A vast majority of Filipinos believe that corporations responsible for environmental damage should pay up.
A new global survey commissioned by Greenpeace International and Oxfam International reveals that 84% of Filipinos support taxing oil, gas, and coal corporations for their role in driving climate change—figures higher than the global average across 13 countries.
The survey, conducted by Dynata in May 2025 via web-based interviews with 1,200 respondents (±2.83% margin of error), also found that 64% of Filipinos want the taxes collected to directly fund aid for victims of typhoons, wildfires, floods, and droughts.
“The poll results affirm what we’ve known for a long time: Filipinos have a strong sense of justice and majority support taxing the climate polluters to compensate for the damages they cause,” said Cheng Pagulayan, Climate Justice Portfolio Manager of Oxfam Pilipinas, in a news release. “These taxes should rightfully go to the vulnerable communities most impacted by the climate crisis and to supporting community-based renewable energy investments.”
Greenpeace Philippines campaigner Jefferson Chua echoed the call, urging the Marcos administration to act.
“The results validate the need to make polluters pay, strengthening the need of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to pursue them and demand climate justice,” said Chua. “The president is quickly running out of reasons to escape his responsibility to the Filipino people.”
Big polluters’ liability
Chua pointed out that just a week before President Marcos’s State of the Nation Address, the International Court of Justice ruled that governments can hold big polluters liable for harms to future generations—timing that coincided with extreme weather that displaced millions of Filipinos.
“Climate justice should not be just mere rhetoric. The president must go beyond piecemeal solutions to the climate crisis and heed the Filipino people’s demand for justice,” Chua added. “He must start the process of litigating oil and gas companies for climate impact damages and immediately call on lawmakers to pass the Climate Accountability (CLIMA) Bill. This is the climate action that we need.”
Beyond climate taxation, 81% of Filipinos surveyed said the government has failed to counter the undue influence of polluting industries and the super rich in policy-making. Of all the countries polled—including the US, UK, Canada, Germany, and India—the Philippines had the highest number of respondents (85%) who said they would support political candidates who prioritize taxing polluters and the ultra-wealthy.
A separate rapid attribution study last year found that climate change, driven by fossil fuel emissions, “supercharged” six consecutive tropical cyclones that hit the Philippines in just over a month. The same study estimated a 25% increase in the likelihood of landfalls due to the burning of fossil fuels.
Pagulayan concluded by quoting the President himself: “To borrow President Bongbong Marcos’s words from his SONA speech: Mahiya naman kayo sa inyong kapwa Pilipino! The government should act to make climate polluters pay now!”
