the town, ferrying passengers across short distances — to the public market, to the parish church, or to the port at the town’s edge.

Small enough that everything remains near, yet developed enough that fast food chains, modest malls, and banks line its main roads. Still, life here moves unhurried. People sit on benches under the thin shade of trees, chatting quietly. Teenagers lean against parked tricycles, scrolling on their phones. The air smells faintly of sun-warmed grass and sea breeze, carrying the quiet joy of a new day.

It is here that Father Jolo Tormis plants hope.

A farmer’s son who grew up in rice fields, he carries the wisdom of planting into his priesthood. Today, he leads the Diocese of San Carlos’ Integral Ecology Ministry — an initiative they call ‘Lunhaw,’ which means green in Cebuano.

Guided by Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’s encyclical on caring for our common home, Lunhaw grew into both prayer and protest.

They campaigned against coal-fired power plants, liquefied natural gas terminals, destructive roads slicing through forests, and mining projects that threatened what little fertile land the island has left.

Growth and Grace

Lunhaw is more than a church program; it is a movement rooted in faith and nurtured by persistence. Its path has not been without stones. Public interest was low. Volunteers came and went. Awareness grew in inches, not miles. Yet none of this dissuaded them. In a city often scarred by storms and floods, Father Jolo believes groups like Lunhaw are lifelines.

“Awareness is there. Participation is there. But changing lifestyles — what we call ecological conversion — that remains a journey,” he said in Filipino.

Though Lunhaw was formally established in August 2020, its seeds were planted long before — during an education campaign led by Doc Romana in 2019. Father Jolo remembers how some young participants stood up during that session — unafraid to ask questions, to care, to act. They became Lunhaw’s first volunteers. Five years later, those early seeds have grown into mentors themselves, guiding new youth ecology ministers and inspiring them to care for their common home.

It was the diocese’s celebration of the anniversary of Laudato Si’ and the week is filled with gatherings that wove faith into caring for the earth: learning sessions, hands-on workshops, and a visit to one of their growing reforestation sites.

They capped it all with a Filipino tradition — the Santacruzan, a procession where women portray biblical characters. But this time, as they walked in their bright, embroidered gowns, each carried not just flowers but messages drawn from the late pontiff’s encyclical.

Father Jolo believes the youth must always be at the heart of these efforts.

“This is not just for this generation,” he said softly in Filipino. “But for the next. That’s intergenerational justice. That is what we teach them.”

Roots and Stewardship

Just over an hour from San Carlos lies Magticol village in the town of Toboso. Beyond the main road and across a shallow stream, you will find the Artujo family’s farm — a hillside plot now transformed into the diocese’s demonstration farm for sustainable agriculture.

At its heart is Allan Artajo, 61, a farmer whose life has always been connected to the land. For decades, he planted what he could, how he could. But everything changed when he joined an organic farming workshop hosted by the diocese. It was there he first heard Pope Francis’ words in Laudato Si’.

“I realized it’s not just factories that destroy the world and our children’s future,” he said in Filipino. “We farmers have caused damage too, because of chemicals.”

When Lunhaw sought land for its programs, Allan offered his farm without hesitation. It was an act of faith, rooted in his dream to leave behind something good.

“The Church truly empowered us,” he said. “Before, we didn’t really engage with Church programs. We only focused on making a living. But when Lunhaw started, it felt like we came alive.”

Today, farming is no longer just Allan’s work — it has become his family’s ministry. Together, they train on agroecology and seed saving, weaving new knowledge into old wisdom passed down through seasons. His children have taken technical courses too, determined to deepen what their father started.

Inside their bamboo hut, a small seed library stands as a quiet testament to their devotion. Jars sit neatly on wooden shelves, labeled with varieties of rice, millet, beans, herbs, root crops, and even saplings of apple and grape they hope will one day bear fruit — not just for their family, but for children in the village to see, touch, and taste.

Each seed they save is shared for free with neighbors and fellow farmers who come seeking hope for their own fields. But they share more than seeds. They share the word of God, gently reminding visitors that tending the land is prayer too.

For Allan, their work is rooted in a deeper truth: “We realized everything is connected — the plants, the soil, people. None of us exist separately.”

Earth and People

Just as seeds need tending, so do people.

In the Diocese of San Carlos, there is a shepherd who cares not only for his flock, but also for the soil, rivers, forests, and air that sustain them. Bishop Gerry Alminaza believes faith is not only what you profess in prayer, but what you protect with your hands.

