World Development Vol. 79, pp.

114–126, 2016
0305-750X/Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2015.11.009

The Green Economy and Constructions of the ‘‘Idle” and

‘‘Unproductive” Uplands in the Philippines
MARVIN JOSEPH F. MONTEFRIO a and WOLFRAM H. DRESSLER b,*
a
Yale-NUS College, Singapore
b
School of Geography, University of Melbourne, Australia
Summary. — In the Philippines, green economy projects encourage the production of agro-industrial commodities ostensibly for climate
change mitigation, environmental rehabilitation, and inclusive rural economic growth. This paper illustrates, however, how elite con-
structions of the uplands as being ‘‘idle” and ‘‘unproductive” precipitate low-carbon, agro-industrial crop production in the Philippine
frontier. Based on field research from 2010 to 2012 (i.e., in-depth interviews with policy and market elites, participant observation, and
archival document analysis), we argue that elites constructions of and discourses on the uplands as idle and unproductive have been
carried over from the colonial period, albeit in more complex ways, to inform and legitimize agro-industrial policies and programs
couched in the green economy vision of the country. Such discourses simplify green economy policies and undermine upland dwellers’
constructions of place. Our findings raise critical questions about the realization of the vision of the green economy in the Philippines and
much of the Global South. Regardless of the inclusive growth discourse in the green economy program, elite constructions of the idle and
unproductive uplands pose serious risks to upland environments and populations.
Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Key words — environmental discourse, green economy, low-carbon development, idle lands, swidden, Philippines

1. INTRODUCTION low-carbon commodities in seemingly unoccupied and unused

The green economy has received significant international
attention over the past decade due to growing concerns over
global climate change, oil price hikes, financial crises, and food
security woes in the 2000s (Allen & Clouth, 2012). Interna-
tional organizations—such as the United Nations, the World
Bank, the OECD, and non-governmental organizations—have
advocated increased investments in the ‘‘greening” of produc-
tive sectors while simultaneously mitigating greenhouse gases,
conserving natural landscapes, and achieving inclusive growth
for marginalized rural populations (The World Bank, 2012;
UNEP, 2011). In much of Southeast Asia, the so-called green
economy has worked through market-based governance,
incentive schemes, and capital investments to ostensibly add
(greater) value to nature to conserve it (Corson,
MacDonald, & Neimark, 2013; McAfee, 1999). Governments,
private companies, and civil society now coordinate among
themselves to create enabling conditions wherein market
mechanisms and technologies converge to revalue natural
landscapes to ‘‘conserve with profit” under the guise of green
developmentalism (McAfee, 1999). Yet while green economy
governance and interventions (e.g., REDD+) aim to render
rural farmers less resource dependent—marked by shifts from
extensive to intensified commodity production—many more
are pulled into the agro-industrial, low-carbon side of this eco-
nomic trajectory. Increasingly, as global demand for food, fuel
and fiber grows, governance regimes, zoning and capital
investments have converged around the expansion of agro-
industries in the tropics (Hall, Hirsch, & Li, 2011). 1 In the last
decade, the growth of agro-industrial development in South-
east Asia has expanded dramatically, with millions of hectares
being devoted to monoculture cash crops (e.g., oil palm,
biofuel crops, natural rubber, and high-value fruit trees). 2
In this context, governments, private companies, and
non-government organizations now repackage agricultural
and forestry products (old and new) for manufacture as
114
spaces—at both discursive and material levels. Multilateral
organizations have advocated increased investments in the
‘‘greening” of agriculture and forestry sectors, and greater
partnerships with agribusinesses governed by corporations,
with the hope of mitigating greenhouse gases and alleviating
poverty among smallholder farmers (UNEP, 2011). The
discourse of the low-carbon, green economy has emerged
from, fed into, and reinvested in dominant narratives of
agrarian change, often under the premise of filling in ‘‘idle”,
‘‘unproductive” lands as well as modernizing farmers and their
agriculture through intensified, sedentary production.
Indeed, the agro-industrial projects that fall under the guise
of the green economy have been subject to significant criticism
for their tendency to introduce, perpetuate, and exacerbate
socio-economic and environmental problems. In the case of
biofuels and natural rubber, for example, such issues manifest
in terms of food insecurity due to the replacement of subsis-
tence plots (Ewing & Msangi, 2009; McMichael, 2010), land
grabbing and conflict over rights to ancestral land (Borras,
Hall, Scoones, White, & Wolford, 2011; Montefrio, 2012,
2013; Vermeulen & Cotula, 2010), a rise in livelihood vulner-
ability due to mono-cropping (Ariza-Montobbio, Lele,
Kallis, & Martinez-Alier, 2010; Montefrio & Sonnenfeld,
2013; Xu et al., 2005), deforestation and biodiversity loss
(Danielsen et al., 2008; Ziegler, Fox, & Xu, 2009), and
greater carbon emissions (Fargione, Tilman, Polasky, &
Hawthorne, 2008). Through foreign bank rolling and state
brokering, investments in and the development of low-carbon
* We sincerely thank the International Development Research Centre,
particularly the Economy and Environment Programme for Southeast
Asia, for the generous field research grant. We would also like to thank
David Sonnenfeld, Peter Castro, Valerie Luzadis, Philip McMichael, and
Carol Colfer for their invaluable feedback on the early versions of this
article. Final revision accepted: November 21, 2015.
 THE GREEN ECONOMY AND CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE ‘‘IDLE” AND ‘‘UNPRODUCTIVE” UPLANDS IN THE PHILIPPINES 115
agro-industrial projects tend to intersect with already uneven
political economies of agrarian change and governance pres-
sures. In particular, the introduction of biofuel plantations
for enhancing rural production tends to unfold on elite land
holdings, and public lands state agencies lease to corporations
through various land tenure regimes (Borras & Franco, 2010).
Rather than intercropping cash crops to better match existing
livelihoods, major monoculture plantations unfold on lands
(sometimes already) aggregated from smallholders, restricting
access to and use of forest resources and land for swidden. 3
Increasingly, these consequences fuel interrelated social
resistance, enduring conflicts and sustained livelihood risk
and vulnerability (Caouette & Turner, 2008; Hall et al., 2011).
While the range of negative consequences of green economy
agro-industrial development have been well documented in the
social sciences more generally, only relatively recently has
literature emerged that critically engages how state bureaucra-
cies classify lands as ‘‘idle,” ‘‘marginal,” ‘‘abandoned,” and
‘‘unproductive” to justify the planting of low-carbon com-
modity crops. The planting of such crops supposedly renders
these spaces productive and in line with dominant economic
orthodoxy. Focusing on a few cases in Africa and South Asia,
these studies have mainly examined the categorization of land
uses as marginal and unproductive in terms of value and loca-
tion in general (see Ariza-Montobbio et al., 2010; Hunsberger,
2010; Nalepa & Bauer, 2012). 4 Fewer studies, however,
engage in detail the historically contingent nature by which
actors in bureaucracies and the private sector perceive, frame
and represent the need to develop agro-industrial spaces in the
green economy (see Baka, 2013, 2014; McCarthy & Cramb,
2009; McMichael, 2010). Even less understood is the complex-
ity of how state and private sector proponents have come to
draw on dominant beliefs, knowledge, and understandings to
facilitate such development across scale and over time.
Our paper builds on these studies by providing an empirical
case that examines how historical and contemporary dis-
courses on agriculture and land layered in state bureaucracies
and private sector are intertwined with green economy devel-
opment today. We focus on the Philippines as an exemplary
case of an unfolding agro-industrialization project often
couched in the language of the low-carbon, green economy.
We found that key decision-makers at various levels of the
Philippine government have used discourses attached to par-
ticular constructions of upland environments and populations
as idle and unproductive, which have informed and rational-
ized the design and implementation of development policies
and practices. Actual green economy programs in several pro-
vinces and municipalities in the country, for example, have
been designed and implemented on the basis of such social
constructions. We show how these social constructions and
discourses have been carried over from the colonial period
to more recent policies, albeit in more complex ways, to
inform and legitimize agro-industrial projects couched in the
green economy vision of the country. Given the persistence
of such social constructions of the uplands, the findings raise
critical concerns of how agro-industrial projects run the risk
of negatively impacting smallholder (swidden) subsistence
and transforming landscapes into monoculture plantations
of export commodities.
2. METHODS
We followed a qualitative mix-method approach to data
collection (in-depth interviews and participant observation)
and content analysis of public documents. Fieldwork took
place in June–August of 2010 and July 2011–July 2012. In-
depth, semi-structured interviews were carried out with a total
of 53 state, private sector, non-government organizations, and
academics from the national, municipal to local level (i.e.,
communities) (Table 1). Questions included, among others,
experiences and perceptions of participants regarding a
number of agro-industrial programs (e.g., biofuels, biomass,
and rubber production regimes), their construction of upland
environments and peoples (i.e., their views, beliefs, and per-
ceptions), and their understanding of upland development.
