Land sharing not sparing in the “green economy”: The role of livelihood bricolage in conservation and development in the Philippines
Introduction
In just three decades, the dominant logic of (neoliberal) capitalism—its ideology, incentives, alienation, and violence—has co-emerged with vigour and intensity in an emerging ‘green economy’ frame advocating for the “mutually reinforcing … relationship of economic growth, nature protection and social equity objectives” (Wilshusen, 2014, p. 129). In particular, global governance and conservation objectives now align with the premise that saving nature is possible only when people and ecologies are subsumed and re-valued in market terms (Büscher et al., 2012, p. 4). The faith and practice of financialising nature, incentivizing resource conservation, and sale of abstract nature, globally, have become central to the green economy. With fervour, government, civil society and the private sector work together to support environmental governance by way of devolved market-oriented interventions in rural landscapes.
In Southeast Asia, actors driving the green economy increasingly focus on developing new environmental technologies, green markets, and ‘low carbon’ (e.g. alternative fuel) economies as solutions for environmental and economic decline (Corson et al., 2013, p. 3). Scaling down, such governance interventions assume that boosting livelihoods with financial incentives while restricting access to forests might compel local users to produce higher value commodities by using fewer resources in less space (Nevins and Peluso, 2008); in contrast to traditional uses and valuing of nature, farmers will harness the imputed financial value of ecosystem services (as ‘natural capital’) in forest landscapes. The assumption holds that locals will come to draw on the financial value of forest goods and services and so protect them in fixed spaces (Wilshusen, 2014, p. 151). Increasingly, green governance practices advocate market expansion and incentive structures that have rural farmers intensify commodity production so as to generate revenue to offset the costs of abandoning extensive land uses that supposedly deforest landscapes.1
In order to curb encroachment and free up land for forest protection, forest governance and zoning regimes produce ‘spatially constrained’ intensification processes that purportedly spare land and draw livelihoods toward less forest-reliant, off farm activities (Rigg, 2005, Li, 2008), including intensive mono-cropping and/or non-agricultural employment (Schmidt-Vogt, 2001, Castella et al., 2005, Rigg, 2006). Coupled with state policies and market pressures, such governance interventions restrict extensive livelihood practices while inducing incentives to progress intensified, sedentarized production among smallholders who remain resource reliant and risk averse relative to others (Phelps et al., 2013).
In line with green economy discourse, many countries have adopted transnational conservation policies with an explicit ‘land sparing’ rationale—protecting some land and farming the rest intensively (Fischer et al., 2011, p. 593)—as national policy justification for interventions aiming to curb extensive land uses (e.g. swidden) long vilified as threats to timber reserves, ecosystem services and surplus production (Phalan et al., 2011). However, despite the prominence of land sparing discourse and practice, debate remains concerning the extent to which intensification (and zoning) can support conservation objectives while not marginalising local farmers in the process (Phelps et al., 2013). With few exceptions, most land sparing approaches promote spatially constrained, sedentary agriculture and conserving ‘high value’ ecosystems in fixed zones. Few policy makers and practitioners, however, have substantively engaged with the type and character of those rural people whose livelihoods depend on these landscapes. As Fisher et al. (2014) note, the debates concerning either approach have neglected the socio-politics of local food production and security, and the socio-cultural and ecological connections of livelihoods across landscapes. We engage these lacunae further. We suggest that the debate has neglected the socio-cultural substance of different societies, their own landscape histories and, often, relatively sustainable agro-ecological outcomes. Uniform land sparing approaches remain contested in policy and practice, as they reflect a static, linear and detached interpretation of how to engage rural livelihoods in transition (Fischer et al., 2012). We further this critique in the context of the Philippine green economy by engaging the concept of ‘livelihood bricolage’ as an alternative to land sparing—in essence, the recombination of different livelihood elements in response to changing environments across landscapes (Cleaver, 2002).
In the context of the green economy, we examine how market-oriented, land sparing interventions may reduce ecosystem services, increase livelihood vulnerability, and scuttle conservation objectives, as the inter-linkages between livelihood bricolage and multi-functional landscapes are broken. While recent studies support intensification and zoning as the basis for land sparing, we argue that land sharing in multifunctional landscapes – protecting less land but farming the remainder in agro-ecologically diverse, sustainable ways (Fischer et al., 2011, p. 593) – is better suited to the complex reality of poor, resource reliant uplanders. This is because poor uplanders’ livelihood security depends on a diversity of resources from varied ecosystem services that are sustained through complimentary resource uses that also support forest conservation. We illustrate with two contrasting cases the important socio-ecological interlinkages between livelihood bricolage and multi-functional landscapes for the rural poor. The first case is the frontier island of Palawan, the Philippines, where NGO and national park interventions support livelihood intensification amongst indigenous swidden farmers who rely on varied forest resources across landscape mosaics. The second case is the post-frontier landscape of Biliran, Leyte Island, where landless tenant farmers persist with livelihood bricolage through swidden and agroforestry that is nested within intensively farmed copra landscapes. In both cases, we explore how such green governance interventions engender socio-ecological uniformity and vulnerability, as well as pathways for the production and accumulation of capital beyond local control. We argue that such governance must invest in rather than constrain those spaces that have long offered the rural poor diverse livelihood alternatives.
