Contextualizing other political ecologies: Japan’s environmental aid to the Philippines

摘要

This paper argues for the utility of a focus on contextualized sources of environmental change toaddress the ever more diverse contexts of political ecology. In order to overcome the conventionalapproach to contextual sources that has tended to be analytically one-dimensional and limited, Iseek to provide a more nuanced account, notably by examining the neglected case of green aid ofa nonwestern aid donor, Japan. Using conceptual tools that are both conjuncture-based andmultiscalar, the paper examines the way in which a post-Rio international policy drive to promoteso called green aid during the 1990s was translated into and conditioned by the historically andgeographically specific contexts of Japan and the aid recipient featured herein, the Philippines. Thisfocus on contextual sources helps to elucidate (i) how the ambiguous nature of international aidcriteria combined together with Japan’s own domestic political economy to render problematic anostensibly environmental project, (ii) the manner in which neoliberal economic restructuring wastranslated into one of Japan’s key policy initiatives in the 1990s and formed the backdrop to thespecific aid case project discussed here, (iii) how Japan’s environmental aid process in the Philippineswas shaped through a repoliticization of various green discourses, and (iv) how the complexdynamics among stakeholders ended up compromising the very nature of the case study project.