Selection of interview participants was done through a mix
of convenience and purposive (snowball) sampling, with atten-
tion to representativeness according to level (community,
municipal, provincial, regional, and national) and sector
(e.g., state administrative, state legislative, private companies,
civil society, academia), as well as involvement or knowledge
of the type of agro-industrial production regime (bioethanol,
biodiesel, biomass, and rubber). Most of the organization rep-
resentatives interviewed are considered to be the most impor-
tant players in the country’s green economy program. The
representatives of government and private sector organization,
in particular, were selected based on their familiarity of and
experience with managing green economy projects. Interviews
lasted between 45 and 120 min and were audio recorded
whenever allowed.
Participant observation supplemented the interviews to
further understand the discursive practices of and actual inter-
actions between various actors involved in biofuels, oil palm
and rubber production regimes in the Philippines. Participant
observation sessions included attending relevant national con-
ferences, meetings and trade fairs, sitting in negotiations and
public forums, and visiting partner communities, plantation
sites and surrounding environments in four provinces in the
Philippines. Ten months of field research were devoted to
the province of Palawan, where twelve oil palm, jatropha
and rubber-growing communities were visited. Whenever pos-
sible, field notes were prepared for each participant observa-
tion session.
Content analysis of government and private sector docu-
ments and newspaper articles was also conducted. The rele-
vant government and private sector documents included
materials from administrative units (executive orders, presi-
dential speeches, administrative orders, annual reports,
research reports and records of agencies), legislature (relevant
journals, committee and session transcripts, bills, resolutions,
and committee reports from the House of Representatives
and the Senate), and companies (sample contracts, annual
reports, information package for prospective investors, and
production maps). The newspaper articles analyzed were from
the Philippine Daily Inquirer and the Philippine Star, the top
two national newspapers. These were selected articles
published from 1990 until 2012 using keyword indexing
Table 1. Interview participants
Sector and level No. participants
National government 8
Regional and provincial government 4
Municipal and local government 7
Government-owned and controlled company 7
Private company 15
Academia 7
National and local NGO 5
Total 53
116 WORLD DEVELOPMENT
(i.e., kaingin, swidden, slash-and-burn, shifting cultivation,
idle lands, marginal lands, uplands, and ancestral lands) at
the Newsbank Access World News and the online and print
archives of the two broadsheets. At least 140 newspaper arti-
cles were analyzed. Qualitative thematic analysis was
employed in coding the interviews, field notes, and documents.
3. ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSES AND LAND
CLASSIFICATION POLICIES
Critical analysis of the historical and contemporary con-
struction of state discourses of land, agriculture and people
sheds light on the complex relationship between green econ-
omy policies, national and subnational construction of, and
discourses associated with, upland environments and popula-
tions in the Philippines. Critical literature has shown how
environmental discourses of ‘‘idle”, ‘‘unproductive” lands
and peoples have informed various laws, policies, and pro-
grams that justify and facilitate low-carbon agro-industrial
development in the uplands today. The historical analysis of
how ‘‘idle land” discourses inform policy narratives is well-
established in the literature; and newer studies have built upon
the former to engage how these narratives justify low-carbon
commodity crops as green development strategies. We con-
tribute to both strands of literature.
The social construction of things in and of society—such as
land, agriculture and people—are forged through discourse, or
privileged ‘‘meaning systems” (Bacchi, 2009, p. 9). Discourses
themselves are ensembles of ideas, beliefs, values, assump-
tions, presuppositions and associated signs that come to reflect
dominant positions in state bureaucracies, civil society and
private sector. In such analysis, emphasis is placed on under-
standing the processes by which the meanings of discourse
are produced, circulated and reproduced through particular
relations of power such that they become taken for granted,
‘‘stabilizing assumptions” that endure to produce policy nar-
ratives (Roe, 1992). The discourse that informs such narratives
strongly influences the knowledge, questions and actions that
are produced, executed and excluded (Beymer-Farris &
Bassett, 2012; Leach & Mearns, 1996; Roe, 1991; Stone,
2002). In time, when narratives cement in institutions, the sci-
entific truth claims that underlie these policy narratives are
accepted as legitimate and difficult to question from within
state bureaucracies (including, for example, the truth claims
associated with land classification systems) (Scott, 1998).
The social process above reflects the politics of construction
and (re)production of ‘‘idle” and ‘‘unproductive” upland dis-
courses in the Philippines (and in Asia generally) over time.
More broadly, scholars focusing on Asia and India especially,
have shown how contemporary ‘‘wasteland” development
schemes (e.g., biofuels feedstock production) can be traced
to colonial conceptions of marginal, derelict lands that were
considered to have little utility until converted, rendered,
and exploited (Ariza-Montobbio et al., 2010; Baka, 2013).
Gidwani (1992) and Whitehead (2010) suggest that such colo-
nial conceptions are often influenced by Lockean principles of
individual, privately held lands being most economically pro-
ductive and rational, such that the parceling out of the unpro-
ductive commons to individual, alienable holdings might drive
productivity and exchange on land markets. This meant that
on economic and moral premises, private property rights
should be favored over uncultivated common property lands
(or ‘‘wasteland”) (Baka, 2013; Gidwani, 1992; Gidwani &
Reddy, 2011). In Southeast Asia, specifically, numerous criti-
cal studies have examined how colonial constructions of
upland agriculture and people extend to and inform post-
colonial state discourses and policies of the same categories,
once again in terms of being unproductive, destructive, and
backward (see Cramb, 2011, 2014; Dove, 1983, 1986, 1997;
Forsyth & Walker, 2008; Li, 2007; Majid Cooke, 2002;
Scott, 1998, 2014; Sivaramakrishnan, 1995, 2000;
Vandergeest, 2003). We engage this literature as the most rel-
evant to insular Southeast Asia and the Philippine context.
(a) Construction of idle lands in insular Southeast Asia
Earlier studies in the Southeast Asian region have interro-
gated various aspects of idle land discourses, focusing on
grassland and swidden myths (Dove, 1983, 1985, 1997) and,
more recently, the contemporary constructions of idle lands
as spaces that need to be reduced and rendered productive
with oil palm (Cramb, 2011, 2014; Li, 2007; Majid Cooke,
2002). 5 Dove (1983, 1997) first interrogated the discourses
of notional ‘‘grassland myths”. In Indonesia, he argued, that
montane grasslands (e.g., Imperata spp., or cogon) have long
been viewed in development policies and programs as ‘‘waste-
land,” ‘‘unproductive,” ‘‘barren,” and ‘‘uncultivable,” and
therefore ‘‘undesirable” as they supposedly had neither eco-
nomic nor ecological value (Dove, 1983, 1986, 1997;
Sherman, 1980). Under Dutch colonial rule and now the
Indonesian government, indigenous creation and burning
practices of grasslands were considered ‘‘destructive” and
‘‘primitive” (Dove, 1997, p. 226). This grassland myth thus
remains closely associated with the construction of swidden
cultivation as destructive and wasteful (to timber) and alleg-
edly results in the proliferation of ‘‘useless” grassland succes-
sion—something Dove (1985) called the political economy of
ignorance. Dove (1986) noted that these grasslands have been
traditionally used by indigenous peoples’ for grazing, hunting
of herbivores, and sourcing of thatch for homes, and so
remained part of swidden systems.
The Indonesian context illustrates well the influences of
colonial discourses on contemporary upland development ide-
als. Li (1999), for example, analyzes the discourse of upland
‘‘marginality” as part of the modern state’s territorializing
project (i.e., regulation of the relationship between population
and resources), which began under Dutch colonial rule (the
Cultivation System or cultuurstelsel in 1830 and the Agrarian
Law of 1870). In the process of increasing colonial control
over natural resources, establishing large scale commercial
agriculture, and gaining control over labor, the colonial gov-
ernment made swidden and other long standing upland forest
uses illegal. In the process, it labeled upland populations as
‘‘unruly,” ‘‘lazy,” ‘‘deficient,” and ‘‘disorderly,” differentiating
them from their ‘‘disciplined” lowland counterparts. Territori-
alization continued in the post-colonial era in the form of
coercive removal of those practicing unregulated smallholder
farming (i.e., branded as forest destroyers) within state-
defined forest zones (Li, 1999, p. 16) and their relocation to
transmigration settlements (Tsing, 1993). According to Tsing,
the relocation efforts during the post-colonial Suharto regime
(i.e., Management of Isolated Populations spanning 1970–80)
were justified as a means to put into order ‘‘disorderly” swid-
den cultivation. In the meantime, the perceived expansion of
useless grasslands lingered and further justified policies that
controlled swidden as a destructive practice—one that suppos-
edly expanded idle lands.
