Contextualizing other political ecologies: Japan's environmental aid to the Philippines

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Contextualizing other political ecologies:Japan’s environmental aid to the Philippines

Soyeun KimDepartment of East Asian Studies, University of Leeds, UK and Re-shaping Development Institute, Seoul,

South Korea

Correspondence: Soyeun Kim (email: [email protected])

This paper argues for the utility of a focus on contextualized sources of environmental change to

address the ever more diverse contexts of political ecology. In order to overcome the conventional

approach to contextual sources that has tended to be analytically one-dimensional and limited, I

seek to provide a more nuanced account, notably by examining the neglected case of green aid of

a nonwestern aid donor, Japan. Using conceptual tools that are both conjuncture-based and

multiscalar, the paper examines the way in which a post-Rio international policy drive to promote

so called green aid during the 1990s was translated into and conditioned by the historically and

geographically specific contexts of Japan and the aid recipient featured herein, the Philippines. This

focus on contextual sources helps to elucidate (i) how the ambiguous nature of international aid

criteria combined together with Japan’s own domestic political economy to render problematic an

ostensibly environmental project, (ii) the manner in which neoliberal economic restructuring was

translated into one of Japan’s key policy initiatives in the 1990s and formed the backdrop to the

specific aid case project discussed here, (iii) how Japan’s environmental aid process in the Philip-

pines was shaped through a repoliticization of various green discourses, and (iv) how the complex

dynamics among stakeholders ended up compromising the very nature of the case study project.

Keywords: political ecology, postcolonial, contextual sources, environmental aid, Japan,

Philippines

Introduction: focusing on contextual sources

Political ecology has recently begun to move beyond a traditional third world (or globalSouth) rural focus to assess issues in urban areas as well as in the global North. Such adevelopment has been linked to a series of debates on the utility and effectiveness of thefirst world/third world binary. For some an emerging first world political ecologyliterature was viewed favourably as a form of ‘critical self-reflection’ (McCarthy, 2005:955), and for the ‘increased geographical scope’ (Schroeder, 2005: 1048) which enabledscholars to discover suitable analytical terrain in the first world (Schroeder et al., 2006:163). Whilst to some calls for a first world political ecology are ‘exciting and important’(Robbins, 2002: 1511), Walker (2003: 8) argues that any regional perspective ‘remains,paradoxically, trapped within the very binary geographic framework that it calls intoquestion; worse, it raises the danger of further retreat in political ecology away fromexamination of large-scale processes’.

To overcome the ‘local’ trap, regional political ecology has sought a scale of analysisthat could examine the particularities of environmental politics across the first world/third world divide. This approach, with an ‘integrated geography that looks “down, out,and far”, as well as “up, in, and near”’ (Robbins, 2002: 1512), provides greater coher-ence even as it helps to avoid dichotomist framing (Walker, 2003). Here, then, is scopefor ‘broad-scale comparative questions’ (Walker, 2003: 7) that affirm local-scale dynam-ics while situating them in broader regional (and global) scales and processes (Mauro,2009; Peet et al., 2011). This approach, derived from Blaikie and Brookfield (1987), has

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doi:10.1111/j.1467-9493.2012.00452.x

Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 33 (2012) 108–123

© 2012 The Author

Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography © 2012 Department of Geography, National University of Singapore and

Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd

been integral to much important work in the field over the years (e.g. Rocheleau &Roth, 2007), including so-called chains of explanation (Blaikie, 1995), with muchinsight provided on multiscale power dynamics and environmental interaction. For thisstudy, such research is noteworthy as it sheds light on a longstanding call for the utilityof contextual sources of environmental change as a key analytical concern in thefield.

Contextual sources of environmental change are associated with ‘the state policies,interstate relations, and global capitalism [that reflect] the growing impact of nationaland transnational forces on the environment in a world of increased political andeconomic interdependence’ (Bryant, 1992: 15). They emphasize the importance ofsituating environmental issues within the multiscale political and economic contexts inwhich they arise – unequal power structures, institutional dynamics and discourses(Neumann, 2005). Such a focus has never been more important than at the currentjuncture with its epoch-making global changes – changes, moreover, that need to be andare at the heart of other political ecologies.

