To achieve the dual goals of minimising global pollution and meeting diverse demands for environmental justice, energy transitions need to involve not only a shift to renewable energy sources but also the safe decommissioning of older energy infrastructures and management of their toxic legacies. While the global scale of the decommissioning challenge is yet to be accurately quantified, the climate impacts are significant: each year, more than an estimated 29 million abandoned oil and gas wells around the world emit 2.5 million tons of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. In the US alone, at least 14 million people live within a mile of an abandoned oil or gas well, creating pollution that is concentrated among low-income areas and communities of colour. The costs involved in decommissioning projects are significant, raising urgent questions about responsibility and whether companies who have profited from the sale of extracted resources will be held liable for clean-up, remediation and management costs. Recognising these political goals and policy challenges, this article invites further research, scrutiny and debate on what would constitute the successful and safe decommissioning of sites affected by fossil fuel operations – with a particular focus on accountability, environmental inequality, the temporality of energy transitions, and strategies for phasing out or phasing down fossil fuel extraction.
In this policy intervention, we recount the process of producing a policy briefing targeting researchers and practitioners who use drones in biodiversity conservation. We use the writing process as a springboard to think through the ways that interdisciplinary exchange has and might further inform the ethical use of new technologies, such as drones. This approach is vital, we argue, because while drones may be deployed as tools that enable or empower forest, wildlife or habitat monitoring practices, so too can they be variously disruptive, repurposed and/or exceed these applications in significant ways. From questions of surveillance and capture, data ownership and security, to noise disruption, drone use requires careful and critical reflection, particularly in sensitive contexts. Yet, interdisciplinary exchange attentive to the ethical, social and experiential dimensions of drone use remains patchy and thin. To this end, this intervention reflects on the process of a group of scholars from ecological, environmental and social science backgrounds coming together in an interdisciplinary project grappling with diverse issues around responsible conservation drone use. After recounting our methodology, including the surprises and learning that emerged in practice, we contextualise the key themes we chose to foreground in our published policy briefing. We conclude by connecting our collaboration with wider actions and energies in the context of existing (conservation) drone policy and practice, while underscoring our contributions to existing work.
The common use of the term bayanihan has inspired NGOs, governments, and the media evoke this principle after major disasters to demonstrate the resilience of the Filipino people. But what is bayanihan in theory and practice, and does this Indigenous principle really serve to increase resilience in urban communities suffering from widespread poverty and frequent disasters? Drawing from two separate but overlapping case study research projects in the province of Leyte after typhoon Haiyan and drawing on the ‘insider-outsider’ dimensions of doing disaster research, we argue that despite its popular use after disasters, calling on communities to evoke bayanihan is often an inadequate policy response to the collective action problem that commonly exists in post-disaster recovery. As such, we call for a more critical examination of the potential and limitations of using bayanihan as a post-disaster response in the Philippines. In addition, echoing the concerns of others, we caution against the over-reliance on bayanihan and other Indigenous Filipino coping strategies as a source of post-disaster community resilience, particularly if doing so shifts pressure away from governmental institutions and humanitarian organizations with formal responsibilities.
This chapter is based on an independent and follow-up study on integrated child-centered disaster risk reduction and management (IC-DRRM) programs and activities of the Department of Education, concerned local government units (LGUs), and select communities in Bohol, Philippines, that were the project-implementing partners of the School-based Disaster Risk Reduction and Management in the Philippines. Adopting the insider and outsider perspectives of doing qualitative research provide an in-depth and objective analysis in examining whether the project interventions during the Bohol earthquake post-disaster response and partners’ initiatives are sustained and/or scaled up that promote resilience among children and communities. Results of the study demonstrate the synergies, child participation, and how the Department of Education, the two pilot LGUs (Maribojoc and Loon), and their communities have adopted and scaled up to sustain an integrated child-centered DRRM as they move forward in resilience building. The conclusion underscores the much-needed IC-DRRM and resilience building and its requisites for safer and resilient schools and communities and ‘disaster risk proofing development’ towards sustainable development.
