Manila, Philippines – Civil society organizations led by NGO Forum on ADB staged a creative protest at the 21st Asia Clean Energy Forum (ACEF 2026), unveiling a giant ‘Kraken of Destruction’ to denounce the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) role in deepening the global energy crisis through continued fossil fuel financing, extractive investments, and false climate solutions.
Outside the ACEF 2026 venue in Mandaluyong, affected community and civil society groups confronted a massive kraken representing what the group called the Bank’s “system of energy capture.” Its sprawling tentacles represented fossil fuels, mining, waste-to-energy incineration, nuclear energy, and the Bank’s growing financial control over energy systems.
“This ACEF, it’s time to name the monster. For more than sixty years, the ADB has trapped communities in a dirty legacy of destructive business across Asia. The imperialist wars only exposed what was already there: an energy crisis structurally built, loan by loan, by the Bank itself through decades of fossil fuel financing,” said Elle Bartolome from the Philippine Movement for Climate Justice.
“The Philippines is a testament to that. In Cebu, coal communities have spent nearly 15 years seeking justice that has remained elusive to this day. In Zambales, families live in the shadow of a coal infrastructure that ADB helped build, and now faces expansion. How many more communities have to watch their homes destroyed, their health at risk, and their very survival threatened before ADB is held accountable?” she added.
Communities symbolically dismantled the kraken’s tentacles during the protest, representing collective resistance against ADB-backed energy insecurity, climate breakdown, and rising inequality across Asia.
Here are some photos of the event:
In its statement, Forum Network said that while the ACEF 2026 is taking place amid a deepening global energy crisis driven by geopolitical conflict, volatile fuel prices, and rising debt burdens across developing countries, in reality, ADB continues to expand fossil fuel-linked financing as if nothing has happened.
Through mechanisms such as ADB’s Trade and Supply Chain Finance Program, the group said, the Bank has revived and expanded oil import transactions effectively using geopolitical disruption and energy insecurity as justification for continued financing of fossil fuel trade flows with little to no public disclosure.
“In the time of a global energy crisis, overwhelming forces such as the surge in electricity prices and basic commodities are carried largely by the public. The indirect impacts of the war in West Asia reveal how Asia, heavily dependent on fossil fuels, has struggled to battle with both volatile markets and the worsening effects of the climate crisis. Now, ADB is capitalizing on this crisis to push its fossil fuel agenda as so-called ‘emergency financing’, including the revival of oil imports under its Trade and Supply Chain Finance Program. This institution must stop packaging fossil fuel finance as a crisis response,” according to Nazareth Del Pillar of NGO Forum.
The groups also stressed that communities across Asia continue to bear the burden of rising energy costs, mounting public debt, and climate-related impacts, while large-scale energy and infrastructure projects backed by multilateral banks remain heavily driven by corporate interests rather than public need. They argued that a just energy transition must prioritize publicly funded, community-led renewable energy systems instead of locking countries into new forms of extractivism, fossil fuel dependence, and debt.
“The ADB continues to undermine a just energy transition in Asia by keeping pathways open for continued oil and gas expansion, preserving coal loopholes, and promoting false energy solutions. At a time of worsening climate and debt crises, the ADB must stop locking countries into costly and polluting energy systems that delay the shift to clean, renewable energy. Real energy security requires accelerating a rapid, equitable, and people-centered transition powered by renewable energy,” said Lidy Nacpil of Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD).
“ADB’s debt-driven climate financing undermines the very essence of climate justice. A truly just transition must move away from fossil fuel dependence and debt-based lending, and instead support public financing that enables clean, affordable, and democratic renewable energy systems that serve people and communities.” Nacpil added.
The groups further cautioned that these trends are being reinforced by new financing initiatives announced during the recent ADB Annual Meeting in Samarkand, including the Action for Creating Energy Security for Long-term Resilience (ACCEL) facility, the Regional Financing Facility for Critical Minerals, and large-scale cross-border energy infrastructure plans.
Jaybee Garganera of Alyansa Tigil Mina warned that “ADB is treading on a slippery slope if and when it proceeds in providing funds for more mining of nickel, copper and other transition minerals in the region. ADB risks creating more suffering against mining-affected communities. Opening up sacrifice zones to deliver minerals that may or may not actually go towards renewable energy technologies, but instead to security and defense requirements of developed countries, is not the direction of clean energy development that ADB is aspiring for.”
The group also criticized ADB’s 2025 Energy Policy Review, which retains fossil gas as a‘transition fuel’ without a clear phase-out pathway and opens the door to nuclear energy, carbon capture, co-firing, and expanded critical mineral extraction.
They also called out ADB’s increasing reliance on private sector financing partnerships, which reached billions of dollars in 2024, involving corporations that advocates and affected communities say are linked to coal expansion, pollution, environmental destruction, and human rights violations across the region.
“ADB’s current push for private sector investments comes with non-transparent financing modalities that hide all manner of evils. By partnering with private sector companies that hold poor human rights records or refuse to phase out fossil fuels, the Bank is putting people and the planet at risk. ACEF must not be a platform for normalising collaboration with companies that are actively fuelling the energy and climate crises. The ADB must keep its development mandate at heart when choosing private sector partners, ensuring it banks on renewables, upholds safeguards, and puts people’s needs first,” said Marjorie Pamintuan, Advisor at Recourse.
Forum Network and allies demand that the ADB adopt several “non-negotiables”, including-
Ending all direct and indirect fossil fuel financing
Rejecting nuclear energy financing
Halting support for false solutions such as waste-to-energy incinerators and large-scale projects
Prohibiting extractive mining without binding safeguards and indigenous consent
Prioritizing public and community-led renewable systems over private sector-driven models
“ADB cannot claim to build secure, inclusive, and sustainable energy systems while its financing arms continue feeding the very kraken that is strangling Asia’s communities. From fossil gas and opaque oil trade finance to nuclear energy, waste-to-energy incineration, critical minerals extraction, and private-sector deals that socialize risks while privatizing profits, the Bank is not resolving the energy crisis—it is deepening and restructuring it for corporate gain,” said Rayyan Hassan of NGO Forum on ADB.
He added that “for communities already burdened by debt, displacement, toxic pollution, rising electricity costs, and climate devastation, this is not a just energy transition. This is energy capture. ADB must sever every tentacle of fossil fuel dependence and false solutions, close all direct and indirect financing loopholes, and place public, democratic, and community-led renewable energy systems at the center of Asia’s future.”
The Asia Clean Energy Forum 2026 is being held at the Asian Development Bank headquarters in Mandaluyong City from 8–11 June 2026.
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