Mandaluyong City, Philippines – 14 August 2025 – Today, environmental advocates and community members gathered outside the Asian Development Bank (ADB) headquarters to oppose the Bank’s proposed revisions to its Energy Policy. The changes are being introduced in a railroaded process and could lead to increased funding for waste incineration, mining, and nuclear power development, and other contentious energy projects across Asia.
The ADB is in the final stages of its midterm Energy Policy review, with the Board expected to vote on the updated policy in October 2025. Apart from failing to prioritize waste reduction, reuse, and recycling before burning waste for energy development as committed in the Bank’s Energy Policy, it is even expanding waste-to-energy (WTE) incineration. The Bank proposes to burn a fraction of waste in power plants called co-firing biofuels. GAIA says it delays the much-needed termination of coal plants, generates more greenhouse gases (GHG) and other toxic emissions, and disincentivizes efforts towards environmentally preferred methods in the waste hierarchy.
“We looked to the ADB to set an example in climate leadership and clean energy investment — not take us backward,” said Brex Arevalo, GAIA Asia Pacific’s Climate and Anti-incineration Campaigner. “The Bank’s willingness to support these false solutions shows a shocking disregard for resource conservation, health, and climate change. How many more resources will the ADB burn on a dying planet?”
The Bank also proposes repurposing coal plants into municipal WTE incineration facilities or to burn fully with biomass materials. “Given that even problematic waste streams with toxic content like processed plastic wastes and spent tires are now being considered as biomass, the Bank is wasting scarce public funds on prolonging the agony of coal-impacted communities by turning them into WTE plants ”, Arevalo said.
Attaching carbon capture storage facilities to WTE plants is also being proposed by the Bank. Another expensive and untested technology that only delays much-needed closure of high carbon-emitting technologies, according to Zero Waste Europe.
Community concerns aren’t just unfounded fears— they are supported by hard evidence. A recent citizen-led air quality study in Surabaya, Indonesia, Ogijo, Nigeria, and Dumaguete, Philippines, found particulate matter pollution near waste-burning plants reaching up to eight times above WHO safety limits. In Dumaguete, experts estimate shutting down a local pyrolysis-gasification plant could prevent nearly 180 premature deaths annually.
“These numbers represent people’s lives—children with breathing difficulties, farmers exposed to dangerous air, waste workers in the facility, and elders living in unsafe conditions,” said Merci Ferrer, Co-convenor of War on Waste-Break Free From Plastic (WoW-BFFP) Negros Oriental. “Communities have been ignored for too long, and the time for empty promises is over.” As a result of the study of WoW-BFFP Negros Oriental, the newly elected Dumaguete Mayor, Manuel Sagarbarria, has ordered the facility to stop its operations.
And, beyond air pollution, the health risks of waste incineration extend into the escalating climate crisis. Heatwaves — periods of unusually high temperatures — are becoming more frequent and deadly, especially in densely populated areas like Delhi, India. Between 2013 and 2022, over 10,600 deaths in India were attributed to heat-related causes, disproportionately affecting vulnerable groups such as the elderly, children, and outdoor workers. WTE incinerators themselves contribute to this problem by releasing large amounts of heat during their high-temperature processes.
Protesters demanded that the ADB immediately phase out its support for WTE incineration and other false solutions and instead back proven, community-centered approaches: reducing waste before it’s created, composting organic waste to cut methane emissions, and investing in clean, renewable energy that protects both people and the environment.
In the past year alone, other international financial institutions like the World Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) had terminated several proposed WTE incineration projects due to their high risks from community resistance to lack of financial viability.
“Energy Policy Review for this year, rushed by the ADB, only shows how corporate interests are being put on the pedestal over people and the planet,” said Nazareth Del Pilar of NGO Forum on ADB. “Instead of closing gaps in its policy, the Bank is slipping in dangerous provisions that deepen debt, sideline human rights, and abandon justice-centered solutions.”
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Media Contacts:
Brex Arevalo, Climate and Anti-incineration Campaigner, GAIA Asia Pacific | albrecht@no-burn.org | +639983510912Dan Abril, Communications Associate, GAIA Asia Pacific | dan@no-burn.org | +639174194426
