Defending lands and forests: NGO histories, everyday struggles, and extraordinary violence in the Philippines

Abstract

ABSTRACT Across the Global South, authoritarian rule and extractivist agendas have intensified the harassment and murder of activists protecting remnant forest frontiers. In 2017, Global Witness documented the brutal murders of 207 defenders, the deadliest year on record. In the Philippines, violence against defenders has recently accelerated under the increasingly authoritarian regime of President Rodrigo Duterte. Excluding drug-related extrajudicial killings, an additional 30 murders were documented in the country in 2018, the highest number of such killings in any country that year. Largely because of expanding plantations and mines, the frontier province of Palawan has experienced a surge in land grabbing and illegal logging, driving defender harassment, intimidation, and death. While scholars have explored the trends and patterns behind violence against defenders in Southeast Asia, few have considered how the rural poor emerge as activists, the role of NGOs in this process, and how defenders negotiate their activism with everyday life and livelihood. This study fills this gap by ethnographically examining how NGOs on Palawan island mobilize rural communities to shape defender practices and by exploring why defenders do what they do amid mounting threats against them, their loved ones, and their comrades across the island.