Chuck Baclagon

There are people who carry the future with them—not in their hands, but in their courage. Jerwiin ‘Jhewoung’ Capatoy was one of them. A youth climate organizer from Bataan, he stood not only against smokestacks and coal ash but against the forgetfulness that lets harm go on as if it were natural.

Much of Jhewoung Capatoy’s early engagement in climate and energy activism was rooted in Bataan, particularly in the heavily industrialized town of Lamao, Limay—surrounded by coal-fired power plants and ash disposal sites. A pivotal moment came in 2004, when he lost two childhood friends to a flash flood that occurred during the construction of a fossil fuel facility. That tragedy revealed to him, even as a child, how environmental destruction could cost lives long before it makes headlines. As he grew into organizing, Jhewoung worked closely with frontline communities and drew strength from the example of environmental defender Gloria Capitan, whose assassination in 2016 was a stark reminder of the risks borne by those who resist. Her loss deepened his commitment. For Jhewoung, activism was not abstract—it was personal, urgent, and necessary. Silence was never an option.

At the helm of the Young Bataeños for Environmental Advocacy Network, he helped light the fuse of climate resistance in the Philippines. He became an alumnus of the Asia Climate Leadership Camp, a space seeded by 350.org where young people dared to dream bigger than the systems trying to outlast them. From there, he helped nurture the youth climate strike movement across islands and cities, the kind of wildfire you want to spread.

In September 2019, as millions around the world joined the Global Climate Strikes, Jhewoung stood alongside fellow youth climate strikers at the gates of the San Miguel Consolidated Global Power coal plant in Bataan. They didn’t shout—they sat. A quiet, powerful refusal to accept a future built on fossil fuels. It was an act of collective defiance that said: we see what you are doing, and we won’t be silent. Among them, Jhewoung’s voice rose—calm, steady, unwavering—echoing a generation’s demand for survival. “The environment is our future,” he said. “It is our life.”

That future is poorer for his absence, but richer for his presence. He reminds us that justice often begins not with power, but with presence—of mind, of heart, of body. In Jhewoung’s life, we saw the story of a boy who became the conscience of a community.
He once said, “We must protect and defend [Mother Earth]. We will not stop.” And so, even in his absence, we don’t. We keep going. Because what he gave us was more than a call to strike. It was a quiet commandment to care.