Forged in flames: indigeneity, forest fire and geographies of blame in the Philippines

Abstract

The forests of Southeast Asia are represented as increasingly ‘at-risk' to fire, constituting a regional fire politics concerned with the management and organisation of environmental blame. State governments often place culpability for this increasing flammability on histories of deforestation that disproportionately blame Indigenous peoples who now face a correspondingly large burden in conservation schemes. By tracing the history of fire management from the colonial period to the 1980s, this paper explores how the management of forests and fire in the Philippines has been shaped over time with imperatives to govern and economically exploit upland spaces. While these histories clearly point..