Conceptualising and enacting pathways to transformative climate justice: examples from the Philippines

ABSTRACT

Scholarship on climate change adaptation is increasingly moving from incremental responses to climate injustice towards transformative approaches that deliberately change systems to achieve just and equitable outcomes. A transformative understanding of climate justice is relatively new and evidence of how this could be achieved is in its infancy. In this paper, we conceptualise transformative climate justice as comprised of three subcomponents: (1) inclusive justice (seeking to ensure that no one, especially the most vulnerable, is left behind), (2) epistemological justice (drawing upon diverse knowledges and worldviews), and (3) restorative justice (healing and restoration of communities and the environment). We then present examples of how different local communities in the Philippines are experimenting with climate adaptation strategies that embody these three components of transformative climate justice. Through case studies of communities in Itbayat (Batanes), Tambaliza (Iloilo), and Barangay Assumption (Koronadal), we demonstrate how their adaptive strategies contribute to community and ecological resilience. We find that transformative climate justice arises from mundane and everyday struggles, takes place at the “middle place” between top-down and bottom-up initiatives, and requires a deliberate redistribution of power to counter decision-making processes that reproduce injustices.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• climate justice
• transformative justice
• climate change adaptation
• Philippines

Introduction

It is widely acknowledged that climate change is more than an environmental problem; it is an issue of justice for a number of reasons (Moss 2009; Shi et al. 2016). For instance, Graham et al. (2015) contend that the consequences of climate change have unequal impacts at the local, regional, and national levels, and that communities that are most responsible for causing climate change do not experience the greatest consequences. Krause (2018, 509) claims that the climate crisis has the potential for “triple injustice” as those who are least responsible for climate change are most exposed and disadvantaged by approaches to address it. As calls for climate justice abound, there is increasing literature exploring the distributive, procedural, and recognitional dimensions of climate justice (Bulkeley et al. 2013; Schlosberg and Collins 2014; See and Wilmsen 2022).

Alongside this growing scholarship on climate justice is a corresponding increase in scholarship that analyses how communities adapt to changing climatic conditions (Adger et al. 2006; Pelling 2011; Schipper and Lisa 2007). The term “resilience”, defined as robustness to withstand external shocks, has been normalised in the literature and has entered the everyday social vernacular. This has contributed to the proliferation of what O’Brien and Selboe (2015) refer to as “to-do-list” responses, which usually involve small-scale changes and familiar patterns of action such as building infrastructure, improvements in building standards, or modification of early warning systems. Pelling (2011, 50) refers to these actions as incremental adaptation as they “seek change that can allow existing functions and practices to persist and in this way not question underlying assumptions of power asymmetries”. While helpful, some scholars have criticised these approaches for failing to challenge the social, economic, and political drivers of risk and vulnerability (Eriksen, Nightingale, and Eakin 2015; Pelling 2011). Other critiques of resilience point to the “malleability and plasticity of the term itself” which sees it “act as a boundary object or bridging concept” that can “be co-opted by different interests” (Brown 2014, 114). There is consequently a push to move beyond fixes which only deliver short-term reprieve towards building long-term transformative adaptive capacity to climate change (Fazey et al. 2018).

Unlike incremental adaptation, transformative adaptation addresses the root causes of vulnerability and deliberately transforms systems in an ethical and sustainable manner (Krause 2018; Ziervogel, Cowen, and Ziniades 2016). As climate-related damages are stratified by historical, social and political-economic arrangements that differentially render vulnerability (Ribot 2022), a transformative approach presents an opportunity to address the structural inequities that produce precarity. For instance, Newell et al. (2021, 4) contend that it helps to engage not only with the root causes of the injustices but also with how these causes “are affected and enacted at various scales and across different domains”. O’Brien (2012) argues that the concept of transformation raises the stakes and emphasises the need for substantial societal change in response to climate change. These authors agree that it is necessary to contest business-as-usual systems, especially in the Global South where socio-economic and ecological injustices have pervasive histories that require rupture and reorganisation.

While the concept of transformation holds great potential, it also presents challenges. For instance, there is less clarity on what just transformation means, what it entails in practice and how it can be realised. Feola (2015) argues that the term “transformation” is often used ambiguously and its application lacks rigour. Additionally, Hellin et al. (2022) highlight the difficulty of applying transformative approaches to adaptation as these require transdisciplinary collaborations with multiple stakeholders. Meanwhile, in the literature “transformative climate justice” remains a largely nascent concept. While Newell et al. (2021) chart several research agendas towards transformative climate justice, there is little information on what the concept entails and looks like on the ground. We propose that further conceptualisation of what transformative climate justice means will go some way to preventing a reduction in its meaning. Without clarity, such terminology is malleable to the political ambitions of the powerful who either lean into its ambiguity to alleviate their responsibility or twist its meaning to progress their agenda.

This paper contributes to the evolving lucidity around transformative climate justice by offering a conceptual framework for its operationalisation in climate adaptation planning. We start the next section by laying out how we view “transformation” and by presenting our conceptual framework of transformative climate justice. We then substantiate our framework with empirical examples from different regions in the Philippines. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of our conceptual framing of transformative climate justice and how we might strive to achieve it.

How is transformation understood and generated?

