First to third nature: the rise of capitalist conservation on Palawan Island, the Philippines

Abstract

The social relations and agricultural lands that rural peoples in Southeast Asia hold in common are being commodified through the converging pressures of agrarian change, conservation and capitalist development. This paper examines how broader and local processes driving agrarian differentiation have been accelerated through the revaluing of people and nature in market terms to ostensibly finance conservation through development at the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park – the flagship protected area of Palawan Island, the Philippines. Drawing on the notions of ‘first’ and ‘third nature’, I show how the pace and scale of agrarian change between rural peoples has gone ‘fast forward’ with the onset of resource partitioning, objectification, commodification and, ultimately, revaluing through translocal ‘capitalist conservation’, the rise of conservation as capitalist production. I examine how the national park's valuing as a ‘common’ World Heritage has drawn major private sector investments that objectify, commodify and rearticulate the value of nature as capital that finances and merges conservation and development according to the images and ideals of the modern Philippines. The conclusion asserts that while the processes of differentiation and capitalist conservation facilitate the revaluing of nature in market terms, the overall process remains recursive, partial and context dependent.

Keywords:

• nature
• capitalism
• markets
• conservation
• indigenous peoples

Notes

¹In this paper, the notion of ‘fast forward’ draws on Lefebvre's (1991) idea involving the reconstitution of social and material spaces over time through the reconfiguration of the relations of production and exchange as a result of social alienation and symbolic abstraction.

²This paper critically engages ‘development’ in the normative sense of the term: sustained, capitalist economic growth.

³Swidden (or ‘slash and burn’) agriculture refers to the intermittent clearing of forest for staple food crop production, followed by a much longer period of forest fallow, which restores the productivity of the land (Conklin 1957, Cramb et al. 2009).

⁴Paddy rice agriculture refers to the (intensified) cultivation of ‘wet rice’ rice in a flooded (irrigated or rain fed) parcel of arable land.

⁵Non-timber forest products refer to any commodity extracted from the forest that does not involve the harvesting of trees/timber, including, on Palawan, rattan, resins, wild pig, honey and orchids, among many others (Dressler 2009).

⁶At the time, the national park was named St Paul Subterranean River National Park.

⁷Since lands were clearly abundant prior to the 1960s, the availability of labour, not land, limited production (Warner 1979, McDermott 2000).

⁸The lands were officially released under LC Map No 2598, Project 1-T, certified in July 1966.

⁹Key Informant Interview, Eduardo Castillo, pioneer migrant farmer, Cabayugan Centro, Spring 2004.

¹⁰Much of the CADC lands were leased for 25 years as public domain and had no potential of being formally titled any time soon.

¹¹Business Owner Survey, Mario Avelino, pioneer migrant farmer, July 2009, Sabang, Palawan.

¹²Business Owner Survey, Anita Wayang, wife in pioneer migrant family, July 2009, Sabang, Palawan.

¹³Business Owner Survey, Joseph Venturillio, new migrant arrival, July 2009, Sabang, Palawan.

¹⁶Business Owner Survey, Christopher Almoroto, migrant farmer/business owner, July 2009, Sabang, Palawan.

¹⁴Business Owner Survey, Anita Wayang, July 2009, Sabang, Palawan.

¹⁵Business Owner Survey, Edwin Pamuntoan, migrant farmer/business owner, July 2009, Sabang, Palawan.

¹⁷See http://www.worldheritagesite.org/sites/puertoprincesa.html

¹⁸See http://www.new7wonders.com/n7w/nature/finalists

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Wolfram H. Dressler

Funding for this research was provided by the Australian Research Council Discovery Grant, Proposal ID: DP1096157. I would like to thank Prof Jim Eder and three anonymous reviewers of this paper for brilliant comments and suggestions. The paper is dedicated to the indigenous peoples and landscapes of Palawan Island – a special place in our hearts that needs urgent protection.