There are two key justifications for this perspectival focus. The first is that contextualsources of environmental change are relatively underresearched. Due to a traditionalfocus on (land-based) local struggles, sundry contextual sources such as internationalaid, trade and (neoliberal) policy change often only feature as brief preliminary discus-sions (Mauro, 2009), resulting in simplistic one dimensional analyses telling ‘simple andsometimes romantic stories of “good” and “bad” players’ (Robbins, 2002: 1511). Con-textual sources therefore have lacked nuanced explanation: ‘accounts of process, struc-ture, and history that tell far more forceful tales’ (Robbins, 2002: 1511). Thus, forexample, both state and international institutions have often come across in politicalecology as coherent or monolithic neoliberal forces, rather than involving complexbureaucratic mechanisms and structures riddled with contradiction and division(Goldman, 2005). Indeed, recent work on neoliberalism makes precisely this point(McCarthy & Prudham, 2004), noting how it is ‘geographically constituted’ (Mansfield,2004: 566) and spatiotemporally embedded (Brenner & Theodore, 2002). This is sobecause:

local is not the only scale at which multiple enduring and contingent phenomena come

together empirically . . . the global is as much a context as the many locals that comprise it; it

is not some homogenous scale overlaying all that exists below it (Castree, 2005: 542).

As such, the study of contextual sources needs to be multiscalar (Cox & Mair, 1989) and‘conjunctural’ (Castree, 2005: 542). Thus, there is a great need for in-depth studiesof political ecology that closely investigate the complexity of specific internationalprocesses.

The second justification is that there are even fewer works in political ecology thatreflect ‘other’ approaches and perspectives at the nonlocal scale (Kim, 2009; 2010).The tendency is to focus on ‘powerful predators’ and ‘vulnerable victims’ through alimited world view that is based on a colonial-minded post-1945 international order(Robinson, 2003). Yet such thinking prevents the field from critically engaging withever more diversified postcolonial forces and spaces, notably across the South(Sidaway, 2000; Power, 2010). One result has been that the field suffers from fewsystematic enquiries into nonwestern others, notably South-South cooperation (seeKing, 2010).

This gap is especially noticeable when considering the growing socioenvironmentalimpact of East Asian donors (Chan-Fishel, 2007; Mohan, 2009). So far these donors

Contextualizing other political ecologies 109

have often been understood through a dichotomist approach akin to orientalism (Said,1995; Sharp, 2008). Hence, their political ecologies are portrayed as what they arenot – notably, for their non- or weak compliance with international environmentalstandards (see OECD/DAC, 1999; 2003) – rather than what they actually are: the howsand whys of respective socioenvironmental strategies or outcomes (see Dauvergne,1997; Kim, 2009). In short, such partial outlooks in western theorizing portray EastAsian donors as one-dimensional and monolithic entities (Raghuram & Madge, 2006),obscuring a fuller account of their actions (Sato et al., 2010; Kim, 2011).

This problematic approach to East Asian donors reinforces our call for more workfocused on contextual sources of environmental change – as a conceptual tool that isever more relevant and critical in understanding the impacts of increasingly differenti-ated and conflicting forms and norms of international aid (Mawdsley, 2012). It istherefore critical to consider contexts that mould aid strategy (see Brautigam, 2009). Aswith western counterparts, East Asian donor notions of development and environmentstem from their own historical contexts of economic development and environmentalchange (Kim, 2009; 2010). At the same time, their aid norms and practices also need tobe considered within broader interactions in the global political economy including theirresponses to mainstream international development norms (Six, 2009; Taniguchi &Babb, 2009) as well as the perceived needs of developing countries (Hilsum, 2005;Kagame, 2009).

As such, a key task is to advance a multiscalar and conjunctural approach to apolitical ecology that offers nuanced explanation of these spatiotemporally specificactors/processes and their impacts on the environment. Otherwise it will be indeeddifficult for the field to critically engage with current and future issues in global politicalecology change. In order to advance the call for the utility of contextual sources, thispaper takes on the neglected green aid of the nonwestern donor Japan for three reasons.The first is that Japan was the largest bilateral donor of the 1990s, when the popularityof green aid reached its peak. The second is that, among East Asian donors at least, Japanis the most studied, providing a plethora of data and literature crucial for an in-depthstudy. The last reason is that Japan’s 40 years of aid experience also provides somecomparable cases to the understudied political ecology of China and South Korea (King,2007; Kim, 2011). Thus, through a close look at one of Japan’s projects in the Philip-pines, the Sustainable Environmental Management Project in Northern Palawan(SEMP-NP), this paper elucidates some of the differentiated other contextual sourcesincluding political economic, social and institutional change that affected environmentalaid in the 1990s.