In Malaysia, Majid Cooke (2002) and Cramb (2011) have
similarly shown how historical land use policies (1863 Land
Regulations) and construction of ‘‘unoccupied and waste”
lands during the Brooke and British colonial regimes (1841–
 THE GREEN ECONOMY AND CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE ‘‘IDLE” AND ‘‘UNPRODUCTIVE” UPLANDS IN THE PHILIPPINES 117
1957) have shaped policy narratives that justify the expansion
of oil palm in Sarawak (e.g., Konsep Baru, Majid Cooke, 2002,
p. 196). Scientific forestry discourse in Sarawak in 1919 also
constructed upland livelihood practices (i.e., swidden) as ‘‘in-
ferior,” ‘‘unscientific,” and ‘‘destructive” of forests (i.e., timber
reserves) (Majid Cooke, 1997, pp. 34–52). Various land-use
policies were thus adopted to regulate indigenous groups from
clearing forests and later on ‘‘abandoning” such lands (Majid
Cooke, 2002, pp. 196–197). The conception of ‘‘unoccupied
. . .waste” lands remained unquestioned in the post-colonial
era. Animated by dualistic theories of economic development
(i.e., a divide between modern and indigenous sectors)
(Cramb, 2011), the old constructions of ‘‘abandoned” or
‘‘waste lands” went hand-in-hand with the new construction
of indigenous peoples being economically ‘‘vulnerable” and
‘‘in need” (i.e., being left behind by globalization). Such con-
structions have been used to justify narratives on oil palm
expansion on native land in Sarawak and elsewhere (Majid
Cooke, 2002, p. 201).
Based in land law and value, the studies above have all inter-
rogated what is classified as productive and what is not, and
point to a binary of opposing constructions: (1) the productive
lands involving those controlled by the state as public domain
(e.g., timberland) for resource extraction/production and
those delineated as private holdings (e.g., private title, fee sim-
ple) held by powerful individuals or corporations; versus (2)
the unproductive upland commons primarily used by indige-
nous peoples. The latter is conflated with ‘‘idle land” dis-
courses, where indigenous peoples and livelihoods are largely
invisible or in need of management (Borras & Franco,
2010). These binary categorizations reflect how statecraft
and policy-making today both render complex socio-
ecological spaces legible for greater control, management
and productivity (Li, 2007; Scott, 1998, 2014). Such catego-
rizations justify how upland societies and the commons should
be converted into modern people and productive agriculture
under the state’s purview (Scott, 1998, 2014). In this regard,
Southeast Asian scholars emphasize the importance of exam-
ining the historical (colonial) origins of these categorizations
and how they come to bare on contemporary policies and
interventions in the idle uplands (Cramb, 2011; Majid
Cooke, 2002; Forsyth & Walker, 2008; Sivaramakrishnan,
1995, 2000; Whitehead, 2010; Vandergeest, 2003).
While these studies have critically examined how colonial
legacies inform the categorizations and nuance of idle lands
in varied contexts, our paper extends this work and con-
tributes to the broader literature in several important ways.
First, as an empirically rich longitudinal case study, we criti-
cally analyze the reproduction of the ‘‘idle land” discourse
over time and across levels of governance in the Philippines.
Borras and Franco (2012) have critically discussed classifica-
tions of land-use change involving idle lands, but neglected
to delve into the discursive construction of such categories
and how they manifest locally. Second, we aim to document
‘‘idle land” discourses within and between multiple state and
non-state actors (see also Baka (2014) and Hunsberger
(2010), albeit to a limited extent), thus underscoring the diffuse
construction of ‘‘idle land” discourses reproduced among
them. Third, we develop a comparative analysis of discourse
reproduction in the context of the Spanish and American colo-
nial regimes, which contrasts with other colonial analysis in
the literature. Finally, we extend this historical analysis to a
broader case study of the green economy involving rubber
and high-value fruit trees, beyond the biofuels and oil palm
contexts that dominate current literature (Ariza-Montobbio
et al., 2010; Baka, 2013, 2014; Borras & Franco, 2012;
Hunsberger, 2010; McCarthy & Cramb, 2009; Nalepa &
Bauer, 2012; Shortall, 2013). Doing so underscores the added
complexity in contemporary upland discourses, where the eco-
nomic logic of developing idle lands goes hand-in-hand with
imperatives to rehabilitate environments and convert small-
holder populations into eco-conscious individuals.
4. COLONIAL CONSTRUCTION OF ENVIRONMEN-
TAL NARRATIVES
The contemporary social construction of upland environ-
ments and people can be traced back to the colonial period.
In the Philippines, the construction of land as an economic
resource was evident as early as the usurpation of public lands
under the Regalian Doctrine imposed by the Spanish colonial
government (1521–1898). The Regalian Doctrine defined those
lands not registered as private title as public domains under
the Spanish Crown’s authority, establishing state control of
the uplands and categorizing those farmers without private
title as squatters (Lynch, 1982). The colonial government soon
moved to establish control over upland areas from swidden
agriculture (pejoratively, kaingin or slash-and-burn) with
new ordinances, including the Spaniard’s Definitive Forest
Laws and Regulations in 1889. With such State control also
came the clearing and exploitation of forestlands for economic
development of the country. So began the binary discourse
that informed the environmental policy narrative of productive
timberlands contrasted with the threats of unproductive kaingin.
In 1899, American colonial rule further fueled this policy
narrative. The emerging forest bureaucracy soon drafted mul-
tiple laws and policies, including the Kaingin Law of 1901 [re-
vised in 1963], with stiffer sentences imposed on swidden
farmers and other upland smallholders; that is, any farmer
‘‘squatting” on ‘‘idle lands” (without private title). US colonial
officials framed swidden on ‘‘vacant” lands in line with this
discourse that contrasted the productive value of timberland
to the rising threat of kaingin. Frontier lands were seen as a
source of direct timber revenue and wealth for the country
(and USA). As the Director of Forestry of the American colonial
government in the Philippines, Mr. Florencio Tamesis, noted:
. . .the forest constitutes the greatest and most valuable among our nat-
ural resources. The stumpage value of its timber alone is estimated at
no less than eight billion pesos. If put under proper management by
treating it like a crop [. . .] it can be made to yield a constant revenue
to the Government for an indefinite time [. . .] it would bring an annual
income sufficient to pay one-third of the yearly expenses of the Com-
monwealth Government (Tamesis, 1937, p. 9).
Just as in Mr. Tamesis’s account of the economic contribu-
tion of frontier lands in 1937, all annual reports of the Direc-
tor of Forestry analyzed from 1901 to 1940 used language to
describe uplands in terms of the commercial value of timber
and non-timber forest products. 6 Juxtaposed against wasteful
kaingin in the uplands, the reports discussed accessibility of
commercial forests, markets, stumpage prices, tariff rates,
and the biophysical condition of forest stands.
As with the environmental features of the uplands, upland
dwellers were constructed in a diametrically opposing frame.
Here the economic logic of the timberlands was set against
the swiddeners’ degrading character on the commercial value
of timber and non-timber forest products. At the same time,
Pinchot (1903) then lauded the ‘‘wise use” of timber for max-
imum sustained yields (then establishing the School of For-
estry at the University of the Philippines in Los Baños) and
so defined swiddeners as the locusts of Philippine forestry
118 WORLD DEVELOPMENT
(Dressler, 2009). In the Bureau of Forestry and academia, they
condemned swidden cultivators as devastators of forests,
labeling kaingin as ‘‘lawless,” the ‘‘enemy,” ‘‘evil” and a ‘‘me-
nace.” Swidden farmers were soon socially constructed as a
hindrance to the interest of the government and the country’s
vital industries. ‘‘The making of caiñgins (kaingin) cannot be
called a development of the country,” said Forestry Director,
Arthur Fischer, in his annual report in 1918 (pp. 16–17). As
Forsythe Sherfesee, colonial Forestry Director, emphasized
in the 1916 report, ‘‘[t]he Bureau of Forestry will continue to
make the strongest efforts to combat this evil, which is decid-
edly the greatest menace to the public forests of the Philippines
and the lumbering interests as well as other industries which
are dependent thereon” (pp. 24–25).
Such anti-swidden discourse was carried over into the Com-
monwealth era (1935–45) and well beyond independence in
1946. New foresters and land managers adopted the same cau-
sal ideals and discourse of swidden being one of the main dri-
vers of deforestation and degradation. In the Philippine
Commonwealth years leading up to the Second World War,
for instance, Director of Forestry, Mr. Tamesis, echoed the
same concerns in his 1937 annual report,
The caiñgin system is one of the worst enemies of the forest. This ``shifting
method of agriculture” continues unabated practically everywhere, from the
lowland to the top of the mountains regardless of the value of the standing
timber, the topography and condition of the soil. It is an expression of
unbridled lawlessness, ignorance of the consequence of such wanton
destruction of the wealth of the country, and utter lack of respect for public
property (Tamesis, 1937, p. 12).
