As the livelihoods of the Filipinx people are interrupted with persistent blackouts and brownouts, the increase in fossil fuel consumption led by current President Rodrigo Duterte, highlights a short-sighted trap that may ultimately cost the country and its people even more disastrous climate events in its future.
LEARNING FROM HISTORY Returning to Professor Flor’s framework of competing development perspectives when managing the environment and natural resources in the Philippines, we must therefore tread carefully and critically at what points of view are ultimately driving development in the context of climate adaptation policy, in this case for renewable energy. Though policies like the Renewable Energy Act of 2008 (RA 9153) exist today, providing relatively safer incentives for foreign capital to enter the country through feed-in tariffs (FiT), there is still a lack of accountability and meaningful precedent in how benefits can be equitably distributed at a community level. Indeed, the Renewable Energy Act now ensures that host communities and indigenous groups receive 80% of shares from royalty, and more layers of due diligence (environmental impact assessments tied to social acceptability) are in place to facilitate this. But it is difficult not to question whether justice and arguably, more attention needs to be placed on the welfare of the communities who have grown to live around Marcos-era geothermal plants. Today, the Bicol region is one of the most disaster-prone in the country (experiencing at least two to three of the twenty annual typhoons), and the province of Albay, site of the Tiwi Geothermal Power Plant, was identified as the top province most vulnerable to climate and weather-related risks (Grefalda et al, 2017). As it sits “sa daan ng bagyo” (translates to “in the path of the storm”), a phrase that many Filipinxs including my parents often use to describe the region, much of my mother’s family is still among the 45.1% of Bicolanos that are poor and earn well below what is required to address their basic needs.
Sociologist Barry Schwartz (1996) describes the power of social movements in its ability to evoke a model of society, describing events of the past, and also a model for society, by providing guidelines for the present and future. By understanding our history, we can activate them to inform society’s institutional and collective memory to provide meaningful solutions for the present-day issues; thereby becoming a “culture-specific source of legitimizing ideologies” (Liu & GastardoConaco, 2011). In close, I argue that balancing and protecting the welfare of the country’s most vulnerable populations indisputably intertwines with energy policy and we must be careful so as to not repeat past development harms.
KEY TAKEAWAYS •
Post-colonial legitimation drove infrastructure development
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NGOs were complicit actors of the technocratic Marcos’ state
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Geothermal energy was explored with the technical assistance and training from foreign governments and agencies
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Environmental impact assessments and social acceptability measures were not yet present
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Philippine electricity today is very expensive ($$$)
(Figure 7) Photo taken July 17, 2019 in Mandaluyong City, Manila, Philippines (by author)
