First to third nature: The rise of capitalist conservation on Palawan Island, the Philippines

Abstract

The social relations and agricultural lands that rural peoples in Southeast Asia hold in common are being commodified through the converging pressures of agrarian change, conservation and capitalist development. This paper examines how broader and local processes driving agrarian differentiation have been accelerated through the revaluing of people and nature in market terms to ostensibly finance conservation through development at the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park - the flagship protected area of Palawan Island, the Philippines. Drawing on the notions of 'first' and 'third nature', I show how the pace and scale of agrarian change between rural peoples has gone 'fast forwa..