Japanese bilateral environmental aid in the 1990s

The political ecology of a Japanese bilateral environmental aid project is certainly not astraightforward event as presented in the stated objective to ‘conserve the preciousenvironment and natural resources’ (JBIC, 2003a: 1), but a subject conditioned byconjunctural multiscalar forces. For a better grasp of this specific nonwestern or otherdonor, relevant contextual sources of environmental change are studied with regard totwo concerns: the first relates to how the international green agenda is repoliticized andtranslated into both Japan’s aid practice and local settings in the Philippines; the secondconcerns how power relations between donor and recipient (and various wider forcessurrounding them) can lead to an unexpected outcome as the aid process unfolds(Whitfield, 2009).

110 Soyeun Kim

Post-Rio green aidAs various studies note, Northern donors have been organizing additional financialresources for green solutions to tackle global environmental problems since the early1990s (Young, 2002; Hicks et al., 2008). The setting of the global environmental agendaat the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro highlighted two contrasting prioritiesadopted by donors and recipients respectively. Northern priorities focused on greenissues (biodiversity loss, ozone depletion and so on), while Southern priorities were onbrown issues (particularly land degradation and water/air pollution) (Forsyth, 2002).However, as the creation of the World Bank-led Global Environment Facility evinced,environmental aid was from the outset significantly influenced by the specific interestsof Northern donors.

As the importance of environmental interests in aid flows mounted (Hicks et al.,2008; Mori, 2011) and donors insisted on sustainable development strategies in recipi-ent countries (Fairman & Ross, 1996), conservation planning often became requiredor ‘inspired’ by aid agencies, international conservation organizations, nongovern-mental organizations (NGOs) and international agreements while being ‘connected tofinancial conditionalities’ (OECD/DAC, 2001: 16). With green conditionalities under-pinning ‘effective’ environmental aid, donors would tend to favour countries that candeliver global environmental benefits including carbon reduction such as China andIndia (Hicks et al., 2008) as well as ‘nations with unexploited natural resources’(Lewis, 2003: 144). Such inclinations could contribute to a widening gap in aid flowsand allocations between countries that are environmentally rich and those thatare environmentally poor – once again, shaped by donor interests and preferences(Lofstedt & Sjostedt, 1996).

Thus, inequality manifests itself in the very provision of green aid, as well as theway in which donors distribute it (Hicks et al., 2008; Figaj, 2010). Yet it is also notedthat recipient commitment is critical for successful outcomes (Conyers & Mellors,2005); that there may be slippage between donor intentions (green conditionality)and the performance of recipient governments (Connolly, 1996). That slippage canstem from different donor and recipient priorities, but might in some cases even bedeliberately planned by the latter (Lehman, 1993; Mosley et al., 1995; Whitfield,2009). Indeed, recipients are liable to revert to their own priorities once funds aredisbursed and, in general, seem more inclined to renege on green promises becauseenvironmental projects usually present real development opportunity costs (seeKim, 2010).

A post-Rio environmental agenda clearly conditioned the gearing up of Japan’senvironmental aid efforts in the 1990s (Hall, 2010) , with the government pledgingsome USD 300 million at the G7 Summit of 1989 and a further USD 700 million at the1992 Rio summit (MOFA, 1997a; JICA, 2001). Indeed, the adoption in June 1992 of theOfficial Development Assistance (ODA) Charter, that clearly prioritized environmentalproblems and set forth principles for assistance (MOFA, 1992; 2003), saw dramaticincreases in environmental aid and formal recognition of green policy concerns (Kim,2009). Japan also aimed to demonstrate its commitment to privilege environmentalissues by providing greater incentive for recipients to conserve or improve their envi-ronments (JBIC, 2001; 2004a). It is important to note that the 1997 Kyoto Initiative wasspecifically designed to support developing country efforts in combating global warming(MOFA, 1997b) through loans offering low ‘environmental’ rates of repayment.

