Age of Vulnerability:

from case studies of

the Philippines and
Trinidad to new
measures of
rootedness
Donna F. Poyaoan
Danica F. Robregado

Vulnerability Weak link of free trade

Rootedness Sustainability
SustainabilityDevelopment that meets the
needs of the present without
compromising the ability of
future generations to meet
Finance, food,
their own needs
environment
Triple Crises

Triple crises exposed

vulnerability

Brief history of vulnerable

development
Vulnerability versus
rootedness frame

Less
vulnerability
Increased
rootedness
Literatures on
vulnerability
Assessment on Philippines
and Trinidad

New gauges of vulnerability draw from economic,

environmental and social fields

Argues that
Openness has in practice increased vulnerability
Vulnerability at the individual/household,
community, and national level is a central
impediment to well-being; its impact has been
devastating in times of crises.

History on the
Development of
Triple Crises

500 years ago | Age of Discovery

Most part of the world were subsistence economies
with little trade with the outside world. With the age of
discovery, European nations seized territory as
colonies and organized a significant amount of
economic activity.
International division of labor was imposed on the
world, that made colonies vulnerable to prices and to
overseas markets in which they have no control

1980s
THIRD WORLD DEBT CRISIS
Used by IMF as an opportunity to press countries to
export even more. Prior to the guidance of key
governments in US and Europe, as the World Bank
initiated market-opening structural adjustment
loans.
These efforts was made because of agriculture
sector
modernisation (reforms started
1960s) whereby technologies like green
revolution
promoted
vulnerability
in
agriculture, as farmers were enticed to
modernise by borrowing money to purchase

1990s
Before 1990s, proponents of neoliberal model
ignored the fact that market-opening policies
might leave countries vulnerable to external
shocks. But shocks did appear.
ASIAN FINANCIAL CRISIS IN 1997 that
started in Thailand and had spread around
the world

2007
Many countries like the Philippines and
Trinidad and Tobago, once self-sufficient in
food, became dependent upon imports even
for their most basic cereal needs.
Too many countries struggling with the overexploitation of their forests, fisheries, and
minerals, and were suffering from drought,
flooding and uncertainty of climate change.

2008
Global Food Price Crisis
erupted at the
beginning of the year

Spreading Global
Financial crisis that
started in the autumn
of 2008

Summed up Economic impact of Financial Crisis in

2010 by the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP)

34 million lost their jobs

64 million people fell under the $1.25 a
day poverty threshold

Throughout the history, there were sudden

solution for the existing crises. But those
solutions were not enough and instead worsen
the scenario.
Colonial powers admitted that opening of markets
was an advantage to them. While economists,
politicians and business leaders claimed that, those
policies would lower prices, help workers and bring
prosperity. However, they underplayed its harmful
impact on working conditions, the environment,
equality and democracy.

Brief Overview: Food, Finance and

Environment
There have been periods of volatility but the adverse impacts of
food price hikes have spread as agricultural trade has grown. Many
countries once self sufficient to food depend heavily on imports.

By the end of 2008, the United Nations reported that the annual
food import basket in LDCs cost more than three times that of 2000,
not because of the increased volume of food imports, but as the
result of rising food prices. These developments added 75 million
people to ranks of the hungry and 125 million into extreme poverty.
-Walden Bello

For poorer nations, the food price hikes were

combined with the 2008 global financial crisis.
These two crises (food and finance), interacted in
many countries with another problem that had been
building around the world: Crisis of the environment.
Wherein the decades of development that
encouraged countries to export food, fish, minerals
and forest product affected the worlds natural
resources in which most countries were suffering
from the depletion. Industrial activities and heavy
fossil fuel use sped up climate change and its
impact through rising sea levels and increasingly

post-2008
vulnerabilities faced
by many communities
and nations were the
result of conscious
policies

Because these
policies encouraged
food imports, nations
were vulnerable to
food price hikes

The relation of Triple

Crises
Nations were
Countries forests
and fishing grounds
were consciously
opened to foreign
firms.

vulnerable to
financial crisis
because their
banking systems
where consciously
opened to global hot
money flows

This call for a new framework for

development that places vulnerability at the
center of the critique. There have been
alternative frames of development before
that centered on human rights, ecological
balance, and living democracy, but the
paper contends that these frames can be
combined and adapted to this vulnerable
era under the frame of rootedness.

