ETW 2025 opens with industry dialogue on accountability and community relations
By: Albert San Diego
Manila, Philippines | December 4, 2025
The 2025 Extractives Transparency Week (ETW) opened with renewed momentum for inclusive and accountable natural resource governance in the Philippines. Now entering its second decade, the Philippine Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (PH-EITI) continues to serve as the country’s institutional platform for promoting transparency, accountability, and meaningful public participation in the governance of mining, oil, and gas.
With the theme “Extracting Better Futures: Amplifying Stakeholder Voices Towards Inclusive Development,” this year’s ETW highlights the importance of ensuring that transparency leads to equitable and sustainable development outcomes. Stakeholders from across the country gathered in Manila to explore emerging challenges and opportunities in extractive governance, with a strong emphasis on strengthening collaboration and elevating community perspectives.
Within this broader context, Day 1 on November 25 featured the Industry Constituency’s parallel session, “Strengthening Accountability and Community Relations in a Changing Extractives Landscape.” Held at the Department of Finance, the session brought together representatives from mining, oil, and gas sectors to examine how global expectations and domestic realities are reshaping the responsibilities of industry players.
In the photo: Katrina Francisco of SGV & Co. presenting on the NAVI operating environment and emerging shifts in ESG and transparency.
The session opened with a presentation by Katrina Francisco, Partner at SGV & Co., who described today’s operating environment as “NAVI” or nonlinear, accelerated, volatile, and interconnected. She explained how this landscape is driving three major shifts: the rising demand for reliable ESG information; the integration of climate, nature, and just transition considerations into corporate strategy; and the rapid expansion of digital technologies as tools for monitoring and transparency. Her discussion underscored that companies positioned to integrate credible data, climate and nature action, and genuine community participation will be best equipped to retain their social license to operate.
In the photo (from left to right): Host Jane Baldago, Guillermo Ansay, Katrina Francisco, Diory Carr, and Marjorie Idio engaged in the panel discussion.
A panel discussion followed, featuring Diory Carr of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau, Marjorie Idio of OceanaGold Philippines Inc., and Guillermo Ansay of the Department of Energy. The panelists stressed the importance of harmonizing ESG and community-relations frameworks across industries, strengthening capacity-building for both companies and host communities, and ensuring consistency between national and local regulations. Their insights highlighted the need for institutional alignment and people-centered approaches to responsible extractives.
In the photo: Participants taking part in the open forum session.
The conversation deepened through breakout discussions where industry participants gathered in small groups to reflect on the practical realities of sustaining trust and acceptance in host communities. They examined the shared and sector-specific challenges in maintaining a social license to operate, noting issues such as persistent misinformation, uneven access to technical information, and the difficulty of demonstrating long-term benefits in areas with historical grievances. Participants then turned to how transparency and accountability can be meaningfully improved across extractive operations, emphasizing that disclosure becomes useful only when information is accessible, timely, and communicated in ways communities understand. These reflections naturally led to exploring new strategies for strengthening community trust, where proactive engagement, localized communication tools, and participatory mechanisms were identified as essential.
Throughout the day, communication surfaced as a recurring theme. Speakers and participants noted that credible and consistent information is central to building trust, and that communication platforms must be used strategically to reach the people who need the information most. The discussions highlighted that transparency requires more than compliance; it requires ensuring that communities feel informed, included, and confident in their engagement with the sector.
As the session drew to a close, participants underscored that accountability and community relations are no longer peripheral tasks but core elements that determine the legitimacy and long-term viability of extractive operations. The insights shared throughout the day pointed toward a common direction: harmonizing standards, strengthening open data, empowering communities, aligning policies, and embracing innovation. These efforts, many agreed, are vital to shaping an extractive sector that supports inclusive development, advances the country’s clean-energy transition, and upholds responsible stewardship of natural resources.
A government-led, multi-stakeholder initiative implementing EITI, the global standard that promotes the open, accountable management, and good governance of oil, gas, and mineral resources. PH-EITI was created on 26 November 2013 through EO No. 147, s. of 2013. It is a government commitment first announced through EO No. 79, s. of 2012.
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In the photo: Atty. Daniel Luis Macalino of the SEC opens the session with an overview of the DOF–SEC Data Sharing Agreement (DSA).