“The river is dead, the lake is dying, the bay is still alive”: vital debates and environmental necropolitics in the Philippines
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Amid an “environmental necropolitics” and a neoliberal paradigm of economic development that views rivers, lakes, and seas as resources to be exploited, sites to be displaced, or land to be “reclaimed”, environmental debates in the Philippines have sedimented around the vital status of the bodies of water in question. In some instances, government agencies and private corporations stake the legitimacy of their infrastructure projects with the claim that the affected body of water is “dead”, while environmental advocates contest the “death” of bodies of water to argue for their continuous protection. In other cases, governments hold up the status of being “alive” of a body of water as evidence of their sound management, while environmental advocates contest such claims, invoking the “dying” state of those bodies to the urgency of their conservationist demands. Drawing on an analysis of public discourse grounded in a broader ethnography and inspired by anthropology, STS, and multispecies perspectives on life and death, this article looks at three bodies of water in the Philippines – Manila Bay, Pasig River, and Laguna de Bay – to explore these “vital debates”, including how various genres of expertise figure in them. What is at stake in these debates, we argue, are scientific and cultural assumptions about what it means for a body of water to be dead – and the political and economic implications of recognising it as alive.
Source: Local Environment
Authors: Gideon Lasco, Anita Hardon
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7165563495