Literatures on
Vulnerability

Neoclassical International Trade

Theory
It ignores the issue of vulnerability
Claims that: it can prove that open free market politics
will lead countries to focus exports on their relative
comparative advantage
At an individual level, the theory subsumes vulnerability
under its category of risk and sees risk-taking behaviour
as a potentially good thing: individuals who are the least
risk-averse stand to be rewarded the most, and such
risk-loving behaviour is seen as catalysing invention.

Challenged by Raul Prebisch

Argued that vulnerability was key to
understanding the obstacles faced by colonial
newly independent poorer nations.
These economies were vulnerable in that they
faced declining terms of trade because of
their imposed dependence on raw-material
exports and manufactured-goods imports.

James Scott
Argued that one needs to focus on the moral economy of
the peasant to understand that what the neoclassical
economists view as primitive and irrational behaviour is
actually sophisticated and rational.
Farmers avoid changes that might increase their
vulnerabilities; farmers embrace changes only when they
see a virtual certainty that the changes will enhance their
livelihoods
Focused on the vulnerabilities that any individual or
community faced in the ups and downs of community life

United Nations University World

Institute for Development Economics
Research
At the micro (individual) level, UNU-WIDER focuses on
the risks that lead to individuals or households falling
into poverty.
At the macro (country) level, it focuses on
vulnerability to both natural crises, like earthquakes,
and human-made crises like the financial crisis.
Explains the economic vulnerability of countries as a
result of dependence on trade, foreign investment
and financial flows

Countries and people are vulnerable when their human

development is threatened by various risks (aggregate
shocks). Shocks arise as economic crises, human-caused
or natural disasters Economic and social integration
have increased the chance of global shocks such as
financial crises and macro-economic shock.
Environmental researchers measured environmental
vulnerability, specifically on the vulnerability posed by
climate change, with special emphasis on the small
island nations threatened by rising sea levels.

 From environmentalist has come the focus on

resilience to climate change. Others have suggested
that environmental resilience is the ability of an
ecological or livelihood system to bounce back from
stress or shocks, and that policies can help enhance
resilience.
Robert Chamber s key to decreasing vulnerability
and establishing sustainable rural livelihoods
increase assets, and to increase the diversification of
income sources and assets. In which, sustainability

Through this environmentalist terminology, UNU-WIDER

posit the notion of economic resilience, which looks at
how countries adopt policies and institutions to help
cope with economic vulnerabilities.
But
The literature offers four indicators of resilience that
are economic and do not challenge the goals of
development and the effort to measure resilience is
important for a new frame of vulnerability.

Concept of Subsidiarity
It is necessary to create new rules and
structures that consciously favour the local and
follow the principle of subsidiarity that is,
whatever decisions and activities can be
undertaken locally should be Only when
additional activity is required that cannot be
satisfied locally should power and activity move
to the next higher level, that of region, nation,
and finally the world.

Assessment of Philippines
and Trinidad and Tobago

Assessment on Philippines
An ASIAN nation that is likewise open to the
global economy and that has little fossil fuels.
It has been a 'poster child' of an open
economy.
International Monetary Fund used the
Philippines as a guinea pig for their marketopening structural adjustment loans starting
in the early 1980s.

The result:
Imports over three times the amount of agricultural goods
by value as it exports,
Extremely dependent on the remittances of 11 million
overseas Filipino workers
Hundreds of thousands of call center workers staying up
all night to talk to anxious computer owners and;
A large tourism sector which is very sensitive to global
economic downturns

Philippines vulnerable to climate change

Food vulnerability of Philippines (2008 Global
Crisis)
Green revolution in farming - promised to increase
crop yields and feed the world. Philippine farmers
were recruited to this revolution with subsidized
credit to buy new miracle hybrid seeds and the
chemical fertilizers and pesticides necessary for
them to grow.

There were groups and institutions established to

further understand the community and household
level better:

1. Davao Provinces Rural Development

Institutes (DPRDI)
2. Philippine Rural Reconstruction
Movement
3. Rice Watch and Action Network (R1)

Sustainable farming in the Philippines is positive

socially, environmentally and economically on a
local level because it:
-leads to more social cohesion and rootedness at a local
level
-reduces debts
-reduces the power of rice traders, of middlemen, and
-gives more social power to people.