It is in this context that the Sustainable Environmental Management Project inNorthern Palawan (SEMP-NP) case study was devised.1 Japanese ODA during the 1990s


involved two implementing agencies: Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) –dealing with bilateral ODA grants providing technical assistance and with supportservices to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA); and the Overseas Economic Coop-eration Fund (OECF) – that until 1999 dealt mainly with bilateral ODA loans and debtrescheduling. For the SEMP-NP, JICA had performed a master plan and developmentstudy, and OECF had appraised the project’s suitability for an environmental ODA loan.

The following section explores the complexity and contradictory nature of SEMP-NPthrough key contexts both in Japan and the Philippines that set the project in motion.

The Sustainable Environmental Management Project in NorthernPalawan (SEMP-NP)

Ambiguity in ‘environmental aid’The SEMP-NP was Japan’s first ‘environmental aid’ project in the Philippines thatspecifically targeted environmental conservation (pers. comm., JBIC Manila SEMPproject officer, email 12 January 2006). Indeed, it was showcased by Japanese officialsat the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg (MOFA, 2002a), among those few regis-tered by the government as a ‘Type 2’ project2 for ‘environment-related assistance fordeveloping countries’ (MOFA, 2002b). In reality, the project’s formal goals of environ-mental and natural resource conservation in Northern Palawan were installed retro-spectively into what had been devised as a ‘community-based’ and ‘environmentallysustainable’ tourism development project (pers. comm., SEMP project management/tourism development component team leader, Puerto Princesa, 11 May 2004). Essen-tially, the reclassification of what was intended as a mainstream tourism developmentproject driven by Japan’s overseas (tourism/leisure development) investment boom inthe late 1980s was necessitated when the annual budget for regular development loansin the 2001 financial year ran out (pers. comm., team leader, Puerto Princesa, 11 May2004).

Indeed, sustainable tourism or ecotourism development was a key form of environ-mental aid programme in the 1990s (Young, 2002), and one through which thePhilippine government promoted eco sustainability and poverty reduction (DOT, 1991).Tellingly, the project comprised three components – environmentally sustainabletourism development (SEMP tourism), environmentally critical area network (ECAN)zoning, and soil protection – for which an ODA loan of JPY 2.034 billion (USD 17million) was disbursed (JBIC, 2003b; 2007). The lead agency responsible for overallproject management, the Philippine Department of Tourism (DOT), held responsibilityfor implementing the SEMP tourism component, while the Palawan Council for Sus-tainable Development Staff (PCSDS) was responsible for the ECAN zoning, and theDepartment of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) for the soil protection (Figure 1).These agencies in turn contracted their work out to private companies either based in orlinked to the Philippines, Japan or the European Union (JBIC, 2004b).

Arguably, the three project components did suggest a multifaceted engagement withenvironmental issues. The tourism component was aimed to produce a tourism devel-opment plan with standards and guidelines for environmentally diverse/endangeredsites; to enhance ‘local participation’; and to introduce an environmental conservationfee in target areas. Despite ECAN being specified as the main tool in the 1992 StrategicEnvironmental Plan for Palawan (SEP) Act (PCSD, 1992), very few municipalities hadproduced their own conservation maps and therefore this was identified as one of thecritical areas requiring support through the ECAN component (see Goldoftas, 2006).

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The soil protection component involved assorted civil engineering works to rehabilitatean existing 59 km road (SEMP, 2004). It aims to prevent further degradation to the roadand adjacent areas by using environmentally-sound technology to provide good drain-age, a gravel surface with improved highway geometry, and slope protection by plantingindigenous trees.