In the early 1900s, American colonial government officials
already expressed concerns regarding the expanding areas of
‘‘wastelands” and ‘‘nonproductive” cogon (Imperata) grass-
lands in the country (as we saw for Indonesia above). At the
same time, evidence shows how these proliferating wastelands
and nonproductive cogon lands were being associated with
destructive swidden cultivators. Forestry Director Mr. George
Ahern (1910, pp.8–9) emphasized in his report that ‘‘[i]t is esti-
mated that 57% of the land area of the Philippines is in grass
and second-growth forest. That this condition is mainly due to
the shifting system of farming known as the caiñgin system
there can be no doubt” (Ahern, 1910, pp. 8–9). Forestry Direc-
tor Fischer clearly regarded the resulting land cover transfor-
mation brought about by swidden cultivation as unproductive,
saying ‘‘[a]fter [kaingin], the presence of cogon grass with its
matted roots makes further planting impossible unless the
land is plowed. This has gone on for centuries, until now
40% of the land area of the Philippines is covered with nonpro-
ductive cogon [grasslands]” (Fischer, 1918, pp. 16–17).
In later years, the Bureau of Forestry became alarmed with
the perceived expanding areas of unproductive cogon lands
and, in response, initiated reforestation programs in addition
to controlling the destructive activities of swidden cultivators.
Although reforestation projects were believed to have started
as early as 1910, full-scale reforestation in the Philippines
began in 1937 (DANR, 1967). Mr. Tamesis detailed this initia-
tive in his 1937 annual report:
[The kaingin] system accounts mainly for the existence of extensive cogo-
nal areas all over the country with an aggregate area of 5,543,899 ha [. . .].
To bring back the forest on the cleared wastelands to economic use of some
kind, the Bureau is undertaking artificial planting or reforestation (Tamesis,
1937, p. 12).
This social constructions of the uplands undoubtedly per-
sisted among policy and market elites into the country’s recent
postwar history of forest policies and laws. The uplands were
still perceived as State-owned resources to be exploited for the
economic interest of the country. The principles of the Rega-
lian Doctrine were retained in the 1935 Commonwealth Con-
stitution, through to independence in 1946, and the 1987
Philippine Constitution. Up until the 1980s, the annual reports
of the Bureau of Forestry continued to describe the uplands in
terms of its commercial value, as well as its potential for indus-
trial forestry and agro-forestry to supply the needs of domestic
and foreign demand for forest products. These constructions
of the uplands accompanied ongoing exploitation of the
Philippine frontiers. Natural resource extraction intensified
in the 1960s and 1970s, involving large-scale harvesting of tim-
ber and extraction of minerals for export to Japan and the
United States (Borlagdan, Guiang, & Pulhin, 2001). The link
between deforestation and agricultural expansion became even
more apparent in this period, as the country began to experi-
ence an increase in (short-term) productivity due to the green
revolution and the government’s efforts to open forestlands to
agribusinesses and industrial plantations developers (Bautista,
1990; Kummer & Turer, 1994).
Relevant agencies persisted in socially constructing upland
smallholders and their practices as destructive and unlawful.
In the 1960s and onward, particularly under the Marcos
regime, the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources
and the Bureau of Forestry Development continued to enforce
forestry laws and regulations that addressed destructive forest
practices, including kaingin (DANR, 1967). Although deroga-
tory terms, such as ‘‘evil” and ‘‘menace,” were used less often,
kaingin was still referred to as illegal and swidden cultivators
ignorant, if not economically hard-pressed. Regardless of the
terms used to describe swidden cultivators, the activities of
these people were always perceived to be detrimental to the
‘‘wealth of the country.” For example, in 1969, the Primer
on Forest Conservation stated that ‘‘[i]llegal kaingin is a
socio-economic problem and it affects the economic stability
of the country, particularly its agriculture and forest indus-
tries” (Pascual, 1969). Moreover, a series of meetings and con-
ferences regarding the ‘‘kaingin problem” were soon
established leading to the National Conference on the Kaingin
Problem in 1965. While these meetings adopted a softer tone,
recommending that the state allow uplanders to remain in
classified forestlands on certain conditions, final recommenda-
tions simply suggested new sets of regulations with which to
contain upland farmers (i.e., Kaingin Management and Land
Settlement Regulations and the Forest Occupancy Manage-
ment Program, 1971).
Internationally, the Food and Agriculture Organization of
the United Nations (FAO) also played a significant role in
influencing Philippine state forestry policies for several dec-
ades, but particularly in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with
many policy reports still suggesting that swidden agriculture
continued to be the main factor in deforestation and so detri-
mental to timber stands and natural forests (Lanly, 1982). In
response, the FAO proposed that different agroforestry inter-
ventions be used to stabilize the shifting agriculture and put
the uplands to more productive use.
The 1970s to mid-1980s saw major forestry codes (i.e.,
revised forestry code, PD 705) being drafted under then-
President (cum dictator) Ferdinand Marcos reinforcing the
same pejorative sentiments toward upland peoples and agri-
culture. PD 705 specified that all lands with a slope >18%
(or above 600 m) were public domain and thus assumed that
upland areas had always been unoccupied and untitled
(Dressler, 2009, p. 60). Near the end of term, and after Mar-
cos’ ousting in 1986, a range of tenurial instruments emerged
to stabilize and make swidden productive through agro-
forestry in zoned lands on renewable 25-year leases. Since then
 THE GREEN ECONOMY AND CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE ‘‘IDLE” AND ‘‘UNPRODUCTIVE” UPLANDS IN THE PHILIPPINES 119
Community-Based Forest Management Agreements (enacted
in 1995) and other ostensibly more progressive legislation
would devolve rights to farmers to utilize and develop the
uplands. 7 Yet as we show, at each policy level, forests were
to be either left alone or be put toward productive use (timber,
tourism, etc.), rather than be cleared for swidden and have
land remain supposedly idle. Indeed, historical discourses of
the uplands being filled with unproductive people on idle lands
have persisted in government and continued to influence
development programs in the Philippine uplands.
5. THE GREEN ECONOMY AND CONTEMPORARY
CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE UPLANDS
Deeply entrenched in Philippine institutional politics since
the Spanish colonial period, the same discourses concerning
upland environments have been used to justify the emergent
green economy. Over the last decade, the Philippine govern-
ment has embarked on a green economy project with the
enactment of several national- and sub-national policies that
aim to simultaneously reduce carbon emissions, restore natu-
ral capital, bolster green investments, while enhancing land
productivity and addressing social inequalities and poverty
in the rural sector (e.g., at the national level: the Biofuels
Act of 2006, the Renewable Energy Act of 2008, the Climate
Change Act of 2009, and the National Greening Program). 8
The government has deemed these policies and programs as
essential in realizing the country’s vision of inclusive green
growth (Aquino, Ani, & Festejo, 2014) and has worked closely
with international organizations (e.g., UNEP, UNESCAP and
ADB) through advising and training to align the country’s
future policies and programs with a green economy vision.
One outcome was the Philippine Development Plan 2011–16,
which provided the roadmap for green economy development
in the country, from the national to the local (UNEP (2012)). 9
The Philippine Development Plan 2011–16 identified the envi-
ronment and agricultural sectors as two key priority areas for
development. Attracting agri-business investments and devel-
oping agro-industries that contribute to environmental reha-
bilitation and climate change mitigation then became a
widespread strategy in much of the rural and upland Philip-
pines, particularly targeting ancestral domains and timber-
lands for lease. 10 Such agro-industries thus far have
included the manufacture of commodities such as commercial
fruits, palm oil, natural rubber, and biofuels from feedstock
such as coconuts and sugarcane. These agro-industrial crops
have been promoted as vehicle to inclusive growth in the
uplands and as promising climate change mitigation efforts
to displace fossil fuel-based products and serve as a reservoir
for carbon sequestration. Oil palm and rubber, in particular,
have been aggressively advocated by policy and market elites
in the Philippines for their supposed forest-like capacity to
sequester carbon dioxide.
Recently, green economy policies have involved a major new
push in biofuels feedstock (e.g., jatropha, cassava, sweet sor-
ghum), oil palm, rubber and high-value fruit production on
public lands and on areas the government perceives as ‘‘idle.”
