Assessing the impacts of agriculture and its trade on Philippine biodiversity

The Philippines is home to a high number of unique species that can be found nowhere else in the world. However, its unique species and ecosystems are at high risk because of habitat loss and degradation. Agricultural land use and land use change are major drivers of biodiversity loss in the Philippines.In the Philippines, an important area that requires focus is plantation agriculture (monocropping) for high-value crops such as banana and pineapple, which are grown widely in the country, particularly in the island of Mindanao. The intensive nature of plantation agriculture means that it has many adverse effects on the environment while producing goods and commodities that are typically for trade and export with international partners. This means that local biodiversity losses may be driven by countries thousands of kilometers away.While many global studies have attempted to understand how biodiversity impacts are embodied within agricultural goods, there are few studies that have investigated the Philippines specifically. In this study, local and national-scale data are investigated to better characterize the nexus between agriculture, biodiversity, and trade in the Philippine context. Based on geographical data, many banana and pineapple plantations and their buffer zones interact and overlap with areas that are high in biodiversity, such as Protected Areas and Important Bird Areas. In this study, data shows that 82 threatened species, including the critically endangered Philippine eagle, are at risk of exposure to agricultural activities from high-value crops banana and pineapple. An additional and important political and legal analysis is also undertaken in the study to reveal key legislation and enabling environments relevant to the interactions between land use and biodiversity. More stringent definitions and protections for biodiversity are recommended to recognize the increasing role that agricultural production, and importantly, its global trade, has on threatened Philippine species and habitats.

An Uncultivated Eden

Borrowing the language and rhetoric of correspondence between individuals living in the Soconusco and the Mexican Minister of Finance, Matías Romero, this chapter elucidates the hurdles that stood in the way of the region’s integration into global markets. After an overview of the region’s precolonial and colonial history, the chapter establishes how little the Soconusco had to recommend it in the 1860s. Without a fixed border, a reliable political leader, institutions to secure property and commerce, or a population adequate to meet the labor demands of plantation agriculture, the Soconusco did not present an ideal site for development. Yet precisely because of these absences, Romero and others posited the region as an exemplary site for experimentation. With this in mind, the chapter illustrates how the region can stand in for other parts of rural Latin America undergoing a shift to export agriculture in the same era.