Section snippets
Methods
Data for this paper were derived from qualitative and quantitative methods spanning 2009–2013 in central Palawan and Leyte Island, the Philippines. In Palawan, between 2010 and 2012, Dressler conducted key informant interviews, oral histories, participant observation, and a livelihood survey amongst Batak (and Tagbanua) farmers in Kayasan and Cabayugan, Puerto Princesa City, central Palawan. Each farmer group relied on diversified upland swidden systems to a greater and lesser extent, with
Rethinking the green economy in practice: Livelihood bricolage and land sharing
Since the 1980s, global environmental concerns have been incorporated into international governance agendas and policies as ‘sustainable development’ or more precisely, ‘green developmentalism’ (Adams, 1990, McAfee, 1999). In the last decade, however, environmental governance policies and interventions have been reframed as a much more systemic, overarching regime known as the ‘green economy’, where market logics, mechanisms and technologies value and commodify nature to conserve it (Igoe and
The Philippine cases: Livelihood bricolage buffering vulnerability and benefitting conservation
The case studies below illustrate empirically how in two contrasting geographies the rural poor persist with livelihood bricolage as a source of socio-cultural meaning, livelihood security and buffer against emerging vulnerabilities in transitional landscapes, with associated zoning and value added, intensified production. We use the cases of Palawan (an ecological frontier with considerable land and low population density) and Leyte (a post-frontier with limited available land and higher
Discussion and conclusion
Globally, the emerging green economy has built on regional governance agendas of ‘sustainable development’ with the aim of assigning different market values to nature’s attributes and processes (Büscher et al., 2014). Concurrent to state ‘green’ investments, NGO and private sector actors have increasingly aimed to bolster stocks of ‘natural capital’ through livelihood intensification and marketization in various zoning structures (Phelps et al., 2013). Such interventions aim to engage ‘nature
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by ACIAR Project ASEM 2010-050 ‘Improving Watershed Rehabilitation Outcomes in the Philippines’ and the ARC Future Fellowship program. The authors would also like to thank Edwin Cedamon for his fieldwork assistance and the smallholders who generously answered our questions during their busy schedules.
References (92)
Risk and uncertainty in agricultural decision making
- et al.
Agrarian transition and lowland-upland interactions in mountain areas in northern Vietnam
Agric. Syst.
(2005) - et al.
The good, the bad, and the contradictory: neoliberal conservation governance in rural Southeast Asia
World Dev.
(2011) - et al.
Swidden, rubber and carbon: can REDD+ work for people and the environment in Montane Mainland Southeast Asia?
Global Environ. Change
(2014) - et al.
The green economy and constructions of the ‘idle’ and ‘unproductive’ uplands in the Philippines
World Dev.
(2016) - et al.
Can payments for environmental services help reduce poverty?
World Dev.
(2005) Land, farming, livelihoods, and poverty: rethinking the links in the rural south
World Dev.
(2006)- et al.
Global food security, biodiversity conservation, and the future of agricultural intensification
Biol. Conserv.
(2012) - et al.
Trends, drivers and impacts of changes in swidden cultivation in tropical forest-agriculture frontiers: a global assessment
Global Environ. Change
(2012) Green Development. Environment and Sustainability in the Third World
(1990)
The Philippine peasant as capitalist: beyond the categories of ideal-typical capitalism
J. Peasant Stud.
The Philippines’ upland development program: cushioning the impacts of global financial crisis and climate change through green jobs
Unasylva
Creating something from nothing: resource construction through entrepreneurial bricolage
Adm. Sci. Q.
Landscapes of diversity: a local political ecology of livelihood diversification in South-western Niger
Cult. Geogr.
African peasantries: a theoretical framework
J. Peasant Stud.
‘Free market’, export-led development strategy and its impact on rural livelihoods, poverty and inequality: the Philippine experience seen from a Southeast Asian perspective
Rev. Int. Polit. Econ.
Struggles for land and livelihood: redistributive reform in agribusiness plantations in the Philippines
Crit. Asian Stud.
The sociology of expectations in science and technology
Technol. Anal. Strategic Manage.
Appreciating agrodiversity: a look at the dynamism and diversity of indigenous farming practices
Environment
Multiplex livelihoods in Rural Africa: recasting the terms of conditions of gainful employment
J. Modern African Stud.
Towards a synthesized critique of neoliberal biodiversity conservation
Capital. Nat. Soc.
