What is Pax Silica?

Pax Silica is a US-led coalition launched in December 2025. It now includes more than 20 countries, and the UK is a founding member. Its aim is to lock down the supply chains behind AI, semiconductors and the critical minerals that feed them, so that the US and its allies have the edge over China.

It is sold as "economic security." For the people who live on the land it needs, it means a new rush to dig up, fence off and sell what they depend on to survive.

What it means for the Philippines

The Philippines has some of the world's richest deposits of nickel and other critical minerals. That has made it a frontline in Pax Silica's plans.

• A 1,620-hectare "Economic Security Zone" is planned at New Clark City in Tarlac, on a former US military base. Foreign investors may be offered 99-year leases on the land.

• It's being rushed through without basic checks. The project has no completed feasibility study, no environmental impact assessment and no environmental compliance certificate.

• We've seen this before. The first New Clark City development pushed Aeta Indigenous and farming communities off land they had worked for generations, and diverted local rivers. Those communities were left out of every decision.

• More mining is coming. The zone is built to process minerals, so the pressure to extract them falls on mining regions like the Cordillera and Nueva Vizcaya. Communities there are already resisting, and already being met with police violence and arrests.

• The military is involved. Pax Silica's own architects describe the chips it secures as essential to "hypersonic missile guidance, autonomous drone swarms" and other weapons systems. Philippine land and minerals would be feeding a war machine.

Filipino scientists, economists and people's organisations have called it what it is: mineral plunder.

Why this is a British issue

The UK government signed up to Pax Silica as a founding member, with no public debate and no parliamentary scrutiny we can find. No minister has publicly taken responsibility for it.

British companies are already part of the critical-minerals rush in the Philippines. The London-listed Metals Exploration PLC is expanding into Nueva Vizcaya, Kalinga and Abra, where community leaders opposing its operations have faced violent dispersal and arrest.

What our government agrees to in our name has consequences for Filipino communities. We have a responsibility to stop it.

The clock is ticking

A US–Philippines Pax Silica framework deal is reportedly due to be finalised by November 2026. Once it's signed, it'll be much harder to challenge.

What we're calling for

1. The UK government must withdraw from Pax Silica, and in the meantime publish what membership commits us to, and which department is responsible.

2. Parliament must scrutinise the UK's role before any further commitments are made.

3. Protect land and environmental defenders in the Philippines, and end the harassment, red-tagging and arrests of people defending their land.

4. Hold British companies to account for human rights and environmental harms in the Philippines.