Nadine Lustre is speaking out on multiple fronts, and she is not holding anything back.
The Kapamilya star took to her Instagram community channel to call out what she described as a pattern of disrespect playing out across several issues in the country, from the treatment of locals in Siargao to animal cruelty to tree-cutting.
On Siargao, where Nadine has been splitting her time since the pandemic, she renewed her criticism of how some visitors treat the island's local community.
She had previously raised the issue of alleged assaults by foreign nationals on locals in the area, and her latest post made clear that the problem, in her view, has not gone away.
"You see it in the disrespect locals here on the island continue to receive," she wrote.
"The way some people come here and treat locals as if they are below them, as if hospitality means servitude, as if kindness gives them permission to disrespect boundaries, spaces, and people,” she added.
She went further, addressing what she sees as a deeper disregard for the community that predates the tourism boom.
“You see stories of aggression, entitlement, violence, and complete disregard for the community that existed here long before tourism ever did. It's painful watching people treat this island like a temporary playground while the people who actually call it home are left carrying the consequences," she said.
Nadine also addressed animal cruelty, a cause she has been publicly vocal about for years.
"And you see it in the way animals are constantly disregarded, as if their lives do not exist beyond human convenience," she wrote.
"People intentionally harming innocent beings that have done absolutely nothing to deserve cruelty. Treating lives as disposable because they cannot speak our language,” she added.
She then turned to the tree-cutting, which she described as “backwards.”
"Trees that have stood long before us are suddenly being cut down in the name of 'development' and 'progress,' when in reality, so much of it feels deeply backwards," she said.
"It's unsettling watching people destroy the very things that keep us alive so casually, as if nature is just another object to consume, reshape, or remove whenever it becomes inconvenient."
Metro Manila already ranks among cities with critically low urban tree cover, according to Global Forest Watch, making the removal of mature trees in the area a particularly charged issue.
Nadine’s post about tree-cutting comes amid intense online condemnation of the tree-cutting controversy in the City of Manila.
The Quirino tree-cutting, for one, has prompted petitions and public protests, with critics arguing that the loss of decades-old trees cannot be justified by infrastructure projects that could have been designed around them.
Nadine closed her post with a message to her followers.
“And the hardest part is that we consume so much of this every single day. These are only some of the things I've been taking to heart lately. There's so much more," she wrote.
"I believe it's still worth reminding ourselves to move through the world with more mindfulness. More awareness. More love and compassion. More respect for people, communities, nature, animals, and lives outside of our own,” she added.
-By Paolo Lim