The term “transformation” has been defined in many ways and can mean different things to different groups (Feola 2015; O’Brien 2012). It can be a deliberate process carried out to achieve an objective or be an unintended outcome of an event (Nelson, Adger, and Brown 2007). The processes that bring about transformation are also widely contested. For some, transformation occurs locally through incremental interventions (Schot and Steinmueller 2018) while for others transformation arises from large-scale political economic forces and collective mobilisation (Stirling 2015). Even the outcomes of transformation are subject to debate. For some, transformation presents openings to challenge dominant paradigms of growth and consumption, while others see it as restrictive, leading to disruption and chaos (Jackson 2009). O’Brien (2012) further argues that transformation may happen in different layers, scales, settings and contexts. It is therefore impossible to find a universal definition of “transformation”. As Fazey et al. (2018) rightly exhorts, the “onus needs to lie on those using the concept to be explicit about how they are interpreting and applying it”.

In this paper, transformation is viewed as actions that reduce “the root causes of vulnerabilities to climate change … by transforming them into more just, sustainable, and resilient states” (Fedele et al. 2019, 116). We focus primarily on human drivers of transformation and highlight the important role that agency plays in driving transformation. We find Moser et al.’s (2019) framework of transformation useful in this regard. For transformation to happen, change cannot be solely superficial – policies, practices and resource flows – but must occur in the underlying relationships and power dynamics that reflect people's values, beliefs, and mindsets. We echo Shi and Moser’s (2021, 2) argument that “reforms (need to) change the underlying social relationships and centre a different set of values and beliefs about humans and human-nature relations”.

Aside from the need to reconsider deeply held assumptions and paradigms, we also stress that conscious and deliberate approaches are necessary to generate transformation (O’Brien 2012). Adopting business-as-usual practices is not enough. Instead, fundamental shifts in thinking, norms, and beliefs are required to enable transformative futures to emerge (Frame and Brown 2008). While there are several barriers to transformation, we concur with Fazey et al. (2018) that transformative change is possible. There is already a substantial amount of work on deliberate transformation in adaptive governance and environmental stewardship (Folke et al. 2010; Nelson, Adger, and Brown 2007; Pelling 2011). For instance, Brockhaus and Angelsen (2012, 17) contend that deliberate policy and protest action can lead “policy formulation and implementation away from business-as-usual policy approaches that indirectly support deforestation and forest degradation”.

Lastly, we emphasise the important role that small and local actions play in driving transformation (Scoones et al. 2020; Stirling 2015). We assume that change happens not only through large-scale structural reconfigurations, but through “individually smaller actions that collectively, over time, shift system states in ways which may be unexpected but which reflects the values and visions of mobilised agents” (Scoones et al. 2020, 67). We highlight agency or the exercise of peoples’ will to take action on their own behalf (Giddens 1984). As multiple forms of power are exercised, there is considerable scope for social mobilisation and cultural change (Stirling 2014). We consequently take a hopeful and emancipatory approach to transformation.

After presenting how we conceptualise transformation, we turn to a series of related questions: how do we operationalise transformative actions in the area of climate adaptation? How can transformational change be enacted to ensure climate justice? We now unpack the concept of transformative climate justice and provide empirical examples in the succeeding sections.

Transformative climate justice: a conceptual framework

Attention to climate justice has expanded significantly over the years. Newell et al. (2020) argue that climate justice is typically construed in terms of either who is responsible for climate change and its impacts or who gains or suffers disproportionately because of responses to climate change. Issues of justice also cover different scales. At the international scale, climate justice raises questions about the rights of countries to continue emitting greenhouse gases, and which countries are primarily responsible for supporting mitigation and adaptation efforts (Okereke and Dooley 2010). Meanwhile, at a local level, climate justice studies focus on unequal vulnerabilities and the importance of local participation and engagement (See and Wilmsen 2020; Shi et al. 2016; Wilmsen and Rogers 2019).

Recently, climate justice scholars have called for new approaches that challenge pre-existing configurations of power and shift decision-making processes that produce and reinforce inequalities (Newell et al. 2021; Stephens 2022). This is in response to a growing concern that traditional Rawlsian ideas of fair allocation fail to acknowledge underlying social structures and processes of marginalisation (Agyeman et al. 2016). Newell et al. (2021, 7) argue that a transformative understanding of justice is needed which they define as “a notion of climate justice which includes, but goes beyond, the immediate and proximate challenges of distribution of costs and benefits from climate interventions by linking them with a historical understanding of place-based movements”. They also suggest directions for future research, one of which relates to just responses to climate-related disasters. Newell et al. (2021, 10) claim that “where we know less is what it takes to shift adaptation and resilience action towards just pathways, as well as what transformative approaches to climate justice look like in practical adaptation and resilience programming”. This paper seeks to address this gap by proposing a conceptual framework to operationalise transformative climate justice in climate change adaptation. We shed light on what type of climate adaptation pathways might be transformative in practice. In doing so, we contribute to providing operational and empirical value to climate justice scholarship that remains largely theoretical in orientation (Hughes and Hoffmann 2020).

In this section, we draw together findings from academic and practice-based scholarship – including work from Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, critical geographers, humanists and climate activists, among others – to conceptualise what transformative justice might look like. We propose a conceptual framework with three subcomponents: (1) inclusive justice, (2) epistemological justice, and (3) restorative justice. We contend that each of these subcomponents is necessary to operationalise transformative climate justice in adaptation planning and practice. We illustrate these three subcomponents in Figure 1 and provide a summary of the drivers of injustice and pathways to transformative climate justice in Table 1.

