Environmental Securitisation and the Case of Eco-DRR in Tublay, Benguet

Subsequent to an environmental risk assessment of Benguet province sponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (UN-FAO) and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) of the Government of Japan, the local government unit (LGU) of Tublay municipality endorsed a series of programs within a framework of Ecosystem-based Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (Eco-DRRM). The most recent of these is a combined agroforestry-reforestation-conservation intervention in the community forests of the Ambongdolan and Tuel barangays of Tublay. This paper is an assessment of a proposal to align these Eco-DRRM programs with tourism-promotion activities of the LGU. Although innovative, this bundling of risk management and tourism promotion by Tublay LGU is not unproblematic, as the orthodoxy in security-related and tourism related research is to regard risk reduction and tourism promotion as distinct and separate modalities. Conversely, certain forms of Eco-DRRM encourage the pro-activity of stakeholders whose well-being is assured by the long-term viability of ecologically important and culturally significant environments.