Imperialism and the Political Economy of Climate Adaptation in the Philippines
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Date
2023-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
The Philippines is recognized as one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change. Its position in the Tropical Cyclone Belt and the Pacific Ring of Fire means the country is continuously battered by seismic shocks, tropical cyclones (TCs), monsoons, and El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) episodes. Seismic shocks occur daily and twenty TCs enter the Philippine Area of Responsibility every year. As global mean temperatures increase, these extreme weather events have become more frequent and intense, pushing the limits of the country's capacity to withstand these hazards. It is right, then, that since 1994, the Philippine state has developed an extensive climate bureaucracy to mainstream policies for climate change adaptation, climate resilient development and disaster risk reduction. However, by opting for technical tools and "best practices," the state continues to obscure the structural roots of impoverishment of the Filipino masses. As an historical symptom of its political economy, the state enables the penetration of capitalist climate governance. How then, did the Philippines arrive at this conjuncture? In this paper, I conduct a critical historical analysis of its political ecology. The Philippines had been "liberated" by colonial and imperial powers for over four centuries––that cannot be ignored. As such, I discuss the Philippines' experience under Spanish colonial and American imperial regimes using the theoretical frameworks of Karatani Kojin and Kohei Saito. I argue that American Imperialism enabled the Philippines' emergence as a capitalist nation-state by entrenching its post-colonial class regime within elite governance and by ensuring its economic, political, and cultural dependence. This reflects a blind acceptance of capitalist climate governance, which is set against the socially just adaptation of the Filipino masses.
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political economy, imperialism, climate change, philippines, spanish colonialism, typhoon haiyan