Mountains of Blame: Climate and Culpability in the Philippine Uplands

Explores the unsettling phenomenon of indigenous self-blame for climate change

Swidden agriculture has long been considered the primary cause of deforestation throughout Southeast Asia, and the Philippine government has used this belief to exclude the indigenous people of Palawan Island from their ancestral lands and to force them to abandon traditional modes of land use. After adopting ostensibly modern and ecologically sustainable livelihoods, the Pala’wan people have experienced drought a...