Although each component stressed green elements, the actual loan allocationsreflected those of the initially technologically-driven tourism project, with the majorshare allocated to civil works for physical infrastructure development (58 per cent) andprocuring expensive ECAN zoning equipment (27 per cent). As seen in Figure 1, theseloan allocations contradicted the heralding of the SEMP-NP as one of Japan’s keyprojects ‘for environmental protection’ (JBIC, 2004b), furthermore, qualifying for ‘themost concessionary terms’ of repayment (JBIC, 2001).3

The reclassification of the SEMP-NP from a tourism development was possible asthere had been no official criteria or definition for ‘environmental aid’ (Franz, 1996). Infact, there is no agreed-upon definition or criteria for measuring environmental aidamong bilateral donors with the result that ‘the majority of agencies . . . have hadproblems in assembling conclusive information on specific levels of funding allocated toenvironment-related programmes and projects’ (OECD/DAC, 1997: 9; see also EC,2006). This absence of international consensus on what constitutes an ‘environmentalproject’ and what is (or is not) environmental assistance has thus left donors includingJapan with considerable freedom to (re)categorize existing development projects asenvironmental efforts – thereby resulting in ‘highly distorted’ data (Connolly et al.,1996: 286; see also Michaelowa & Michaelowa, 2010). Not surprisingly, considering thebillions of yen involved, burgeoning green loans have been condemned viewed as ‘amatter of labelling, nothing else’ (pers. comm., director, Mekong Watch Japan, Tokyo,3 February 2004) – which is also how one high-ranking JICA official described theprocess:

as we were told to expand the share of environmental aid, what we eventually did was just

recategorize the projects under the name of environmental aid at the end of financial year as

long as a project had any environment-related element in it (pers. comm., Tokyo, 12 November

2003).

Figure 1. Location, loan allocations (excluding 1 per cent set aside for contingency), and implementing

agencies in the Philippines of Japan’s Sustainable Environmental Management Project in Northern Palawan

(SEMP-NP).

Source: Data compiled from JBIC (2003c).


While such ambiguities are is not unique to Japan’s ODA classifications but symptomaticof the donor world generally (OECC, 2001), it certainly puts into question the greencontent of significant financial flows (Hicks et al., 2008) such as those presented atFigure 2.

Japan’s own development normsSEMP-NP was an environmental ODA loan project with a heavy infrastructure orien-tation (pers. comm., JBIC officer, Development Assistance Dept., Tokyo, 6 June 2006),does not fit the profile of the average environmental projects of the 1990s, when thesewere often funded by ODA grants, and had little to do with infrastructure (Imura,2005). Between 1990 and 2000, the total global environmental ODA (classified asgeneral environment protection) was USD 9942 million – of which loans accounted for44 per cent, and grants, 56 per cent (AidData, 2010). Apart from Japan, only fourdonors provided environmental ODA loans – France (0.6 per cent), Germany (8.3 percent), Italy (0.1 per cent) and Spain (0.3 per cent). What is striking here is that Japan’sshare accounted for 90.7 per cent of all environmental ODA loans – especially comparedwith its 6.3 per cent share of total environmental ODA grants. This differentiatedenvironmental aid provisioning has its roots in Japan’s aid norms, which emphasizeloans and infrastructure.

Akira Nishigaki (2000), former president of Japan’s OECF, has argued that conces-sional status does not necessarily enhance the quality of aid; therefore, aid should notbe measured by whether it takes the form of grants or loans. This viewpoint is based onthe two elements stressed in Japan’s own development norms: self-help efforts and theimportance of infrastructure. The proven success of loans in Japan’s postwar economicgrowth is often attributed to the contribution of policy-based finance to these elements(pers. comm., JBIC officer, Development Assistance Strategy Dept., 6 June 2006).Japan’s historical experience of rapid economic development thus frames an aid phi-losophy that legitimizes and simultaneously allows the pursuit of its interests as a donoralongside those of the recipient.

Japan’s neoliberal economic restructuring and overseas tourism developmentThe specific contextual sources for the SEMP-NP were embedded in Japan’s overseastourism/leisure investment boom in the 1980s, a key strategy identified by the Japanesegovernment for its neoliberal-style restructuring efforts. Rather than targeting debt/

Figure 2. Japan’s environmental overseas development assistance (ODA) in the years 1994–2003.

Note: Average conversion rate for the period JPY 115 = USD 1 (Bank of Japan, 2012).

Source: MOFA (2005: 6).

114 Soyeun Kim

deficit management, however, Japan’s restructuring was designed to reduce a currentaccount surplus. By the mid 1980s, the external pressure to reduce this mounting tradesurplus, with the US in particular (Pyle, 1987), culminated in two developments: theappreciation of the Japanese yen via the 1985 Plaza Accord, and the Japanese govern-ment’s more concerted neoliberal economic restructuring of its own programmes(Pempel, 1997; Noguchi, 2008). To this end an Advisory Group on Economic StructuralAdjustment for International Harmony was set up to look into effective measures torectify the Japan’s trade imbalance (Maekawa Commission, 1986).

