1 - Biodiversity Conservation for Whom and for What? Historical Backdrop of "Green Counterinsurgency" in the Western Visayas

Presentation Abstract
Dunlap (2023) argues that the green economy functions as an instrument of global rebellion suppression, managing, preempting, and redirecting the inevitable ecological anxieties that can be mobilized for radical social change. In his argument, the concept of counterinsurgency is used metaphorically in the sense that the green economy serves as a “force multiplier” for market expansion and capitalist development, rather than actually engaging in socioecological mitigation or restoration, while fragmenting ecological opposition. In the Philippines, however, greening is used not metaphorically but genuinely as a means of political counterinsurgency.
This paper examines the process of the National Greening Project (NGP) promoted by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) since 2011 in a local context of an island in the Western Visayas. While the primary objective of the NGP is the reforestation of upland areas in the Philippines, it also simultaneously aims for poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation, with the highland indigenous people being major participants. However, on that island, in the very highlands where the NGP is being developed, there are also plans underway for a mega-dam development, which includes land expropriation from the indigenous people and massive deforestation, leading to intense resistance naturally. As an initial report on the research, this paper explores the entangled historical background of the Green Counterinsurgency on the island, focusing on the story of an indigenous farmer who became a contract forest ranger of the DENR.