Figure 1. Conceptual framework for transformative climate justice.

Table 1. Subcomponents of transformative climate justice, including the drivers of injustice and pathways to transformative justice.

Components	Drivers of injustice	Pathways to achieve transformative climate justice
Inclusive justice	Top-down and technocratic participation Community engagement is tokenistic and often limited to information provision and / or consultation Elite capture Limited stakeholders are represented Working in “silos”	Community-led and bottom-up processes Community empowerment to manage their own resources and actions Diverse stakeholders are represented and involved Working across different domains and disciplines
Epistemological justice	Expert-driven and colonial approaches Overlooking the needs and perspectives of Indigenous groups Ignorance and suppression of local and traditional forms of knowledge	Community-driven and post-colonial approaches Context-specific and place-based actions Space for diverse ways of knowing, being, and doing
Restorative climate justice	Preference for the status quo Apolitical approaches Inequitable distribution of benefits in adaptation projects	Healing and reparation for marginalised communities Acknowledgement of harm and/or injustice Rectification and addressing of drivers of vulnerability

The first subcomponent of a transformative climate justice framework is inclusive justice. We see the imposition of top-down and technocratic solutions as having very little prospect for inclusive justice. Top-down approaches are rarely democratic and have the potential to undermine local adaptive capacities and resources (Kenis and Lievens 2014; Tschakert and Machado 2012). Additionally, the quality of community engagement is also essential: scholars have shown that being consulted does not necessarily translate to an ability to influence adaptation decisions (Nagoda 2015; Ojha et al. 2014). Moreover, elite capture and limited representation of vulnerable groups are inextricably linked to social relations of exclusion (Godfrey-Wood and Otto Naess 2016; Nightingale 2017).

To address such drivers of injustice, this subcomponent stresses the importance of co-producing solutions with community members themselves. Climate adaptation processes have the potential to be transformative if they are transparent and open to diverse voices and perspectives (Chu and Michael 2019). Moreover, community members should be empowered to take charge of their own adaptation (Haynes and Tanner 2015; Kilmer 2016). This subcomponent also posits that a transformative approach requires inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration with multiple stakeholders across different knowledge domains and disciplines (Hellin et al. 2022; Leal Filho et al. 2021). While this may be challenging, scholars recognise that collaboration and knowledge-sharing play a vital role in building community resilience and enabling the transformation of values and norms (Dowd et al. 2014; Laycock and Mitchell 2019).

The second subcomponent in a transformative climate justice framework is epistemological justice. This is driven by the broader landscape within which climate justice is being pursued. It should decolonise existing scholarship on climate change and highlight work produced by scholars from the majority world (Johnson, Parsons, and Fisher 2022; McNamara and Buggy 2017). We view colonial approaches to adaptation as contributing to historic injustices and inequitable distribution of resources (Atteridge and Remling 2018; Meerow, Pajouhesh, and Miller 2019). At the same time, scholars contend that most of the existing work on climate change and marginalised groups such as Indigenous communities tends to overlook Indigenous needs or worse, generates injustices for Indigenous groups (Cuaton and Su 2020; Rarai et al. 2022; See et al. 2024). In addition, while the last decade has seen a proliferation of studies that illustrate the value of local knowledge as a complement to climate data, we agree with Byg and Salick’s (2009, 157) observation that “local knowledge of climate change and its impacts has largely been ignored by most climate change studies”.

To counter these drivers of epistemological injustices, we stress the importance of adopting approaches that are centred on local communities’ perspectives and experiences. Context-specific and place-based actions help foster decolonial approaches by recognising and valuing traditional and local knowledge that arise from the experiences of communities (Anguelovski 2014). Scholars argue that local knowledges can help contribute to better understanding of climate change as it can fill in the gaps missed out by technocratic and expert-led approaches (Kloprogge and van der Sluijs 2006; Van Aalst, Cannon, and Burton 2008). This subcomponent also promotes space to engage with diverse ways of knowing and being, as scholars like Schipper et al. (2021) concur that greater engagement with difference can be a source of creativity and deep learning. Epistemological justice also requires recognising the often-overlooked knowledges of women, Indigenous communities, and other marginalised groups (Nightingale et al. 2020).

The third subcomponent in a transformative climate justice framework is restorative justice. Used mainly within the criminal justice system, it is understood as a process whereby all relevant parties “come together to resolve collectively how to deal with the aftermath of the offence and its implications for the future” (Gavrielides 2007, 44). We argue that restorative justice can also redress the negative impacts of climate change on people and the environment. We view approaches to preserve the status quo and to exclude the needs of the marginalised as potential drivers of injustice. Scholars contend that there is a plethora of apolitical approaches to climate adaptation and claim that there is a lack of consideration of power differentials and inequalities (Bassett and Fogelman 2013; Mikulewicz 2018). This contributes to the inequitable distribution of benefits and burdens and may lead to the emergence of “winners” and “losers” (O’Brien and Leichenko 2003; Thomas and Twyman 2005).