It was early Sunday morning. Bishop Gerry had just returned from France, where he stood before Europe’s banking giants to denounce their continued investments in fossil fuels. Three flights and long hours by car brought him home to San Carlos. But rest could wait. His first act upon returning was to celebrate Mass.

He stood before his community and spoke of his journey abroad — of boardrooms, shareholder meetings, and quiet confrontations — weaving each story back to the lives of farmers, fisherfolk, and young people listening in the pews. He spoke with his eyes closed, drawing words not from notes but from somewhere deeper — from conviction.

Bishop Gerry was born in Sipalay, Negros Occidental, in a mining village that shook daily from dynamite blasts. As a boy, it felt normal. As a man, he understood it as destruction. Mining built houses and schools but hollowed out the land. It gave jobs for a time but left hunger in its wake. Perhaps it was there, in the silence after the blasts, that his calling took root: to serve, to protect, to heal.

Ordained in 1986, the year Filipinos lined Manila’s major thoroughfare, EDSA with prayers and yellow ribbons to topple a dictator, Gerry Alminaza stepped into priesthood as People Power bloomed. As the nation rejoiced after a bloodless revolution, his ministry carried a promise: that faith must always speak against injustice.

Over the years, his ministry widened from parish to province, from flock to forest. In 2013, he was sent to San Carlos just after Typhoon Haiyan tore through the Visayas. Here, he found a city proud of its green policies — zero plastic waste, marine sanctuaries, a “where green is a go” slogan. Yet beneath these was a betrayal: a proposed coal-fired power plant.

He rallied with youth activists, civil society groups, and the clergy to stop it. They formed human chains across towns. They prayed in plazas. They stood in silence outside government offices. Their campaign succeeded: Negros Occidental was declared coal-free.

“Ubuntu,” he often says. “I am because we are.” For Bishop Gerry, this African wisdom echoes the Gospel truth — that none of us exist alone. It has become the diocese’s battle cry under his leadership.

But his fight has not been without danger. Under the Duterte administration, he was red-tagged, labeled ‘demonic and diabolical’ for speaking against killings, militarization, and political repression. Yet at every turn, he remained steadfast, Laudato Si’ became his blueprint for climate hope. But it has also reshaped the way he says his prayers.

“The more I listen, the more I empathize, the more I make myself vulnerable to all the realities around me,” he reflected softly. “I cannot prevent (myself from being) affected by it. (It) even transformed my own understanding of God.”

Bishop Gerry stands firm in his belief that his faith was never meant to stay inside church walls. He carries his advocacy far beyond Negros — to the streets, grand halls, even global climate summits — speaking of faith’s power to move people — then, now, and always.

He remembers 1986, when prayers put an end to an authoritarian rule. Today, he believes faith can move people again — this time for the planet.

“Faith can move mountains,” he said. “(But) there seems to be a problem of ensuring that the spirit of EDSA, of People Power in 1986, is faithfully communicated and the responsibility falls on us, church leaders.”

Bridges and Boundaries

Antonio La Viña has spent his life building bridges — between law and people, policy and environment, faith and action.

A lawyer by training, he became one of the country’s youngest Environment Undersecretaries in the 1990s. Today, he is known not only as a legal scholar and negotiator, but also as a teacher — guiding generations of environmental lawyers and climate advocates in the Philippines and beyond.

He has sat at negotiation tables from Kyoto to Paris, advising Filipino delegates on the world’s biggest climate stages. But when asked what sustains him in these long fights, his answer is simple: hope rooted in people.

“I’ve been involved in the climate negotiations from the beginning,” he said softly. “Since 1990. That’s 35 years.”

In conversation, he speaks with quiet authority. His words are precise, measured, unhurried. Each sentence carries both the weight of scholarship and the warmth of someone who believes in community.

“Our problem is not climate change. It’s not scientific. It’s not technical. Our problem is climate justice.”

But in a country where power repeats itself, justice is never simple. The Philippines is once again led by another Marcos — the son of the strongman ousted during People Power in 1986. He sees the distance between then and now.

“EDSA is so far away already,” he said. “The issues there were very, very different.”

Dean Tony, a moniker that stuck after he once headed an educational institution, does not see today’s administration as an outright enemy, but he is clear-eyed about its shortcomings.

“My hope is that they just be consistent with what they say globally and what they do locally,” he said, referring to the government’s continued support for mining, reclamation, natural gas, and controversial dams. “So that we don’t contribute to the climate crisis.”