Nature Inc.: Environmental Conservation in the Neoliberal Age
The Maoist shaman and the madman: ritual bricolage, failed ritual, and failed ritual theory
Cult. Anthropol.
Reinventing institutions: bricolage and the social embeddedness of natural resource management
Eur. J. Dev. Res.
Development Through Bricolage: Rethinking Institutions for Natural Resources Management
Furthering critical institutionalism
Int. J. Commons
Grabbing “Green”: markets, environmental governance and the materialization of natural capital
Hum. Geogr.
Swidden transformations and rural livelihoods in Southeast Asia
Hum. Ecol.
Cultural understandings of the environment
How Institutions Think. 1986
Old Thoughts in New Ideas: State Conservation Measures, Development and Livelihood on Palawan Island
Green governmentality and Swidden Decline on Palawan Island, the Philippines
Trans. Inst. Br. Geogr.
Farmer gone fishing? Swidden decline and the rise of grouper fishing on Palawan Island, the Philippines
J. Agrarian Change
The shifting ground of Swidden agriculture on Palawan Island, the Philippines
Agric. Hum. Values
REDD policy impacts on indigenous property rights regimes on Palawan, the Philippines
Hum. Ecol.
The caloric returns to food collecting: disruption and change among the Batak of the Philippine tropical forest
Hum. Ecol.
On the Road to Tribal Extinction
Who are the Cuyonen? Ethnic identity in the modern Philippines
J. Asian Stud.
Palawan, a Last Frontier
Household strategies and rural livelihood diversification
J. Dev. Stud.
Green grabbing: a new appropriation of nature?
J. Peasant Stud.
Conservation: limits of land sparing
Science
Conservation policy in traditional farming landscapes
Conserv. Lett.
Land sparing versus land sharing: moving forward
Conserv. Lett.
Cited by (32)
Negotiating between forest conversion, industrial tree plantations and multifunctional landscapes. Power and politics in forest transitions
2021, GeoforumCitation Excerpt :While this simplifies forest functions it also simplifies the users in that it tends to separate and exclude local land users that rely on multifunctional forests. From a livelihoods perspective, research in other countries of the Global South has shown that “more equitable forest governance [may] support land sharing with diverse, extensive livelihoods in various landscapes” (Dressler et al., 2016, p. 75). Hence, an emphasis on politics and governance is indeed key (Riggs et al., 2018) to better understand the mechanisms and institutions that guarantee access to and control of (the benefits from) forests (Pichler et al., 2021b).
Recalibrating burdens of blame: Anti-swidden politics and green governance in the Philippine Uplands
2021, GeoforumCitation Excerpt :Many Tagbanua now rely heavily on the cash income derived from exploiting NTFPs, the live reef fish for food trade, paddy rice cultivation, cash crop production (e.g., rubber, oil palm), daily labour and credit (Dressler and Fabinyi, 2011). Rather than aligning with any discrete category of horticulturalist, forager or hunter-gatherers, they (and the Batak) have long pursued ‘multiplex’ livelihoods (Bryceson, 2002) in patchy landscape mosaics that cut through older upland-lowland/forest-farm divides (see Dressler et al., 2016). In the last decade or so, various charismatic City mayors—from Ed Hagedorn to Lucilo Bayron—have bolstered Puerto Princesa City’s environmental branding and bureaucracy to legislate against and criminalise swidden clearing and burning in areas overlapping Tagbanua and Batak ancestral domains.
Agglomeration and driving factors of regional innovation space based on intelligent manufacturing and green economy
2021, Environmental Technology and InnovationCitation Excerpt :The regional green innovation system is an organic whole composed of different elements and innovation subjects. Each innovation subject and various elements are the foundation of the regional green innovation system, and the components and innovation subjects of the regional green innovation system are mutually restricted, interacting and interconnected, rather than isolated from each other (Dressler et al., 2016; Antonioli and Mazzanti, 2017). When dealing with emergency situations, if there is no scientific and systematic emergency decision-making method, emergency rescue operations cannot be carried out in time.
Adaptive farm management in the context of the expansion of industrial tree plantations in northern Argentina
2020, Land Use PolicyCitation Excerpt :In landscapes dominated by monocultures, such as tree plantations, the maintenance of patches of diversified small-scale agriculture promotes biological connectivity and the conservation of biodiversity (Perfecto and Vandermeer, 2008). Agrodiverse household productive systems are a result of biophysical variables, farming styles, both agricultural and non-agricultural labour and market opportunities (Batterbury, 2001; Dressler et al., 2016). In Argentina, the area of ITPs has increased 90 % from 1990 to 2010, reaching more than 1,200,000 ha in recent years (MAGyP, 2017).
A multi-method approach for the integrative assessment of soil functions: Application on a coastal mountainous site of the Philippines
2020, Journal of Environmental ManagementTransforming exploitative land-based economy: The case of Borneo
2020, Environmental Development