This chapter provides a narrative inquiry on the practice of applied theater that aims to recenter grassroots participation as a post-disaster recovery program. Through auto-ethonograpy, the author reflects, complicates, and envisions ethical methodology of co-producing and co-creating community-based theater that deals with the impact of climate crises in local communities. A thematic centering on the renewal of creativity in the aftermath of disaster, the author asserts that collective creation in community-based theater performances underscores an attentiveness in agentic representation of social trauma brought by climate crises. He also argues that empowerment in post-disaster work is always a shared responsibility. Using the processes of applied theater, the author foregrounds the multivalent possibilities of mobilizing creativity, relationality, and solidarity.
This is the concluding section of the book which synthesizes the themes and chapters and implications beyond the Philippines.
Disasters open up opportunities for women’s participation and engagement beyond the traditional gender roles. It draws attention toward empowering contributions (for example, financial, decision making, and community participation) and the transformation of gender roles. As a case in point, women’s capacity to take on the role as partners in community building is highlighted in disaster recovery efforts. Through these shifts in traditional gender roles, women are rendered visible in comparison with past experiences of invisibility and marginalization. This chapter expands beyond women’s vulnerabilities and marginalized status to explore the experiences of low-income, rural women in a disaster context.
Braun and Clarke’s thematic framework highlights narratives of women’s struggles to survive and rebuild. Revealed is the stark reality of women burdened by caregiving yet embracing new roles to help with family and community recovery. Women’s active role and engagement in disaster recovery reflect the UN’s agenda for Sustainable Development specifically to achieve gender equality. Toward this end, women must be recognized for their active involvement and contribution to community building. Their capabilities and strengths in disaster and post-disaster contexts need to be harnessed to reinforce and maintain shifts in gender roles.
Bringing together the voices of local scholars in the Philippines, this book offers critical insights into one of the world’s most disaster-prone regions.
The Asia-Pacific region is one of the most vulnerable regions in the world, with the effects of climate change contributing to rising sea levels and increasingly frequent typhoons and floods. Case studies in this book examine such disasters, including the aftermath of 2013 super typhoon Haiyan. Discussions are centred around four themes: women and empowerment, economics and recovery, community and resilience, and religion and spirituality.
Through its analysis, the book demonstrates the scopes, inequities and inefficiencies of policies and responses, as well as forms of empowerment and resilience, in meeting challenges in disaster-afflicted communities in the Philippines. Its conclusions provide a more nuanced and grounded perspective of policies, practices and approaches in the sociology of disasters today.
Disasters in the Philippines: Before and After Haiyan is a collection of original works produced mostly by local scholars and specialists in one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries. Case studies examine the disasters in the Philippines using selected themes such as women empowerment, children, disability, economics and recovery, communities and resilience, and religion. Disasters caused by natural hazards are likely to increase in frequency and severity due to the global impact of climate change, yet the scholarly examination of its social and economic dimensions in vulnerable areas in the Asia-Pacific region like the Philippines is not well established. This new collection provides a more nuanced and grounded perspective of policies, practices, and approaches in the sociology of disasters today.
Traditional division of labor and gender roles are evident before a disaster. Gender issues can be heightened during disasters but the blurring of boundaries, its extent and fluidity have not been fully understood. The gender role of caregiving influences a woman’s own and her children’s nutrition and health outcomes during disasters. In 2009, tropical storm Ketsana (Ondoy) and typhoon Parma caused major flooding disasters in the Philippines.
This chapter used an adapted UNICEF food and nutrition framework with a care model to understand how nutrition and health preservation with women’s contributions prevailed in Laguna-affected communities. Mixed-methods research was undertaken describing demographic, health, nutrition, and household food security profiles 18–24 months post-disaster. A total of 20 mothers were interviewed to explore the nexus between gender and food and nutrition security. Mothers and children were more food insecure post-flood disaster. Women engaged in overt coping strategies to adapt. Women’s caring role is a strong contributor to child nutrition preservation during disasters. Challenges in women’s social role highlight the need for support for women and households during and after disasters.