In the last 10 years, the total planted area for oil palm doubled
(from 25,800 to 53,000 ha) and natural rubber production
areas has increased by 80% since 2000. Under the Benigno
Aquino III administration, national agencies such as the
Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR)
and the Department of Agriculture (DA) have endeavored to
undertake ambitious programs to develop 100,000 ha of new
areas for ethanol crops and target 8 million ha of ‘‘idle,
denuded, and unproductive” lands for establishment of oil
palm plantations (Lagsa & Antonio, 2014). To make this
expansion possible, the Arroyo and Aquino government
issued a call for more private sector investments in the devel-
opment of plantations of ethanol crops, oil palm, natural rub-
ber, and other cash tree crops (e.g., high-value fruit trees). The
agro-industrial production of these crops then increasingly
became an elite project among coalitions of government politi-
cians, bureaucracies, local and international private compa-
nies, and even non-government organizations that have
similar conceptions and understandings of the Philippine
uplands. Below we discuss these contemporary elite social con-
structions as discourses on upland environments and upland
dwellers as they emerged from our interviews, participant
observation, and document analysis.
(a) The vast ‘‘idle lands” in the green economy
Based on our findings, elite coalitions composed of mostly
state legislature, executive, the bureaucracy and the private
sector drew on colonial discourses to inform and justify con-
temporary national and local low-carbon agro-industrial
development policies and programs. Particularly evident was
the discourse on the vast tracts of ‘‘idle,” ‘‘unproductive,”
‘‘abandoned,” and ‘‘waste” lands in need of development. 11
Our national level document analysis and interviews suggest
that the perception of the ubiquity of idle lands in the Philip-
pines became particularly salient at the turn of the millennium:
government agencies and officials targeted idle lands as sites
for green economy policies and programs. The ‘‘idle land” dis-
course became pervasive in the legislative process and at times
central to debates in national-level policy-making. In the case
of the Biofuels Act, for example, the justification of vast idle
lands in the country was pervasive in Congressional floor
and Committee sessions. In one of the heated debates about
competing land uses, the lead author of the Senate version
of the biofuels bill rebutted, ‘‘We will tap one million hectares
of idle government land to plant jatropha. These are tracts of
land we see in the countryside with nothing planted on them
except cogon grass.” Top government executives also referred
to these vast idle lands in their development planning. DENR
regional executive Ben Tantianco, for instance, talked about
how President Benigno Aquino III ordered the agency to con-
vert all idle lands into agro-forestry and biofuel ventures. In
response, he began to explore biofuel programs to introduce
in his jurisdiction. ‘‘Here in [a province in the North], we
should then keep the ball rolling in the sense that we have
many idle lands,” Mr. Tantianco said (Lagasca, 2010). Mark
Victoria, 12 liaison officer for a provincial government in Wes-
tern Philippines, attested to the availability of vast tracts of
idle land in their province. He said, ‘‘[i]t is really promising
here. Lands here are extensive, but they are untouched. There
are many investors coming in, asking for large areas of land
[. . .] they all want to plant industrial crops” (Interview, July
27, 2011).
The increase in investment activity in the private sector also
coincided with the growing perception of the ubiquity of idle
lands. All private company officials interviewed reasoned that
the availability of idle lands is one of their main reasons for
investing in industrial crop production in various areas in
the Philippines. For instance, the general manager of a Singa
porean–Malaysian-Filipino oil palm consortium in the Wes-
tern Philippines, Miguel Delgado, said, ‘‘[o]ne of our primary
reasons for coming here is the vast idle lands. When we came
here for recon, these were all idle lands, left and right” (Inter-
view, June 22, 2012). Another is the president of a Japanese-
120 WORLD DEVELOPMENT

Filipino bioethanol consortium in Northern Philippines, Rico
Bautista, who said, ‘‘[o]ur target are the idle lands and the
unproductive lands in [province in the North]. There’s a lot
there. That’s the reason why we located there, because there
are a lot of vacant areas. Nothing is being done, nakatiwang-
wang lang (it is left there unused)” (Interview, August 4, 2011).
Ancestral domains (CADCs and CADTs) and some of the
DENR’s tenurial regimes were identified as frontier areas for
agro-industrial development due to perceptions that these
areas are rife with idle lands. As Mr. Randy Gomez, a main
proponent of the National Rubber Development Program,
attested,
There are many idle lands in ancestral domains! I went to this district [in
Southern Philippines] [. . .] when you are there, on top of the hill, you will
see the entire district, several barangays in ancestral domains. It's so vast!
You will see that it's all just idle. They say it's around 20,000 ha (Interview,
August 15, 2011).
When asked to describe the ancestral domains they targeted
for their jatropha program, Cesar Trinidad of the Philippine
National Oil Company Alternative Fuels Corporation
(PNOC-AFC) said, ‘‘[t]he lands there are huge! They don’t
plant anything! What a waste!” (Interview, June 19, 2010).
Government owned corporations also became actively
engaged in the discourse and in targeting idle lands for pro-
duction of low-carbon agro-industrial crops. In 2006,
375,000 ha of idle lands were transferred to the Philippine
Forest Corporation (Philforest) to be developed under the
program, Economic Productivity Out of Idle Lands. During this
time, Philforest planted hundreds of hectares of jatropha in
these lands. Likewise, the PNOC-AFC highlighted its focus
on developing idle lands in ancestral domains for jatropha bio-
diesel production.
The perception of the enormity of idle lands was based on
either a combination of personal observations in the field
and/or estimates provided in studies and reports. Randy
Gomez, for example, appeared to rely on both: ‘‘There is huge
potential in our country because there are many idle lands.
From North to South, there is really a lot! One researcher
from the University of the Philippines estimated more than
1.5 million ha,” he said (Interview, August 15, 2011). He later
added that he himself had witnessed how vast the idle lands
are in the South, particularly in Mindanao. Several other gov-
ernment and company officials quoted studies that report esti-
mates of idle land areas in the Philippines. In a conference
with prospective investors, Francisco Arriola quoted an Asian
Development Bank study reporting that six million hectares of
arable lands remain idle and another 15 million ha of forests
are denuded (Bondoc, 2007).
While there was widespread perception of the ubiquity of
idle lands, estimates on idle land area were inconsistent, how-
ever. In a study done by the La Liga Policy Institute and
Development Academy of the Philippines, statistics on idle
agricultural land varied dramatically. For instance, the
National Statistics Office estimated that only about 119,461
of the 9.3 million ha of total farm land are idle, while the
Philippine Agribusiness Lands Investment Center estimated
as much as 8.8 million ha. Part of the disparity is attributed
to the differing means by which idle lands were measured, with
some agencies relying on the Philippine agriculture census con-
ducted every 10 years (as in the case of the National Statistics
Office), while others on a combination of census and geo-
graphic information system surveys of the National Mapping
and Resource Information Authority (as in the case of the
state-owned Philippine Agricultural Development and Com-
mercial Corporation) (Lara et al., 2008). But more impor-
tantly, the disparity can be attributed to the multitude of
technical definitions adopted for the term, ‘‘idle lands.”
As shown in Table 2, the respective institutions are in agree-
ment when referring to idle lands as ‘‘uncultivated,” but what
it means to leave the land in such a state (i.e., what specific
activities and crops count as ‘‘cultivation”) and the extent of
area and the period of time it remains uncultivated differ.
For example, the Department of Agrarian Reform and the
High Value Crops Development Program Committee identify
idle lands as those uncultivated and undeveloped for a contin-
uous period of 3 years, while the National Statistics Office
(NSO) use a range of 1–5 years. The Department of Interior
and Local Government (DILG), on the other hand, takes into
consideration the percent area of the land that is not planted
with permanent or perennial crops. There is also discrepancy
in the way NSO and DILG assess grazing lands as idle. It is
not in the scope of this paper to discuss the origins of these
definitions and their evolution over time. However, what is
evident is the multiple and differing conceptions of idle lands,
a reality that government officials themselves recognize. In a
Memorandum Circular of the Bureau of Local Government
Finance (No. 05-2012) on idle land taxation, local government
units are required to perform an inventory of idle land areas in
their jurisdiction and to specify the basis in classifying lands as

Table 2. Formal definitions associated with the term ‘‘idle land”

Institution Definition
Department of Agrarian Reform Idle or abandoned land—any agricultural land not cultivated, tilled or developed
(Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program) to produce any crop nor devoted to any specific economic purpose continuously
and the High Value Crops Development for a period of three (3) years immediately prior to the receipt of notice of acquisition
Program Committee (Republic Act) by the government as provided under this Act
National Statistics Office Idle agricultural land—lands that are temporarily fallowed from one-to-five years before
being planted to temporary crops, and those used for grazing for 5 years
Department of Interior and Local Government Idle agricultural land (proposed for additional Ad Valorem tax)—agricultural lands,
more than one (1) hectare in area, suitable for cultivation, dairying, inland fishery, and other
agricultural uses, one-half (1/2) of which remain uncultivated or unimproved by the owner
of the property or person having legal interest therein. Agricultural lands planted to permanent
or perennial crops with at least fifty (50) trees to a hectare shall not be considered idle lands.
