One of the most biodiverse corridors remaining in Southeast Asia is protected by the Sierra Madre mountain range, which stretches like a spine down the eastern edge of Luzon. Its old-growth canopy is where hornbills build their nests. Its rivers are home to rare freshwater fish. For generations, indigenous Agta communities have inhabited those waterways, drawing sustenance and significance from the environment in ways that no infrastructure plan has ever adequately taken into consideration. Additionally, it is a location where conservation lawyers and development interests are increasingly circling each other with genuine urgency.
Geronimo Piquero has lived in that tension for over ten years. Piquero is a Manila-based environmental lawyer with strong connections to civil society organizations in the Cagayan Valley and Aurora Province. He has established a reputation for using Philippine environmental law to halt or slow down large-scale dam projects before their concrete ever reaches a riverbed. He doesn’t take a dramatic approach. It depends on documentation, procedural challenges, and an exceptionally thorough understanding of environmental impact assessment legislation. However, the outcomes have been startling in a number of well-known cases.
The Philippine Environmental Impact Statement System, the legal framework that oversees significant infrastructure projects, is at the center of Piquero’s legal strategy. On paper, before any approval is given, the process necessitates a thorough assessment of the ecological and social implications. In reality, Piquero and his associates have frequently contended that when strong proponents—often with government support—are advancing a project, this process is compressed, captured, or covertly circumvented. Fundamentally, his lawsuits are demands that the process take place.
Speaking with those who have collaborated with him gives the impression that Piquero recognizes something that others occasionally overlook: the connection between dams and forests. A mega-dam does more than simply flood a valley. It modifies the hydrology both upstream and downstream, modifies sediment flows, disturbs the fish populations that riverbank communities rely on, and—possibly most importantly in the context of Luzon’s remaining forests—often necessitates road networks and cleared land that encourage logging and encroachment well beyond the reservoir footprint. According to this perspective, the forest loss occurs over years and kilometers, making it partially invisible in any one environmental review.
Whether Philippine courts will consistently accept that more expansive framing is still up in the air. Since the introduction of the Rules of Procedure for Environmental Cases in 2010, the nation’s environmental jurisprudence has significantly changed, providing advocates with new tools such as the Writ of Kalikasan, a legal remedy created especially for national environmental threats. In at least two dam-related cases, Piquero has invoked this mechanism, claiming that the ecological impact zones extend far beyond what developers revealed in their EIS documents. In one instance, a proposed storage dam in a watershed that spans two provinces in northern Luzon led to a temporary restraining order that was in place for more than a year while a more thorough investigation was required.
The real conflict of interest at work is what makes his work complex and worthwhile to watch. There is severe water stress in the Philippines. Reservoir projects are frequently portrayed as urgent fixes for the persistent water insecurity in Metro Manila and the neighboring provinces. In a nation that urgently needs to wean itself off of its reliance on coal, hydroelectric capacity is likewise positioned as clean energy. Piquero does not contest those demands. He challenges the notion that a project’s advantages outweigh its expenses, which typically disproportionately affect communities with the least political clout.
He has talked extensively in legal forums about the pattern he sees: indigenous communities near proposed reservoir sites are frequently not consulted in a timely manner, are not fully informed, or are given procedures that appear to be participatory on paper but actually serve as rubber stamps. In these situations, the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act’s Free, Prior, and Informed Consent requirement is legally required. However, obtaining actual consent differs from obtaining documented consent, and Piquero has emphasized this point repeatedly in his court documents.
All of this does not make him well-liked by everyone. His interventions have at times been described by project supporters as obstructionism, a charge that arises whenever significant infrastructure timelines are disrupted by legal challenges. That frustration is shared by some local officials who are excited about the jobs and economic activity that dam construction brings to rural provinces. It is important to recognize that these are not straightforward moral formulas. Water security and employment are genuine benefits. Piquero consistently brings up the question of whether the tradeoffs were fairly calculated in court.
Even though there isn’t always political will to take action, environmental organizations acknowledge that Luzon’s forests are getting smaller. Although the Sierra Madre is still intact, infrastructure corridors, mining concessions, and agricultural growth have continuously put pressure on its buffer zones. Piquero seems to realize that once those forests are gone, no court order can restore them. This is what his legal work aims to formalize. In this way, the law is more than just a tool for procedure. While longer-term solutions are being worked out, it is a type of time that is purchased in increments.
The unanswered question that looms over all of this work is whether those solutions will ever fully materialize. In the Philippines, environmental attorneys work in a political climate that is subject to sudden changes, and court rulings are never final. However, some of the dams meant to stop the rivers in northern Luzon have not yet been constructed, and the rivers are still flowing. That’s worth something for the time being.