He believes the lesson of unity still endures, but admits that solidarity has changed.

“You can get more people involved… but people don’t want to leave their houses anymore,” he said, pausing as if weighing each word. “None of us has mastered how to bring people out.”

Yet for Dean Tony, the Church remains one of the few institutions capable of bringing people together.

“The Church was prophetic in the Marcos years. It took a while. But by EDSA (People Power), they took on a prophetic role. That’s what the Church should do now.”

As the Church faces its own reckoning — to divest from fossil fuels, to stand with creation rather than its destruction — his hope remains quiet but unbreakable.

“I think it can be very powerful,” he said softly.

Faith and Fossil Fuels
The streets of Intramuros wake slowly. Light pools over stone pavements worn by centuries. A guard raises his hand to stop traffic, letting visitors cross toward the walled city’s quiet heart. Once the seat of colonial power, Intramuros remains the symbolic home of faith in a country where the majority of people identify as Catholic.

Beyond a black iron gate stands the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines. Here, faith becomes policy. Here, decisions echo far beyond church walls.

Inside was a quiet gathering — a handful of people, guests, advocates, and journalists. Morning light fell softly on chairs and open notebooks as they spoke of divestment.

Filipino bishops committed to it in a pastoral letter in 2022, setting 2025 as their deadline — the tenth anniversary of Laudato Si’ and a Jubilee year in Catholic tradition. But as the year draws to a close, one question lingers in the stillness: Has the Church walked its talk?

“I am very much challenged to really raise more awareness,” Bishop Gerry said. “Because in spite of the fact that we are already experiencing the warnings of a global climate emergency… people seem not to feel the urgency.”

A new report presented at the gathering painted a sobering picture. Catholic institutions in the Philippines remain invested in companies driving climate destruction — coal, gas, and mining giants.

For Bishop Gerry, however, divestment is not just about numbers. He knows change cannot happen overnight.

“If Christianity has been here for 500 years and we are still beset with corruption and a culture of impunity… (what) can we expect in three years?” he asked, pausing. “But it should not make us complacent. It should make us more committed.”

He shared plans for a green audit to guide dioceses in tracking their carbon footprints and financial holdings, alongside executive courses for bishops and dialogues with diocesan financial councils. He sees this as part of a just transition — a journey that will take time but must begin now.

“The process is not just ‘divest’. It has to be accompanied with ‘invest’… to convince them to also reinvest their funds from fossil fuels to renewable energy.”

Across the sea, the first American pope pledged to build a solar farm that could make the Vatican the world’s first carbon-neutral state — a clear signal he would carry forward Pope Francis’ ecological legacy.

Days later, dressed in green, Pope Leo XIV stood under open skies and celebrated the first-ever Mass for creation, underscoring the urgency of the climate crisis. He directed that this new rite be added to the centuries-old list of Masses for special intentions.

It was a step in the right direction — but whether faith can keep pace with a world already burning remains an open question.

Mission and Memory

Bishop Gerry knows that time is running out.

“It’s so sad if we miss the opportunity,” he said softly. “I hope we can do it soon. Because there is power in our vision. There is power in our mission… if we just put our acts together, we can still make a difference.”

These days, his vision reaches further. As the newly elected President of Caritas Philippines, he carries the Church’s humanitarian work on his shoulders. In Negros, he continues to help gather faiths under the One Negros Ecumenical Council — Catholics, Protestants, and Evangelicals coming together for peace and the protection of their common home.

Not far away, Doc Romana tends to her butterfly garden, a quiet testament to a life spent in struggle and bloom. Recently, she discovered a butterfly never before recorded in Negros. Its wings were pale and small against the green, delicate yet resolute — proof that something beautiful can appear where it has never been seen before. Like victory after years of resistance.

She smiled, remembering how she once left and her sudden intention of returning.

“I felt God was calling me home,” she said.

At the Capitol Lagoon, the Paghimud-os sculpture — Visayan for “endeavor” or “struggle” — sits between two statues: a man and a woman, each guiding a carabao.

They face each other across the square, not in opposition, but in quiet tension. In that silent pull is a metaphor: progress that comes not from uniformity, but from shared weight and unyielding will.

As the light softens over the lagoon, the question lingers like a prayer:

In this warming world, can faith and care still pull us toward something more just, more whole, more alive?

This story was funded by climateXchange (cXc), a nonprofit initiative dedicated to helping global newsrooms enhance local climate storytelling and its intersection with cultural narratives.