Lands actually used for grazing purposes shall likewise not be considered idle lands
Bureau of Forest Development/ Open land—all denuded forest lands (less than 10%)
Forest Management Bureau Brushland—areas characterized by discontinuous cover of shrubby and non-wood
vegetation including grasses
Grassland—areas predominantly vegetated with grasses such as Imperata, Themada,
Seccharum spp., among others
 THE GREEN ECONOMY AND CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE ‘‘IDLE” AND ‘‘UNPRODUCTIVE” UPLANDS IN THE PHILIPPINES 121
‘‘idle.” Much of the government’s formal definition of ‘‘idle
land” relate to agricultural areas, but the conception of ‘‘idle-
ness” in the uplands also relate to the perceived ‘‘denuded”
and ‘‘degraded” states of forests. The varying definitions leave
a wide array of possible interpretations and mental images of
what idle land looks like in reality. Indeed, regardless of
whether or not a government or private company official refers
to the formal definitions, conceptions of idle lands are bound
to vary.
Elite coalitions’ constructions of idle lands spanned a spec-
trum of land cover types ranging from grasslands to second
growth and residual forests. In some cases, interviewees con-
flated multiple land features as idle lands. The disparity in
social constructions was evident among government officials.
When asked to describe what he means by ‘‘idle lands,” for
example, the DA national officer, Mr. Gomez, said, ‘‘[t]he hills
without tanim (often referred to as crops) [. . .] the second
growth forests. The hills that are mostly cogon [. . .] denuded.
These are lands owned by absentee land owners. Pinabayaan
lang nila (they just leave it alone)” (Interview, August 15,
2011). Some were very particular about their description,
emphasizing that idle lands are Imperata grasslands and not
forestlands. General manager Miguel Delgado was very expli-
cit about the idle lands that they clear for their plantations.
‘‘Let’s go to my area, you’ll see where I’m planting palm oil,
in grasslands [. . .] is it a crime to convert cogon to palm oil?
[. . .] we don’t touch the natural forest, like what they are doing
in Sumatra,” explained Mr. Delgado (Interview, June 22,
2012). On the other hand, some were specific in describing idle
lands as residual and second growth forests. The account of
one provincial officer of the Philippine Coconut Authority in
a province in Western Philippines, for example, described
forested areas as idle lands. When describing to us the history
of land development in his province prior to the arrival of oil
palm, he said, ‘‘[b]efore, these lands were gubat [referring to
residual forests], abandoned lands! Masukal at hindi mapakin-
abangan (the foliage was thick and no one can take advantage
of the land) (Interview, November 17, 2011).”
This ‘‘idle land” discourse was complicated further when
agro-industrial crop plantations were seen as forests or possi-
ble replacements to forests. A case in point was when a rubber
plantation supervisor in Western Philippines, Antonio
Alvarez, argued that replacing second and residual forests
with natural rubber is perfectly acceptable given that these
industrial tree crops are also trees that make up a forest. Dur-
ing our field observations in a community protected forest, he
said, ‘‘this plot [referring to the sacred forest] should also be
converted to rubber. I do not understand why they [the indige-
nous smallholders] want to keep it as is. After all, rubber is
also a tree you find in a forest, right?” (Participant observa-
tion, April 25, 2012). Another example is a prospective inves-
tor from Australia, Mr. MacDonnell, who kept referring to oil
palm plantations as ‘‘forests.” In an interview, he narrated
how a Filipino businessman approached him to develop
cheap, underutilized lands in the South. MacDonnell shared,
The idea was put to me by [name of Filipino businessman]. He has got large
plantations of African palm in Mindanao. He said to me, ``why don't you
start your own plantation. We can get you land here, for, depends on where
it is, between 10 and 20,000 pesos per hectare.” I said, ``what?! (laughs).”
And then I asked, you look after the forest, will you? He said, ``Yes, no
problem! I have people. They will look after it for you” (Interview, July
25, 2011).
The conflation of agro-industrial crop plantations as forests
reflected the environmental and low-carbon justification of the
conversion of idle lands into productive uses. Just like forests,
agro-industrial crop plantations of rubber and oil palm, for
example, were perceived as effective sequesters of carbon. Such
discourse was pervasive both at the national and local levels,
often mentioned in industry conferences and talks. The theme
of the 6th National Palm Oil Congress in the Philippines in
June 2009, for example, was ‘‘Oil Palm: Solution to Global
Warming, Sustainable Peace & Enhancing Economic Stabil-
ity.” In this event, many of the talks and discussions men-
tioned the carbon sequestration potential of oil palm and its
prospect of revitalizing idle lands in the country. Another
example is the speech delivered in the 1st Sarangani Rubber
Forum on May 2012 by Mr. Rudy Caoagdan, mayor of Mak-
ilala municipality in Cotabato province, where he said:
Of the entire productive area of about 24,000 ha, no less than 10,000 ha are
potential for rubber production in Makilala and at present are left idle and
definitely unproductive [. . .] the expected 10,000 ha of rubber project in
Makilala would have planted 5 million trees. This could be categorized
as one which contributes at greening the environment and which condition
would be an effective medium to sequester carbon dioxide which gave rise
to the increasing global temperature. With 5 million full grown and produc-
tive rubber trees in Makilala would be able to sequester about 113,650 tons
of carbon dioxide annually. 13
Although the low-carbon discourse was pervasive among
policy and market elites, the above constructions of idle lands
ultimately culminated into spaces with untapped economic
value. Hence, it was quite common to hear in interviews with
the phrase, ‘‘sayang lang (what a waste).” These spaces were
then surmised as needing improvement and that growing
high-value, low-carbon commodity crops would help tap and
regain the potential value of land for development. As Mr.
Bautista of the Japanese-Filipino bioethanol consortium
argued, ‘‘[t]here are some landowners who own idle lands,
but they do not farm it. They just purposely leave them behind
unused. When we came in, suddenly we brought in value to
their land. So, it regained its utility. Before, nobody was inter-
ested, but now they appreciate us coming in” (Interview,
August 4, 2011). The discourse also evolved in such a way that
development of idle lands is seen as enhancing the welfare of
not just upland smallholders, but also the rural sector and
the country as a whole. Mr. Gomez’s comment aptly describes
this perspective:
It should be that we get something from the land. In more developed coun-
tries, like Malaysia, they maximize the utility of their land, right? Here, we
have so many vacant lands. We are not a rich country. Maybe that is why
we are not rich, because we don't take advantage of our number one re-
source [referring to lands]. I went to Malaysia, and there's no vacant land
there. They use their land to the fullest. (Interview, August 15, 2011).
Here we illustrate that unlike the colonial discourse of idle
lands as clearly cogon grasslands and or wasteful swidden
(see Dove, 1983, 1986, 1997 and Sherman, 1980), the contem-
porary reproduction and use of the discourse varied widely as
Shortall (2013) and Baka (2013) suggested. Contemporary
elites had interpretations of idle lands as anything within the
spectrum of cogon grasslands, residual forests, and/or sec-
ondary growth, with broad and inconsistent definitions across
policy documents. Although there were shifts in the under-
standing of idle lands across time, both colonial and contem-
porary elites strategically used the ‘‘idle land” discourse in
policy-making and planning as a reflection of an economic
logic (i.e., the goal of creating greater economic value for
the country), whether to restock the idle lands with new timber
stands or cash crop of some sort. The only difference in the
green economy period is that this economic logic is further jus-
tified by the goal of low-carbon development and climate
change mitigation. We show next how colonial discourses of
extended to upland dwellers and were likewise extensively used
in green economy policy-making and planning.
122 WORLD DEVELOPMENT
(b) The ‘‘unproductive” upland dwellers
Just like the unproductive idle lands, by extension upland
dwellers and their livelihood practices were viewed through
the normative lens of productivity and economic logic. Upland
dwellers, especially indigenous peoples, were primarily con-
strued as impoverished and marginalized. This perception
was pervasive in elite rhetoric, often cited as a compelling rea-
son to target the uplands for agro-industrial development pro-
jects. The general manager of the Philippine National Oil
Company Alternative Fuels Corporation, Cesar Trinidad,
for example, described as such the upland dwellers in one of
their jatropha project sites: ‘‘In [Matala], a community 5 km
from the road, they do not have electricity and water. Their
land is huge, but they do not plant much. They are already
lucky if they could eat once a day. They do not have stable
income” (Interview, June 21, 2010). He said that their com-
pany purposely targets impoverished indigenous peoples, as
they believe the jatropha project would provide livelihood to
lift these people out of poverty.
