Economic development and environmental management in the uplands of Southeast Asia: challenges for policy and institutional development

Using a Philippine case study site, the forces driving the recent evolution of economic behavior and institutional arrangements in upland and forest margin areas of Southeast Asia are considered. In early modern development, subsistence agriculture using long‐phase forest–fallow rotations and regulated by customary law was replaced by more intensive, commercially oriented farming systems, a process heavily influenced by internal migration to the agricultural frontier. Traditional land and resource use institutions were quickly displaced during this shift—both de facto, through the actions of colonists, and de jure, through the state's assertion of ownership over forests and uplands and the introduction of private title to agricultural lands. Yet the effective implementation of natural resource use constraints lagged substantially behind the pace of agricultural development and forest exploitation, resulting in a period in which high demand for such resources coincided with virtually open access. These processes were noticeably subject to the influence of policies and reforms affecting markets, prices, and institutions.