To prevent the unequal distribution of adaptation benefits and costs, restorative justice requires the healing and protection of the most vulnerable to prevent further harm and marginalisation (Bruch 2019). This subcomponent therefore impels actions that arrange restitution and reparation to the most vulnerable groups as well as adopts a forward-looking approach to prevent future damages. Restorative justice has precedence in the field of environmental justice particularly environmental damages caused by heavy industrial activities. Dorsey (2009) explains that restorative justice provides opportunities for decision-makers to rectify situations that harmed and disenfranchised particular communities. An important first step to restorative justice is an acknowledgement of harm or injustice (McCauley and Heffron 2018). Then, restitution can be arranged – through capacity building and technology transfer, and should also come in different forms (both monetary and non-monetary) (Robinson and Carlson 2021). Hence, restorative climate justice can also entail arranging access to land and natural resources or recovering parts of heritage and restoration of agency with regard to their lands (Earth in Common 2021). We also stress that this subcomponent should not only be concerned with restitution as a reactive means to address climate losses and damages but should also involve a proactive acknowledgement and rectification of underlying differential vulnerabilities (Connolly and Anguelovski 2021).

Study sites and research methods

This section provides an overview of the three study sites and the methods employed to collect and analyse data. The reasons for selecting these case studies are twofold. First, the three areas are vulnerable to extreme weather events due to their proximity to the coast or watershed areas and their residents’ reliance on small-scale agriculture and fisheries. Second, the authors are well familiar with the three areas and have access to knowledges through formal research activities and established relationships. We selected areas from the three major regions of the Philippines (i.e. one from Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao respectively) to cover a wider geographical scope and breadth. This paper presents vignettes of the locally-driven adaptation strategies that are already occurring in several communities, based on exploratory fieldwork conducted in all three locations in varying periods between 2015 and 2022.

The first case study is located in Itbayat, the northernmost inhabited island of the Philippines with a land area of 92.9 square kilometres occupying 40% of the province of Batanes (Talubo 2022). Located 632 kilometres from Metro Manila, Itbayat is bounded by the Pacific Ocean and the West Philippine Sea. Itbayat is also isolated from the rest of Batanes and can only be reached by a 3-hour boat ride from Basco, the capital town of the province. Itbayat is populated by 2867 Ivatans (Indigenous group), living in five barangays,¹ with a density of about 30 persons per square kilometre (Talubo 2022). Most of the households reside on the coast and work as farmers and fishermen. Garlic, rice, corn, fish and cattle are the major cash crops in the area (Uy and Shaw 2008).

This study is led by EP, a Filipino scholar who has worked extensively with the residents of Itbayat as part of the research project entitled Coastal Cities at Risk in the Philippines (2020). The project sought to build community capacity and document local knowledges on adaptation strategies in the country. As part of this project, EP conducted fieldwork in Itbayat on September 2022. The empirical data came from semi-structured interviews with 15 people (5 community leaders, 5 local officials, and 5 residents), community walkthroughs, and informal conversations with 13 people (7 women elders, 3 male elders) and 3 Indigenous residents during community activities such as vegetable planting and housing construction. These respondents were approached through local networks, informed about the questions that were going to be posed, and asked if they wished to proceed. Only those who expressed consent were engaged. The qualitative data were then transcribed, manually coded, and analysed for emerging themes related to the residents’ adaptation strategies.

The second case study is in Tambaliza, a small island in the northeastern part of Iloilo province in the Visayas region of the country. Comprised of a population of approximately 3500 people, it has a land area of 775 square hectares, divided into seven territorial enclaves called sitios. The main source of income among its residents is fishing, followed by farming, raising livestock and poultry. Tambaliza is susceptible to climate-related hazards such as typhoons, sea level rise, and drought (See and Wilmsen 2022). According to its Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Plan, Tambaliza has “typhoon and drought severity ratings of 100% based on the probability of occurrence and percentage of impact” (Municipality of Concepcion 2017, 20). Meanwhile, Abian (2016) estimates that 40% of households that reside within 40 metres of the sea on Tambaliza will be completely inundated by 2035. In addition, sources of water on the island dry up during the summer, “affecting vegetation, livestock and people … (who) fear the burdensome process of fetching water from other areas” (Municipality of Concepcion 2017, 25).

The findings were drawn from two months of fieldwork (May to June 2018) that was conducted as part of JS doctoral project. A key component of this study was an exploration into how residents perceived and were adapting to climate change. Working through a local NGO, the research employed a range of qualitative methods including participant observation, semi-structured interviews with 21 respondents (5 community leaders, 6 local officials, and 10 residents), and two focused group discussions (FGDs). The FGDs involved different groups of informants including teachers, fisherfolks, sea patrol, NGO staff, and local officials. The respondents were identified through snowball sampling, and those with knowledge of local adaptation were engaged. After obtaining consent, data generated from interviews and FGDs were then recorded, transcribed, and analysed through thematic coding. Dominant narratives on adaptation strategies were identified and noted.

The third case study is situated in Barangay Assumption, one of the 27 barangays in Koronadal City in the province of South Cotabato in Mindanao. The barangay has a population of 2291 as of 2020, and this has increased by 2.63% since 2015 (Philippine statistics Authority 2021). Situated at 322.6 metres above mean sea level, Barangay Assumption is composed of seven villages and is part of the Roxas Mountain Range, a watershed area. It has a total land area of 2506 hectares, with 53% of it devoted to agriculture. Barangay Assumption is one of two barangays in the mountain range that is highly susceptible to landslides, long dry spells, and flash floods (Sabino et al. 2020). These often lead to adverse impacts on livelihoods, damage to houses, and even loss of lives (2020, 52).

This study is led by AF, who has long-term engagement in Barangay Assumption through her participation in various agricultural projects in the area. She draws upon data collected from her involvement with the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) funded Mindanao Agricultural Extension Project (AMAEP). The project, entitled “Improving the methods and impacts of agricultural extension in conflict areas of Mindanao, Philippines”, sought to develop and test an agricultural extension model by strengthening the farmers' social capital and linking them with appropriate institutions. AF conducted fieldwork intermittently between 2015 and 2021 and engaged local residents through interviews, informal conversations, and participant observations. She interviewed 2 project site facilitators, 2 barangay councillors, and 6 farmers (3 males and 3 females). Qualitative data were recorded in fieldnotes, which were then transcribed and translated to English. Analysis was undertaken through thematic coding, and dominant narratives on climate adaptation were noted.

We will now discuss our qualitative research findings, which we organised thematically according to three components of our conceptual framework for transformative climate justice: inclusive justice, epistemological justice, and restorative justice.

Progressing transformative climate justice in three communities in the Philippines

Inclusive justice in Itbayat, Batanes: whole-of-society approach to climate change adaptation

Our first case study looks at how the residents of Itbayat respond to the impacts of climate change through collaborative efforts between their residents, local groups, and their government. Due to their constant exposure to extreme weather events such as typhoons and floods, coping with extreme weather is part of people's lives in the province (Hornedo 2000). The residents of Itbayat regard collective action and community participation as essential components of climate change adaptation. This collective approach to adapting to climate change is locally known as “yaru”. It refers to the voluntary coming together of people from different sectors of society (i.e. community members, government officials, civil groups, and the private sector) to share labour to meet collective needs. Community members pool their available resources together to accomplish a particular job (e.g. construction and repair of homes and buildings, planting/harvesting of garlic and rice, etc.). Cooperative work is accomplished by large sections of the community and facilitated by residents who often provide food and refreshments during the work period. In all these activities, everyone shares whatever resources they have and age and gender hierarchies are blunted. Men, women, children and the elderly contribute their labour and other material resources to the yaru activities. During strong typhoons, those with bigger homes also serve as informal evacuation centres, with the owners serving their neighbours food and drinks. Leadership and decision-making embedded in these activities are always consultative, dialogic and collegial.

In Itbayat, community members are treated as key players in disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation initiatives of the local government. Community engagement through yaru involves building the agency of the residents through empowering and negotiated processes. Community leaders are regularly capacitated through Buklod Itbayat, a series of trainings and workshops meant to ensure that residents know what to do and where to go in times of emergency. After undergoing several trainings, community representatives then sit within the planning committee of the local government's disaster management council, where they discuss adaptation projects for the community. Adaptation programmes are difficult to have approved without the acceptance of these community representatives. Community members and local officials are also jointly involved in bandillo, a local way of disseminating information about incoming typhoons. Here, village leaders move through town using a megaphone and speakers to announce an impending weather event to residents (Talubo 2022).

Despite the various forms of community engagement and empowerment processes in Itbayat, there were nevertheless a number of issues raised during the interviews by its Indigenous communities. One concern is recognitional injustice, as some respondents asserted that there are on-going stereotypes and discrimination against Indigenous knowledges which served to hinder their participation in the planning of the local government's adaptation planning and responses. Another issue mentioned during the interviews is the uneven distribution of the benefits among the residents. Some of the Indigenous residents claimed to be left out in some of the adaptation initiatives of the local government and were often the last to get community assistance during disasters. Nevertheless, adjustments are currently being made to address such disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous members of the community. One community leader remarked: “It is only by working together and sharing our meager resources that we survive hunger, famine, and the Covid-19 pandemic. In a sense, our community survival and solidarity depends on our yaru way of life” (personal interview, 10 October 2022).

In 2019, President Rodrigo Duterte issued Executive Order 70 mandating the institutionalisation of a whole-of-nation approach for the attainment of peace, and the creation of a National Task Force to end local communist armed conflict. Since Itbayat did not have local insurgents, the local officials in consultation with their constituencies, contextualised Executive Order 70 to complement the practice of yaru as a proactive disaster prevention and mitigation of climate impacts with the governments' whole of society approach to risk governance. Thus, aside from the community members coming together to work, different agencies and local government units (LGUs) pooled their resources including funds and facilities to complement what the community members provide. The convergence is facilitated by the fact that both leaders and workers in yaru activities come from both informal and formal leadership systems of Itbayat's society. Thus, yaru practices help strengthen the climate adaptation systems of the community, while strengthening the linkages between and amongst different agencies. Consequently, this whole-of-society approach has helped Itbayat maintain a zero-casualty record to date and earn a prestigious Galing Pook award for excellence in local governance in 2022 (Doctolero 2022).