As captured during our interviews and participant observa-
tions, elite coalitions also portrayed upland dwellers, in partic-
ular indigenous peoples, as primitive, indolent, uneducated,
stubborn, and short sighted. As one liaison officer for a private
biofuels company, Ben Sucat, said, ‘‘[i]t is really challenging to
handle the natives, especially those who do not have. . .[he
points to his head].” He continued, ‘‘[the natives] would spend
money quickly. . .if you give them the payment in full, they will
spend it immediately” (Interview, July 2, 2010). The most
noticeable social construction, however, was that upland
dwellers are ‘‘destructive” and ‘‘inefficient” because of their
kaingin (swidden cultivation) practices.
Censuring of swidden cultivation has been rife in Philippine
politics and extended from and well beyond the bureaucracies
of Manila. In the popular media, during 2001–13, for instance,
we found at least 140 articles in the Philippine Star and Philip-
pine Daily Inquirer newspapers that focused on or alluded to
the state and impacts of swidden cultivation in the country
in reference to land degradation, marginality and idleness.
Ninety percent of these articles presented swidden cultivation
negatively, labeling it as ‘‘slash-and-burn” and a main contrib-
utor to: deforestation, loss of endangered species, climate
change, forest fires, soil erosion, landslides, water depletion,
floods, and air pollution. It was also often associated with
other destructive upland practices, such as illegal logging
and mining. Negative perspectives concerning the destructive
nature of swidden often came from bureau officials such as
from the DENR and DA, lawmakers, provincial and local
government officials, NGO (particularly environmental
groups) representatives, private company representatives,
and academics.
Our analysis of policy documents also illustrate that the neg-
ative discourses on kaingin were strongly reflected in upland
development policies. As explicitly stated in the Philippine
Development Plan 2011–16, ‘‘the main threats to Philippine
forests come from [among others] collection of fuel wood, con-
version to agricultural uses, [and] kaingin.” Several Regional
Development Plans for the period 2011–16 were also docu-
mented to identify kaingin as one of the causes of environmen-
tal degradation and deforestation and a persistent challenge
that needs to be addressed in respective regions. Proposed
environmental and forest management policies from the 13th
Congress onward were also rife with the kaingin discourses.
For example, in the proposed Sustainable Forest Management
Act (Senate Bill 5792), kaingin was identified as a criminal act
punishable with a fine of no less than PhP100,000 and impris-
onment of no less than 6 years—language that harkens back
to the colonial era.
As expected, the use of the kaingin discourse was pervasive
among proponents of green economy policies and programs.
Interviews with these individuals disclosed how kaingin is per-
ceived as a contributor to global climate change and how
green economy programs would mitigate this issue. Carlos Vil-
lanueva, owner of a local jatropha company in Western Philip-
pines, emphasized that their project would potentially displace
kaingin and ultimately contribute to mitigating climate
change, because ‘‘slash and burn releases a lot of greenhouse
gases” (Interview, August 30, 2011). These individuals empha-
sized not only the destructive nature of kaingin, but also the
inefficiency of such a livelihood practice. Oil palm company
general manager, Mr. Delgado, explained why there is a need
to convince upland farmers to stop swidden cultivation and
urge them to do more productive forms of livelihood. He
opined, ‘‘[t]he kaingeros are worse than the illegal loggers.
They just burn what they chop down, which makes it worse
because no one takes advantage of the wood that was chopped
down. They just burn it. Sayang lang (what a waste)” (Inter-
view, June 22, 2012).
The discourses of destructive and inefficient swidden cultiva-
tion were used to justify initiatives to develop the uplands. Mr.
Delgado, for instance, promoted oil palm as a solution to
weaning upland dwellers off kaingin. A supervisor of a state-
operated rubber plantation, Mr. Antonio Alvarez, explained
how their organization specifically targeted swidden cultiva-
tors for rubber production. He shared,
This [plantation] area used to be cultivated for kaingin. That's why we
thought of planting permanent crops here, because they just do kaingin
in the mountains here. . .our plan is that after kaingin they will follow it
up with rubber. That means, when the rubber starts producing they will
no longer do kaingin (Interview, April 26, 2012).
When asked for the reason why kaingin needs to be replaced
with rubber, he continued, ‘‘[s]a pagkakaingin kasi nakatun-
ganga nalang yung lupa (after they do kaingin the lands are just
left unproductive.)”
The perspectives above all legitimized green economy agro-
industrial development in the uplands. Accompanying these
development projects were programs specifically designed to
change the behaviors of upland dwellers, whether for the ben-
efit of the people or the project. The aim was not only to com-
pletely eradicate inefficient and destructive swidden
cultivation, but also to convert swidden cultivators into ‘‘pro-
ductive,” ‘‘progressive,” ‘‘efficient,” ‘‘entrepreneurial,” and
‘‘environmentally sustainable” farmers. Several managers
and supervisors of biofuels and rubber production regimes
mentioned the existence of education and training programs
targeted at changing upland behaviors. These interventions
put anti-swidden discourse in practice—explicitly. Many of
these programs aimed to make upland dwellers adept at finan-
cial management, as they supposedly transcend their subsis-
tence economy to full production of cash crops. As pointed
out by three private company managers, upland dwellers, par-
ticularly indigenous smallholders, are ‘‘weak” in money mat-
ters. For instance, an owner of a local jatropha company in
Mindanao, Mr. Vivencio Jimenez, said, ‘‘[i]t’s hard because
they do not know how to do budgeting. But we have a project
management office where we give seminars. Now, the indige-
nous peoples who have undergone training know how to bud-
get already” (Interview, June 25, 2010).
Another evident trend for upland development programs
was to make entrepreneurs out of smallholder farmers.
According to a representative of an agriculture-based
government-owned corporation, Ms. Jenny Lagmay,
 THE GREEN ECONOMY AND CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE ‘‘IDLE” AND ‘‘UNPRODUCTIVE” UPLANDS IN THE PHILIPPINES 123
We consolidate the farmers and then our treatment is corporate, so that we
can change the way they think. . .so that they realize that they're not only for
production of whatever they grow and harvest. Our objective is to turn them
into entrepreneurs, so that they will have a say until the final product (Inter-
view, August 15, 2011).
The Forest Management Bureau, in particular, has inte-
grated low-carbon commodity production and enterprise
development with existing upland programs, such as
community-based forest management. In 2012, the Bureau
organized a series of workshops to guide upland communities
to become more entrepreneurial, ultimately feeding into efforts
of making uplands more productive and connected to agro-
industrial and forestry markets.
Educational and training programs also specifically targeted
the environmental behavior of upland dwellers. Apart from
efforts to transform upland smallholders into efficient and pro-
ductive entrepreneurs capable of transacting in the cash econ-
omy, green economy programs have also attempted to
introduce indigenous cultivators to ‘‘environmentally sustain-
able” practices. For example, the reforestation (tree crops)
program of the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP)
has taught kaingineros the ‘‘proper way of farming” (Diaz,
2011, p. 25). As highlighted in one of the featured reports, ‘‘
[s]ince his acceptance to the program, [a former kainginero]
has given up his slash and burn farming [. . .] [the former kain-
ginero] now says the DBP Forest program has not only chan-
ged his views about farming, it has also taught him the proper
way of cultivating and taking care of our forests” (Diaz, 2011,
p. 25).
Just as the ‘‘idle land” discourse, constructions of upland
dwellers were in many ways broad, but clearly associated with
the perceived economic unproductivity of traditional forms of
agriculture. These discourses were strategically reproduced
and used to inform and justify green economy governance.
It should be noted that not all policy and market elites we
interviewed perceived upland environments and dwellers as
idle and unproductive. There were very few bureaucrats and
government units—such as some members of the Community
Forestry Section of the Forest Management Bureau and the
National Commission on Indigenous Peoples—who recog-
nized the importance of maintaining swidden cultivation and
that fallow lands are not idle. There were also a number of
non-government organizations at the national and local levels
that advocated for the protection of fallow lands and swidden
cultivation. However, these few groups had limited access and
influence on green economy policy-making and programing.
6. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
Upland discourses have been (re)produced, have permeated
multiple levels of governance over time, and have influenced
policy-making concerning the development of the Philippine
green economy today. As shown, historical constructions of
peoples, lands and agriculture have persisted as entrenched
discourses in bureaucratic and market institutions over time,
and have informed new policies and programs concerning
agro-industrial production in the green economy. We have
illustrated across scales how the gradual rise of the green econ-
omy in the Philippines remains firmly entrenched in the
broader discursive constructions of upland places and peoples
first conceived of and institutionalized during the colonial per-
iod.
The colonial discourses of the Philippine uplands seem to
parallel the experiences of Indonesia and Malaysia, and in
most cases, build on Lockean conceptions of private property
holdings and control, to justify the rendering of marginal, idle
lands productive. Similar to Dove (1983, 1986, 1997) and
Sherman’s (1980) observations in Indonesia, we found striking
consistency in the colonial construction of grasslands as idle
lands in the Philippines. As elsewhere, upland populations
and their swidden practices in the Philippines are also bla-
tantly constructed as illegal and destructive to forests, just as
reported by Majid Cooke (2002) for Malaysia and Li (1999)
for Indonesia. Resonating Dove’s (1983) argument, it was
clear in the Philippine case how American colonial officials
labeled swidden cultivation as the primary cause of proliferat-
ing idle lands in the country.