Four of the policy recommendations in the advisory group’s report are relevant tothe conditions in which the SEMP-NP was conceived: namely boosting consumption(more disposable income via reduced income tax); promoting the service industry and,concomitantly, increasing leisure time for employees; promoting overseas investment;and increasing ODA. The resulting unprecedented scale of overseas leisure/resort(tourist) development investment (Cameron, 1996) in turn boosted Japan’s raid ascen-dancy as the world’s largest aid donor, with significant green components in the 1990s.

Having highlighted how contextual sources of environmental change, especiallythose arising from Japan’s neoliberal reforms to balance its trade surplus, conditionedthe formation of an environmental aid project, I now explore how those contextualsources at the global and national Japanese scale translated into the local Palawansetting through the implementation of the SEMP-NP.

Palawan: the Philippines’ last frontierThe Philippines is well known for its rich biodiversity and much attention has been paidto the quest to conserve it (National Geographic, 2002; CI, 2011). Yet rapid biodiversityloss has been caused by both natural and human processes (Bryant, 2005). Thus, thepost-Rio green drive propagated rafts of donor-encouraged laws in the 1990s to providea framework for environmental protection, embodied by legistlation like the NationalIntegrated Protected Areas System (NIPAS) Act of 1992 (GOP, 1992) and the SEP forPalawan Act (PCSD, 1992) for example – both shaped by political battles from the late1980s, with Palawan (Figure 1) a key battleground (Broad with Cavanagh, 1993; Eder& Fernandez, 1996; Goldoftas, 2006). When the pioneering Haribon Foundation (http://www.haribon.org.ph/) successfully led the efforts for a total commercial logging ban inPalawan in 1992, with national as well as international support, it did not just mark asignificant victory for Philippine environmental NGOs (Guiang, 2001; pers. comm.,Haribon Foundation, 2004), but also propelled a movement for the greening of Palawanin the 1990s (Silliman & Noble, 1998; Arquiza et al., 2010). Palawan’s green shift wastherefore an outcome of state and civil society action as well as encouragement byinternational donors (Ross, 1996).

By the early 1990s, the search for alternatives to long dominant commercial loggingin Palawan (Vitug, 1993; Goldoftas, 2006) led the Philippine government to designateNorthern Palawan as a priority ecotourism destination as well as socioenvironmentallysensitive area (DOT, 1991; 2005). It was thus deemed necessary to manage localresources via ‘eco-friendly’ and ‘sustainable tourism’ (CEC, 1994). This was the contextfor the collaboration between Japan and the Philippine DOT in implementing theSEMP-NP (SEMP, 2003).

Recipient versus donor interestsThe formulation of the SEMP in JICA’s preparatory and master plan study was occa-sioned by a DOT request to ‘combine concerns on Northern Palawan’s vulnerable


environment and [a] rapidly expanding tourism industry’ (JICA, 1997: i; also seeJICA, 1995b). The request, coinciding with the quest to increase Japanese tourismdevelopment investment, was timely. Thus, the SEMP-NP was conceived as a tourismdevelopment project, albeit designed to promote environmental conservation andsocioeconomic improvement (JICA, 1995a, 1997; pers. comm., SEMP project manage-ment leader, Puerto Princesa, 11 May 2004).

The differences over terminology that cropped up immediately were quite revealing,with DOT preferences expressly for ‘ecotourism’ and JICA preferring the notion of‘sustainable tourism’. This was seen as more than simply splitting hairs: while sustain-able tourism suggested a more technical and hence value neutral project, ecotourismevoked a sense of ethics (Alampay & Libosada, 2005). Indeed, this can be seen in thePhilippine government definition for a ‘low-impact, environmentally-sound andcommunity-participatory tourism activity in a given natural environment that enhancesthe conservation of biophysical and cultural diversity, promotes environmental under-standing and education, and yields socio-economic benefits to the concerned commu-nity’ (Andrada, 2002: 169).