Epistemological justice in Tambaliza, Iloilo: utilising multiple forms of knowledge for effective adaptation

Our second case study explores the different community-led adaptation strategies in the context of fishing communities in Tambaliza. While adaptation actions among its residents are diverse (refer to See, McKinnon, and Wilmsen (2022) for more information), local and traditional knowledges are recognised and valued in the community's adaptation plans. These knowledges accumulated over time as the community elders observed incremental changes in their natural environment. In a country that privileges science-based over traditional forms of knowledges, the residents of Tambaliza stand out as they rely first on their elders’ local knowledges to make decisions about how to respond to climate challenges. More specifically, they look for the following early warning signs of an impending typhoon: unusual appearance of certain animals (e.g. earthworms, hermit crabs, and eagles), the particular formation of clouds (e.g. thick, dark, and feathery), a certain type of wind (e.g. comes from east to west with whirling sounds), and the manifestation of roaring and giant waves in the sea. For protection and survival, residents also draw on traditional strategies such as communal pooling or sharing of labour to plant trees and mangroves, establish and police marine protected areas, and share food and water during disasters. Community members also cultivate and produce disaster-resilient food sources relied upon by their ancestors: sweet potatoes, bananas, papayas, and coconuts.

Tambaliza residents ensure that these traditional forms of knowledge are passed on to the next generation through several strategies. First, they strengthen and promote their traditional adaptation practices and scientific knowledges. Elders organise monthly dialogues to impart traditional knowledge to the community, particularly children and youth. These conversations are held inside a balai kubo, a communal hut made of bamboo and nipa grass, that also serves as a venue for discussing collective issues. Here they learn how to predict extreme weather events through traditional indicators but also how to validate these observations with conventional science. Through engaging with multiple ways of knowing they enhance their capacity to respond to extreme weather events in advance.

Second, Tambaliza residents collaborate with multiple stakeholders to disseminate their traditional forms of knowledge and strategies. For example, whenever they attend trainings or workshops organised by NGOs and civil society groups, Tambaliza residents find ways to share their knowledges and assert their effectiveness in adapting to climate change. Their efforts eventually bore fruit as their local forms of weather prediction have recently been incorporated into the policy document called “Tambaliza Village Guide”. The guide was endorsed by the local government and included in the local development plan for the island. Moreover, Tambaliza village leaders have organised a committee of residents to produce an inventory of traditional forms of knowledge and adaptation strategies in an effort to keep local knowledges alive and useful in the future.

These initiatives do not come without any challenges, however. For instance, the sharing of the residents' local knowledges has not been easy as there have been many failed attempts to lobby for and integrate their inputs into higher-level adaptation planning and policy. Their local adaptation activities had been labelled “backwards” and ineffective by officials from the provincial and national government agencies. Another issue raised during the FGDs was the systemic structural barriers that prevent some of the residents from effectively participating in provincial and national-level policy-making and adaptation planning. Success in elections requires a substantial amount of financial resources and political networks which many of the residents do not have. The residents can only hope that their voices are taken up in higher levels of decision-making processes through their representation in infrequent provincial meetings and national-level consultations. Respondents attested that such dialogues were often tokenistic and top-down in manner. The residents’ fight to influence higher-level policies continues to date.

Restorative justice in Barangay Assumption, Koronadal: reparation of communities and ecosystems

Our third case study discusses how the environment and the livelihoods of the Indigenous residents of Barangay Assumption have been repaired and restored through the collaborative efforts of different stakeholders. Many of the residents of barangay Assumption are B'laan, an Indigenous group found in South Cotabato, in some parts of North Cotabato and in Davao del Sur (Maranan, Prudente, and Obusan 2020). They are one of the 18 non-Moro ethnolinguistic groups in Mindanao and the “third largest cultural minority living in the island of Mindanao” (Ancena-Arcenas 1993). Historically, the B'laan occupied the coastal plains and foothills but were eventually pushed further to the interior of the mountains (1993, 4). Like other Indigenous groups in the Philippines, they experience various forms of oppression, through land grabbing, deception, non-recognition of ancestral domains, and exploitation of their natural resources. Despite the passing of the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA) in 1997, many Indigenous groups in Mindanao including the B'laan still struggle to control their ancestral domains which are increasingly being encroached upon by investors, loggers, and mining companies (Gaspar 2015).

Due to its historical marginalisation, in 2015 the ACIAR selected Barangay Assumption for inclusion in its AMAEP Project (Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research 2012). Through this intervention, farmers in one of the villages called sitio Olo-clofe, organised themselves into a group known as Olo-clofe B'laan Landcare Association (OBLA) and registered with the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) (Cordero et al. 2017). Registration with DOLE is important for farmer groups to access services and programmes provided by most government agencies. One of the adaptation strategies deployed through the project is the diversification of farmers' food production through planting organic vegetables such as string beans, tomatoes, bell pepper, garlic and carrots, cacao, as well as goat and poultry production. The literature points to the importance of crop diversification in buffering crop production from the effects of climate change (Lin 2011). In addition, OBLA members mobilised themselves to establish a tree seedling nursery around their village. They lobbied the local government to purchase tree seedlings from the farmers, thereby increasing the farmers' earnings by 10–20%, and in the case of a few farmers, resulted in a 69–225% (Predo et al. 2016).