Government Actions:
Organic Agriculture Act in April 2010

Assessment on Trinidad and Tobago

A Caribbean island nation with ample fossil fuels and a very
open economy. It became the largest economy in the
Caribbean.
It invested in heavy industry. Through this, the following
happened:
Leaving farmers and fishers by the wayside,
Farmland was abandoned,
Artisanal fishermen, who were given subsidies to expand in
the 1950s, were largely forgotten,
Finance, industry and tourism were the considered as the

Most of its earnings came from oil, gas, finance and tourism
wherein US served as Market.
GDP falling 3.5 percent (2009)
To defeat vulnerabilities be deepened, there were small acts
constructed:
Multibillion Dollar Aluminum smelter - that would have processed
bauxite from nearby Guyana and exported the finished product to
countries like China. Fisher groups and other activists opposed it and
invoked a 1995 Environmental Impact Assessment law.
Long-standing fight over a road not built - there is a 17-mile road less
stretch in the middle of the northern coast, filled with gorges, rivers
and bays, which makes road construction difficult.

The national government experienced a backdrop wherein

they realized the limited range of years their oil will last.

New Gauges of Vulnerability

ECONOMIC

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ENVIRO
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To spell out key measurements to assess where households

or communities or countries fall

Economic
Vulnerability from trade
Countries that were more vulnerable, suffered more in
human and economic terms than countries that were less
vulnerable.
A country is vulnerable when it depend on trade flows.
As it was pointed out by ANU-WIDER that indicator of a
country's vulnerability to global economics shocks is
determined by country's value of imports and exports as
a percentage of country's GDP.

Dependence on One Market

country's dependency on one other country as the destination of
its exports
Brazil represents a more rooted trade model, because its trade
exports represents a low percentage of GDP.

Openness of Economy
Openness to the global economy of a certain country can be a
measure in terms of liberalization of trade, investment and financial
flows.
In terms of rootedness, it is important to measure the country's
financial, trade and legal protections to help national enterprises
and restrict foreign enterprise.

Dependence of Country on Food Imports vs.

Food Sovereignty
Food Sovereignty - it exists in a country when its
people consume safe and nutritious food largely
grown by its own small farmers.
It is critical to measure the dependence of
countries on food imports and the overall
availability of safe and affordable food for the
population.
Example: Trinidad and Tobago imports all its
wheat

Environmental
Ability of nations to protect environment and
ecosystems into the future
Environmental Sustainability -measure each
countrys natural resource endowments, its resource
extraction rates, its pollution flows and the policy
responses.
Resource depletion
This indicator put emphasis on the speed at
which a country is depleting its forests,
fisheries, biodiversity and other natural
resources. This is a key indicator of the

Fossil fuel dependence

Trinidad and Tobago and other countries that are endowed with
fossil fuels, both pollution and the volatility of oil and gas prices
erode rooted alternatives.
While Philippines, with limited or no fossil fuels, the dependence
on imports with volatile prices also poses great challenges for
rootedness.

Water scarcity
Vulnerability to climate change
Island nations and countries with large amounts of farm land
near oceans, like the Philippines, are particularly vulnerable.

Social
Availability of sustainable livelihoods and social
safety nets
The key issue for most households is the availability of livelihoods
for family members and the existence of government safety net
programms for those without livelihoods.
In richer countries most peoples livelihoods have been ensured by
wage-paying jobs
In most poorer nations a much higher percentage of people meet
their daily needs by growing their own food or catching their own
fish
The existence of government safety nets or programmes is an
important measure of social rootedness.

Equality
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
Equality is an important social rootedness indicator
Human Rights
Over the past decade, citizen groups and governments
have likewise spread the notion of human rights to
embrace indigenous groups' rights and rights to natural
resources. When countries score high in these rights,
human and environmental well being is usually higher
than those countries that score low.

Power/Control
Peoples sense of well-being tied to how much
control they have over their natural resources
and over their lives in economic, social and
political terms. For example, organic farmers
growing for themselves and local markets tend
to have lower costs and more control over
their decision and destinies.

Conclusio
n

New approaches to development can

break new ground in addressing
vulnerabilities. Furthermore, there are
variety of ways wherein government
can pursue its policies to lessen
vulnerabilities and encourage
rootedness.