The Green Economy and Constructions of the “Idle” and “Unproductive” Uplands in the Philippines

Can the Wrongs be Righted? Prospects for Remedy in the Philippine Oil Palm Agro‐industry

“…Moreover, the Guiding Principles undisputedly offer novel quasi‐legal guidance on the provision of remedies for both states and companies that could, in principle, help leverage local rights claims in a variety of ways. However, unless local and indigenous actors are allowed to reshape both purpose and practice, then the enactment of Guiding Principles as well as the wider pallet of approaches within the procedural turn are likely to remain rooted in colonial doctrines and neoliberal constructs (De Schutter, ; Montefrio and Dressler, ). On this basis, the promise of improved leverage for local and indigenous communities will never be delivered.…”

“…This resulted in farmers being much worse off than before their engagement in the project. Local and national governments and investors evoked the ‘proverbial promised land’ (Vellema et al., ) and mobilized the (post‐)colonial environmental narrative to sidestep the fact that lands often were not vacant (Montefrio and Dressler, ). Given the contestation over the area that was permitted for oil palm cultivation at the time of this study (close to 15,000 ha), it is doubtful how many of the 208,997 ha identified by the PCA and the PPOIDC as suitable for oil palm cultivation in Palawan (Barraquias‐Flores, ) actually are ‘available’.…”

“…As elsewhere in the world, one of the vehicles of power was to impose myths of so‐called ‘vacant lands’ where people had lived for centuries. Given the persistence of this colonial construction of upland environmental narratives and the genealogy of exploitation (Montefrio and Dressler, ), it is hardly surprising that territorial fixes have proven ineffective in protecting the proclaimed rights of indigenous peoples and local communities in the Philippines. International finance institutions such as the World Bank led large‐scale programmes for collective land titling of indigenous lands during the 1980s and 1990s, and the Philippines also saw the advent of the 1997 Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA).…”

Declining Food Security in a Philippine Oil Palm Frontier: The Changing Role of Cooperatives

“…Globally, nation states have reinforced long‐standing rural development agendas through sustained investments in agro‐industrial expansion to address food security and alleviate poverty. Revitalized rural modernization ideals now work through the broader policy and practice of so‐called ‘inclusive growth’ and ‘green’ economic development to integrate smallholder farmers into contract farming and outgrower production of high‐value commodities for international markets such as palm oil and rubber (McCarthy and Cramb, ; Montefrio and Dressler, ). Recently, a burgeoning literature has critically examined how the expansive rise of contract farming for agro‐industrial production has driven notional ‘land grabbing’ and other patterns of inclusion, exclusion and adverse incorporation that reproduce problematic livelihood outcomes for poor farmers (Borras and Franco, , ; Hall et al., ; Li, ; McCarthy, ).…”

“…Kainginero is a blanket (often derogatory) term used in the Philippines to refer to shifting cultivators. Refer to Montefrio and Dressler () for deeper discussion.…”