In addition to the external project, the local council of Barangay Assumption passed several ordinances to heal the environment and ensure the viability and sustainability of B'laan's livelihoods. Three ordinances were passed: (1) Ordinance No. 10 of 2016 (for the rehabilitation, conservation and protection of designated watershed areas), (2) Ordinance No. 11 of 2016 (for the promotion of conservation farming practices), and (3) Ordinance No. 12 of 2016 (for the adoption of sustainable farmer charcoal production). These ordinances are components of the Conservation Farming and Natural Resource Management (NRM) Program passed by the Barangay Assumption Council and attract corresponding activities and funding from the local government. These include the provision of incentives and rewards to groups and individuals adopting sustainable farming practices, the issue of government clearance/certification for individuals who adopt conservation farming practices, and community contests such as the search for Best Individual Farm, Outstanding Farmer, and Best Sitio during local festivals.

There were nevertheless a number of difficulties and challenges that the community faced as observed during the implementation of the AMAEP Project. For instance, there is a dearth of representation from the most vulnerable groups of the community, namely among the B'laan, older women and those belonging to the LGBTQI + community in the local council. The dominant voices that get heard in the community are from those who are schooled in mainstream education, more often coming from migrant settlers. One of our interviewees asserted: “The traditional forms of knowledge of the B'laan need to be recognised and valued more. They have successfully adapted to this environment for decades, so there is a lot to learn from them” (Personal interview, 12 September 2019). While there may be no deliberate effort to silence indigenous peoples, most of them tend to be shy in asserting themselves with government officials and employees.

Another aspect of restorative justice is taking a proactive policy approach to preventing harm and damage (Hazrati and Heffron 2021). This critical tenet of restorative justice is also evident in Barangay Assumption. On 3 June 2022, the Governor of South Cotabato vetoed a decision to lift a ban on open-pit mining initially passed by the provincial board. This was in response to protests from indigenous groups, specifically the B'laan, the local councils of nearby communities, and environmental groups who were concerned it would allow destructive mining in Tampakan, a gold and copper-rich town in South Cotabato (Estabillo 2022). Should mining activities have been allowed in the area, Jocson (2022) said that “thousands of residents could be displaced, five major rivers or tributaries face contamination, and at least 33,000 hectares planted to rice in the Koronadal Valley will be affected”. These initiatives show how both local and provincial governments facilitate restorative justice for the B'laan through legislation that supports livelihoods and protects their environment, together with various incentives for practising more sustainable farming. The B'laan are thus supported to manage their own resources and cultivate more sustainable livelihoods.

Discussion and conclusion

We have described three examples of transformative climate justice in the Philippines: inclusive justice at Itbayat, Batanes, epistemological justice at Tambaliza Island, Iloilo and restorative justice at Barangay Assumption, Koronadal. In Batanes, “yaru” supports a whole-of-society approach where people from different sectors come together voluntarily and share labour to respond to climate change and drive transformative change. In Tambaliza, epistemological justice is progressed through combining traditional signs of climate change with scientific indicators and is central to the policy, planning and practice of climate adaptation. Finally, support of Indigenous knowledges by various levels of government in Barangay Assumption helps to protect, restore and progress less destructive land use practices and achieve restorative justice for its Indigenous population. These examples illustrate that transformative adaptations are not simply technological but also behavioural – driven by fundamental changes in institutional arrangements, priorities, norms and values.

While these case studies illustrate the subcomponents of transformative climate justice, they also elucidate key operational elements that can be useful for adaptation planners, government agencies and institutions. Transformative climate justice (i) can be small and incremental, (ii) requires structural and institutional support, (iii) may involve struggle and (iv) necessitates the redistribution of resources and power. The list, while not exhaustive, contributes to the conversation about how transformational climate justice is advanced.

First, transformative change may not begin with grand interventions, or even with a vision for transformation. Instead, transformative climate justice may arise from the more mundane; from a need to address issues or system failures or gaps experienced every day. It is often in the absence of government-led policy frameworks and community resources that communities are compelled to self-determine how best to adapt to a changing climate. These everyday strategies deserve closer inspection to understand how communities meet their present and anticipated needs through alternative practices attuned to their local particularities. This is termed “everyday adaptation” and is defined as the “aggregate micro-actions that cohere into strategies of adaptation to changing social-ecological conditions, including climate change” (Lindegaard and Sen 2022, 1). In Itbayat, we observed everyday adaptation in the practice of yaru where communities pool their resources, especially after a disaster to support each other. This is the same spirit that inspires the residents to help one another rebuild their homes after a typhoon (Gibson and Hill 2022). Also, at Barangay Assumption, the farmer-driven Olo-clofe B'laan Landcare Association (OBLA) reorganised farming practices to be more sustainable, diversified and climate-resilient.

Second, only paying attention to the every day is insufficient in achieving transformative climate justice. Literature has built a dichotomy of either top-down, institutionally imposed interventions or bottom-up, community driven responses to climate change (Malloy and Ashcroft 2020). However, transformation is difficult to accomplish from the top-down or the bottom-up. Transformative climate justice takes place at the confluence of institutional and community action – within a middle ground – that enables multiple actors to remove institutional barriers and champion the agency of communities. We call this the “middle space” – a place between top-down (where governments and practitioners operate) and bottom-up (where communities are). The case studies presented in this paper illustrate the transformative potential of societies when cooperation occurs in this middle-space. In Tambaliza, our study highlights the importance of providing room for people to come together to work out adaptation plans in unprescribed and experimental ways. In Barangay Assumption, we observe the importance of institutional representation in supporting tangible outcomes while simultaneously opening government spaces in which communities can advocate for their rights and their environment to enact change through the passage of legislation. In this sense, rather than a vague boundary object (Brand and Jax 2007), transformative climate justice can be a useful concept that provides a place of “betweenness” (Baggio, Brown, and Hellebrandt 2015) where interest groups converge around shared understandings to progress just climate adaptation.