Yet in the end the Palawan project title was changed at JICA’s behest from‘Ecotourism master plan’ to ‘Master plan for environmentally sustainable tourismdevelopment’ (JICA, 1995a: 166), indicating ‘the aimed type of tourism developmentwhich is environmentally sustainable and economically feasible’ (p. 186, emphasisadded). This subtle but important nuance further highlighted that JICA’s focus con-tinued to emphasize tourism development – rather than environmental conservation –which therefore influenced its initial formulation of the Palawan project as a develop-ment aid project (later recategorized to an environmental one). Donor wishes andpower were further manifested in project formulation.

Japanese dominance in agenda settingA second area of donor influence was observed in the specific activities surrounding the1997 master plan. While the SEMP-NP was publicly celebrated for its partnership withlocal NGOs at the 2002 Johannesburg summit, it was clear that the DOT and JICAdisagreed in practice over their role in the project (JICA, 1995a). In keeping with the1992 SEP Act that emphasized the social acceptability of development projects inPalawan, DOT strongly recommended the inclusion of NGOs in key managementpractices. JICA, however, disagreed, and forced DOT to settle instead for a ‘dialogue’process; indeed, JICA (1995a: 11) decreed that ‘communication with NGOs is onlypossible through an informal route’ and that responsibility for managing this dialoguerested with DOT. Furthermore, JICA suggested ‘interaction’ with local communities,rather than participation or extensive involvement, justified by the reasoning that thelocal community was not an ‘official entity for the development plan’ (JICA, 1995a:147). Uneasiness about local participation is a familiar situation in Japan itself (Aoyama,2008), where direct participation by Japanese citizens are excluded from decisionmaking processes largely confined to circuits of official entities such as contractors, localauthorities, and relevant government agencies (Hirata, 2002).

Again, the donor’s wishes prevailed: JICA’s preparatory study was carried out basedon informal interaction with local communities and NGOs. Although the project (as areall Japan’s ODA projects) was initiated based on the recipient’s official request, theproposed implementation was clearly shaped by Japanese perceptions and interests.Moreover, the Japanese preferences revealed in the master plan were not consonant

116 Soyeun Kim

with an expansive sense of greening – for instance, one that prioritizes environmentalconservation and local participation.

Not surprisingly, the 1997 JICA master plan faced resistance from local NGOs andcommunity organizations (pers. comm., former CI Japan representative, email 18 Feb-ruary 2004). Notwithstanding this, the international environmental NGO ConservationInternational (CI) – known for being ‘realistic’ about looming development in Palawan(pers. comm., email 18 February 2004)4 – proposed that the governor of Palawan adoptthe JICA master plan on condition that the three aspects of environmental consider-ation, local participation and environmentally sustainable income generation bestrengthened, for which they also succeeded in bringing the OECF on board (pers.comm., CI Palawan programme manager, Puerto Princesa, 8 May 2004).

Although such NGO participation in the early stage of project formation is rare inJapanese aid practice, it can be explained in terms of CI’s global reach as a Washington-based international environmental NGO which made it easier for CI Palawan toapproach OECF through CI’s Japan office in Tokyo. Unlike NGOs such as Greenpeace,CI is perceived by Japanese aid bureaucrats as politically acceptable to work with, givenits internationally respected status as well as moderate political tactics (Revell, 2003).

The recipient strikes backIn spite of CI’s successful lobbying of OECF, other stakeholders asserted their owninterests in the project. One such actor was the major project contractor, the Japanesecompany Pacific Consultants International (PCI). For PCI, undue restriction of devel-opment components would cost it future business since it catered to clients in bothJapan and the Philippines (pers. comm., SEMP ECAN zoning component manager, PCI,Tokyo, 12 February 2004). On the one hand, the Philippine government (the DPWH inparticular) wanted infrastructure development; on the other, OECF insisted that theproject be greened to fit formal project aims. For example, when PCI proposed to useconcrete in road rehabilitation, OECF rejected the proposal, demanding that a more‘environmentally friendly’ proposal be designed (pers. comm., director, ResourcesDevelopment and Management Division, PCI, Tokyo, 12 February 2004).