The colonial-era interpretations of idle and unproductive
lands were synonymous with unproductive people and agricul-
ture—an impediment to colonial civilizing missions
(Constantino, 1978)—that would be overcome by infusing eth-
nic and agricultural hierarchies into forest governance so as to
contain and develop ‘‘recalcitrant” uplanders. Similar to the
territorializing project in colonial Indonesia (Li, 1999), Span-
ish and American ethno-religious ideals helped divide the
Philippines into a dominant, Hispanized Christian lowlander
majority and an upland-dwelling, indigenous ethnic minority
in terms of ‘‘civilized, productive” and ‘‘primitive, unproduc-
tive and idle,” respectively (see Vandergeest, 2003, p. 21).
Although upland discourses did change over time, the associ-
ated discourses of ethno-ecological difference remain deeply
embedded and essentialized in governance and policy-
making institutions, as the dominant Hispanized Christians
assumed important political positions in the country. The
pejorative social constructions of the uplands have thus been
reproduced as ‘‘stabilizing assumptions” (Roe, 1992) that
shape development policies, bureaucratic and market practices
and cultures in the post-colonial era.
In the context of recent constructions of upland popula-
tions, the contemporary elites’ upland discourses were neither
homogenous nor uniform. Although deeply rooted in history,
extensive, and with striking consistencies, our analysis of dis-
courses suggests a wide spectrum of social constructions of
upland environments and populations across government
institutions and the private sector. The conception of the
unproductive idle lands, for example, was ambiguous, ranging
from grasslands to abandoned forests. However, such areas,
or a part thereof, were never conceived in public documents
and elite rhetoric as dynamic fallow lands. Rather, fallow
lands were seen either as idle grasslands, bushlands, brush-
lands, or abandoned secondary or residual forests, with an
almost absent regard to their crucial role in upland liveli-
hoods. In this sense, the longer term, historical time dimension
often associated with indigenous fallow management, particu-
larly usufruct property rights, was rendered obsolete in and
through such discourse.
There are also differences between colonial and contempo-
rary discourses, particularly concerning upland populations.
In the colonial period, idle grasslands and swidden fallows
were constructed as spaces needing rehabilitation primarily
for economic development, while in the green economy there
is the added justification of environmental rehabilitation and
carbon sequestration for global climate change mitigation.
Moreover, the inclusive growth principle of the green economy
constructs upland populations not just as unproductive and
backward, but also as poor, marginalized, and ‘‘vulnerable
”—an observation paralleling Majid Cooke’s (2002) work in
Sarawak. Although there is now the discourse of vulnerability
of upland populations, most state and private sector actors,
especially at the national and provincial levels, continue to
identify kaingin as destructive and the cause of the persistence
124 WORLD DEVELOPMENT
and proliferation of idle lands. These populations thus find
themselves in the difficult position of being cast as both the
cause and victim of idle lands, who must be transformed into
modern, entrepreneurial, and eco-conscious individuals.
In many ways, then, the current macro-economic and rural
development policies underpinning the country’s green econ-
omy have aligned with the colonial and contemporary discur-
sive representations of the uplands, but in more complex ways.
These discourses have become powerful instruments in legit-
imizing, informing, shaping, and creating the governance of
the nascent Philippine green economy. Government and pri-
vate sector elites at various levels of governance in the Philip-
pines have coalesced around the narrative of needing to
develop the idle and unproductive uplands of frontiers to reap
greater economic returns for inclusive growth in the rural sec-
tor and the nation as a whole. Moreover, through green econ-
omy governance, the economic logic is further justified by the
transformation of idle land into ‘‘rehabilitated” spaces for
environmental mitigation and, in some cases, social control.
NOTES
1. Industrial agriculture is characterized by increased use of: modern
technology; substitution of capital for labor; energy use; tendency toward
competition, specialization and overproduction; and interdependence
between farm units and agribusinesses (Barlett, 1989). It also relates to
the proliferation of agro-industries, which manufacture and process raw
materials and intermediate products derived from agriculture, fisheries
and forestry (Henson & Cranfield, 2009).
2. According to FAOStat, during 2000–12, the production area for oil
palm more than doubled, from 5.7 to 11.7 million ha. Production area for
natural rubber, on the other hand, increased from 5.7 to 7.7 million ha.
3. Swidden cultivation, particularly in Southeast Asia, is ‘‘a land use
system that employs a natural or improved fallow phase, which is longer
than the cultivation phase of annual crops, sufficiently long to be
dominated by woody vegetation, and cleared by means of fire” (Mertz
et al., 2009, p. 261). The staple crop is often upland rice, sometimes with
maize, and can include secondary crops such as cassava, bananas, and
other annual and perennial crops. We generally use the neutral technical
term, swidden cultivation, and occasionally switch to the more pejorative
term, kaingin, often used by our research participants.
4. The term ‘‘idle land” is related to (and often conflated with)
‘‘marginal” and ‘‘waste lands” in the literature. According to Shortall
(2013), different actors (including academia) define ‘‘marginal land” in
many ways, including the following: land unsuitable for food production;
land with (ambiguously) low biophysical quality leading to low
productivity yields; and land where cost effective agriculture is not
possible. ‘‘Wastelands,” on the other hand, are defined in many ways as
well, but often related to Locke’s conception of uncultivated common
property lands (Baka, 2013). We use the term ‘‘idle lands” that is closer to
the definition of ‘‘waste lands” to mean, in general, lands that are
uncultivated and not used for any ‘‘economic” purpose, and therefore
should be developed to maximize its use and economic value.
5. This parallels Gidwani’s (1992, p. 39) observations in India that
while there seems to be ambiguity in the definition of ‘‘wastelands,” the
term is nonetheless universally conceived as something that is ‘‘bad and
should be dealt with”. Baka (2013) and Shortall (2013) make a similar
argument.
While there is ambiguity in what these idle spaces and identi-
ties mean, the economic and environmental logic behind
upland discourses toward such lands remain coherent and
widespread across multiple governance levels.
The policy and material implications of these upland
discourses facilitating green economy and low-carbon agro-
industrial development projects can be profound. Still the
subject of future research, we believe that in being strongly
informed by colonial legacies and new global realities, contem-
porary upland discourses generate new meanings and realities
on the ground that influence local actors and drive lasting
(often irreversible) changes to the socio-cultural and biophys-
ical character of the Philippine uplands (see Dressler, 2014).
The question thus remains as to whether or not the vision of
the green economy will or should ever be fully realized in
the Philippine uplands. Regardless of the inclusive growth dis-
course in the green economy program, elite constructions of
the unproductive uplands pose serious risks to upland popula-
tions and environments.
6. These reports include those prepared by Ahern (1901, 1902, 1908,
1910), Sherfesee (1916), Fischer (1918, 1919, 1920), and Tamesis (1939,
1940).
7. See Magno (2001) and Pulhin and Inoue (2008) for a comprehensive
discussion of the process of devolution and evolution of upland
management in the Philippines.
8. Refer to Montefrio and Sonnenfeld (2011) for details on the biofuels
policy.
9. The Philippine government has not explicitly used the term ‘‘green
economy” in its recent policies. However, recent policies, such as the
Philippine Development Plan 2011–16, has been designed on the basis of
rapid, sustainable, low-carbon, and inclusive economic growth, which are
important elements of the United Nation’ conception of green economy.
The UNEP (2012), nonetheless, has considered the Philippine
Development Plan 2011–16 as the country’s green economy
development implementation guide.
10. These tenure instruments include, among others, Certificates of
Ancestral Domain Claim or Title (CADC or CADT) in State-recognized
ancestral domains, and lease contracts (usually 25 years) in State-
designated ‘‘timberlands,” such as the Community-Based Forest Man-
agement Agreement (CBFMA), Socialized Industrial Forest Management
Agreement (SIFMA), and Integrated Forest Management Agreement
(IFMA).
11. These terms have been used loosely and interchangeably in elite
rhetoric and thus will be grouped together under the term ‘‘idle lands.”
12. Pseudonyms have been used to protect the identities of individual
research participants, but the names of their institutional affiliations have
been retained. As for secondary sources and public documents, the names
of individuals and their affiliations have been retained as in the original
source.
13. Transcript of speech available at http://makilala.gov.ph/speeches/if-
you-plant-a-tree-be-sure-its-rubber/ [accessed on May 28, 2015].
 THE GREEN ECONOMY AND CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE ‘‘IDLE” AND ‘‘UNPRODUCTIVE” UPLANDS IN THE PHILIPPINES 125
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