Climate change, neoauthoritarianism, necropolitics, and state failure: the Duterte regime in the Philippines

ABSTRACT

The Philippines is vulnerable to climate change and the natural hazards it has enhanced. The Philippines lacks peace, suffers from weak state institutions, and is a fragile state. Since 2016 President Rodrigo Duterte has embarked upon a war on drugs, claiming thousands of lives. This war on drugs is perceived to be a pretext for the establishment of an authoritarian government. The confluence of weak state institutions, a disregard for human rights, and weak public participation in environmental governance generates difficulty for coping with climate change in the Philippines. The intersection of climate change and state weakness is found in the violation of the human rights of environmentalists and the Philippines is among the leading countries in the world in terms of the number of environmentalists killed.

KEYWORDS:

• Philippines
• climate change
• peace
• state failure
• war on drugs

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors .