Recalibrating burdens of blame: Anti-swidden politics and green governance in the Philippine Uplands

Abstract

In Southeast Asia, the presence of cleared and burned forests has long evoked deep emotions, symbolism and representations that powerfully inform the governance of forests and upland peoples. In particular, the palpable visibility of shifting (swidden) agriculturalists 'slashing and burning' forests has fuelled centuries-old political agendas to criminalise swidden farmers for supposedly destroying swaths of forests valued for timber, biodiversity and now ecosystem services. Swidden farmers who regularly clear and burn forests, have endured a disproportionate burden of blame for investing in and maintaining an old livelihood practice into the 21 st Century. Drawing on Hall's politics of representation, we examine the contrasting political frames, management and practices of clearing and burning forests among upland farmers, state and non-state actors who govern forests on Palawan Island, the Philippines. We describe the social, economic, and biophysical character of swidden clearing and burning among the indigenous Tagbanua of central Palawan, whose livelihoods and landscapes are impacted by green governance and enclosures. Informed by several years of ethnographic fieldwork, we explore how and why Tagbanua farmers continue to clear and burn forest despite state and non-state actors criminalising these practices for decades. We argue that, despite sustained vilification and reduced fallows arising from governance policies and enclosures, Tagbanua farmers continue to clear and burn knowing well that, despite the practices being illegal, levels of tolerance and leniency toward swidden is the local norm, rather than exception-highlighting the importance of what we call 'atmospheres of consent'. Ethnoecological understandings of clearing and burning in the uplands, we argue, are crucial to recalibrating the burden of blame placed on poor farmers whose agriculture is deemed destructive by the region's burgeoning sustainability discourse.

The Struggle of Philippine Indigenous Peoples

“…Precisely, Thomas Pogge urges the people to remain steadfast in the fight to eradicate poverty and inequality in the country, it requires the technical know-how and the goodwill from the government to be able to control it effectively. In addition to that, the citizens ought to remain positive and act in a way the support global institutional transformation; they should act ethically as global citizens rather than acting as local citizens (Dressler et al, 2020).…”

Modelling Human-Fire Interactions: Combining Alternative Perspectives and Approaches

“…The fire exclusion policy adopted in Bale National Park in Ethiopia, for example, forced local communities to stop smallpatch burning practices and resort to illlicit fires, often set late in the dry season when ignition is more likely, to maintain the grazing landscape, with the inadvertent result that the size of fires in the park has increased (Johansson et al, 2019). In contrast, wide acceptance allows Indigenous Tagbanua farmers in the Philippines to practise traditional fire-based swidden farming despite the practice being criminalised for decades by both state and non-state actors (Dressler et al, 2020). Political interests may also undermine policy intentions.…”

The last enclosure: smoke, fire and crisis on the Indonesian forest frontier

“…Communities should inform the agency beforehand in order to anticipate the burn and prevent everybody from igniting their fields at the same time and to put extra effort into preventing the spread of fire, etc. With the regional agreement to 'allow' the burning of 2 hectares under strict local government control, the practice of burning continued as a locally 'tolerated crime', at least for a while (Dressler et al 2020). As argued by Ansori in his study of the 2015 forest fires in the neighbouring province of Central Kalimantan, low ranking officials often have shifting allegiances and are caught in the dilemma to choose between acting on local concerns or state policy (Ansori 2019).…”