Third, transformative climate justice may require struggle from below to resist the status quo. As has been observed elsewhere, “counter conducts” involve resistance, leveraging and/or reworking adaptation projects by “negotiating for control, setting the terms of participation, opting out, subverting the discursive frame and leveraging longevity” (Mills-Novoa et al. 2023). While we did not observe the same breadth of counter-conduct as Mills-Novoa et al. (2023) in Equador, we saw overt resistance to plans for mining on B'laan lands at South Cotabato. This fight is a continuation of conflict over land seized from the B'laan and reflects the B'laan's ongoing struggle for power and control over their resources. At the other sites, there was also evidence of struggle for the recognition of local and traditional knowledges and political representation. For instance, in Tambaliza the community had to struggle against long-held prejudices towards their traditional knowledges to have their adaptation strategies recognised as legitimate in policy documents.

Finally, there needs to be a re-distribution and sharing of power. As Mills-Novoa et al. (2023) observe, while it is recognised that beneficiaries of adaptation projects are central to adaptation, they are on the periphery of policy and practice. Our case studies reveal the importance of sharing power with communities by (1) capacity building and (2) including previously excluded actors. For example, in Itbayat, the community takes part in collaborative knowledge creation within the local government's disaster management council. In Tambaliza, adaptation knowledge is passed on by the elders to the youth, who then take this into climate adaptation planning of the local government. In Barangay Assumption, ACIAR supports the community in building their social capital and opens opportunities to cultivate sustainable livelihoods and manage their own resources. These examples show the ways that pre-existing power relations can be disrupted, the status quo can be challenged, and decision-making processes can be shared to better support transformative adaptation.

Our case studies also illustrate the complexities involved in diverse pathways to transformative climate justice. Examples from our study sites demonstrate that even if adaptation efforts have been initiated by community members themselves, they still have the tendency to overlook and repress perspectives from marginalised groups. For instance, the voices of Indigenous communities in Itbayat are seldom heard in higher-level planning of adaptation projects. The knowledges and initiatives of the Tambaliza residents have been downplayed and ignored in multi-stakeholder dialogues related to adaptation. There is also few representation of older women and those belonging to the LGBTQI+ communities in the council for the adaptation projects in Barangay Assumption. These findings resonate with the observations of other scholars in the Philippines who argue that adaptation, conservation, or social policy reforms do not necessarily translate to transformative outcomes on the ground (Montefrio 2017; Ramos 2020). They warn that efforts to build resilience (Ajibade 2022) or to allocate unprecedented efforts for social spending (Ramos 2020) are power-laden and double-edged which may lead to winners and losers while stabilising the status quo.

What do these findings ultimately mean for future justice-based climate adaptation practice? Our conceptual framework of transformative justice offers three potential lessons. First, transformation requires transdisciplinary practice and collaboration. The enrolment of diverse actors, particularly vulnerable groups such as women, the elderly, differently abled, and Indigenous communities, across multiple levels of governance and domains of knowledges and disciplines is crucial. Second, transformation necessitates dismantling colonial systems of knowledge and foregrounding local and Indigenous knowledges in co-producing adaptation interventions. Being attentive to who gets invited to debates about adaptation, whose knowledges matter, and whose priorities should be considered is a step in the right direction. Third, transformation demands both restitution for past damages and forward-looking approaches that protect stakeholders who might be at risk of being adversely affected by future adaptation interventions. This entails the restoration of communities, healing of damaged ecosystems, and proactive planning to prevent any future harm. Like Bulkeley, Lecavalier, and Basta (2023, 834), we argue that there are multiple pathways to transformative action, and we need to “recognise its multiplicity and actively engage with its different facets” to achieve lasting changes.

To conclude, we conceptualise transformative climate justice through the domains of inclusive, epistemological, and restorative justice, but further progress this framework by drawing on the combined learnings of our research in the Philippines. Through our exploration of transformative climate justice in Batanes, Tambaliza and Barangay Assumption we also respond to Newell et al.’s (2021) call for more practical demonstrations of transformative approaches to climate justice. We observe a number of important factors that are important to operationalising transformative climate justice: small and localised actions supported by more formalised institutions, struggle against the status quo and the sharing of power. In this way, we respond to Hughes and Hoffmann’s (2020) call for the literature to progress beyond its largely theoretical orientation of transformative climate justice towards the more empirical and operational.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the residents, local government units, and non-governmental organisations in Itbayat, Tambaliza, and Assumption in the Philippines for their generosity in accommodating us during fieldwork. We would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback. Finally, we acknowledge that we live and work on unceded lands of the Gadigal, Ngunnawal and Wurundjeri peoples, and pay our respect to the country and to the traditional custodians who have cared for the country for countless generations, and continue to do so today.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

1 The smallest political unit in the Philippines.