Of Forests and Gods

This chapter describes four intersecting social histories: the origins and practices of grassroots nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on Palawan; the rise of parastatal entities (quasi-NGOs) such as the Palawan Tropical Forest Protection Programme (PTFPP); the market-based turn and architecture of the environmental NGO, Conservation International (CI); and how the Adventist Frontier Missions (AFM) profoundly deepened biopolitical reforms in the highlands of southern Palawan. The chapter details how the parastatal PTFPP “governed the way” for environmental nonstate actors to subjugate and discipline the bodies, behaviors, and livelihoods of the Pala’wan in line with market ideals and incentives. Crucially, this included valorizing the tingkep and other customary objects as “sales objects” to further incentivize and induce reforms aimed at curbing swidden-based livelihoods. Despite being actively contested, the social contracts between certain Pala’wan and nonstate actors continued to be rolled out to provide incentives, services, and opportunities in exchange for cooperation and alignment with nonstate aims and objectives. Such contracts aimed to reproduce a biopolitical architecture with degrees of permanence and stability for upland peoples in the state’s absence, despite the despondency of many toward such agreements.