Yet the Philippine DPWH disagreed with this ostensibly green OECF preoccupation:5

as an engineer, I believe concrete is the only solution [to this problem]. With or without Japan’s

help, we can do this with our government fund or other donors [such as] ADB [Asian

Development Bank], World Bank – whoever is willing to give us money. For now, we are laying

down the foundation for the concrete work (pers. comm., Manila, 24 May 2004).

Revealingly, this indicates how far a recipient government can go in reversing any onedonor’s priority on environmentally friendly technology, if inclined. Indeed, this alsosuggests that recipients are quite liable to revert to their own priorities once funds aredisbursed (Connolly, 1996). This supports the view that recipients would be moreinclined in general to renege on green promises as environmental projects usuallypresent real development opportunity costs to them in the long term.

Conclusion

This paper proposed the value of examining the contextual sources of environmentalchange, not only to address the ever diversifying contexts of other political ecologies butalso to overcome the more general problem imposed by one-dimensional and partialanalyses in the research field. While few works in political ecology adopt to any great


extent a focus on contextual sources as sketched in the paper, even fewer of them reflectother postcolonial approaches and perspectives. I argued that such a situation is ulti-mately founded on a colonial-minded post-1945 international order that has left some(others) less visible in the field. This situation is especially apparent, as suggested inrelation to East Asian donor relationships and their associated political ecologies.

In addressing this lacuna, the present study examined the SEMP-NP environmentalaid project of the nonwestern and East Asian donor Japan in relation to the Philippines.In doing so, it demonstrated the empirical utility of an other political ecological per-spective by providing a more nuanced explanation of other contextual sources and theirassociated socioenvironmental impacts on a Southern recipient. By underlining inter-secting multiscalar contextual sources (notably, the post-Rio international policy driveto promote green aid, neoliberal economic reform policies, and the historically andgeographically specific institutional landscapes and policy environments of Japan andthe Philippines), this study elucidated in particular how the ambiguous nature ofenvironmental aid criteria turned a development project into an environmental one,how Japan’s preoccupation with loans and infrastructure resulted in its status as thelargest environmental ODA loan provider in the green 1990s, and how Japan’s uniqueneoliberal reform programme to reduce its immense global trade surplus (especiallywith the US) brought about the subsequent overseas tourism investment boom thatwashed up on Philippine shores.

The other political ecology perspective deployed herein further underscored howconjuncture-based and multiscalar contextual sources shaped the life course of theSEMP-NP in the local setting. It has highlighted how and why the socioenvironmentalstrategies devised by Japan came about. In doing so, it clarified both the similarities withand differences of Japan–Philippines green aid relations and traditional projects associ-ated with western donors. Thus, and via a focus on other contextual sources, the paperdemonstrated how spatiotemporally specific contexts – in which, say, Japan engageswith civil society as well as other actors, and understands project keywords such asecotourism and participation – have influenced the socioenvironmental decisionmaking process for a project such as the SEMP-NP. At the same time, international greenissues were translated into the Palawan setting through diverse conservation efforts bystate agencies, civil society groups, and diverse international donors. Yet, I illustratedultimately how such issues were bent this way and then that way in the light of bothJapanese and Philippine stakeholder preferences and interests that rendered concrete adevelopment-centred project with a green veneer. In the process, larger environmentalissues were inevitably compromised.

Acknowledgements

Field research in Japan in 2003 was funded by the University of London Central Research Fund.

I also thank the two anonymous reviewers and the SJTG editorial board for their helpful comments.

Endnotes

1 Data from field research in Japan and the Philippines was collected between November 2003

and May 2004, and in June 2006.

2 ‘Type 2’ projects refer to voluntary partnerships with stakeholders such as governments, NGOs

and businesses that are intended to contribute towards the goals of sustainable development set

out in Agenda 21.

118 Soyeun Kim

3 A special ‘environmental’ interest rate of 0.75 per cent over a repayment period of 40 years

with 10-year grace period has applied since the loan expiry date in September 2009.

4 CI’s view was contested, with resistance from other organizations (pers. comm., Environmental

Science for Social Change, Manila, 5 May 2004; for further details see Bryant, 2002).

5 Both DPWH and PCI supported a concrete road, claiming that a gravel road would not stop soil

erosion because pebbles and small rocks were easily dislocated by cars (indeed, during fieldwork

in the rainy season, the two-wheel-drive van I was in got stuck in a muddy road for two hours).

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