Plundering Paradise: The Struggle for the Environment in the Philippines.

While traveling the Philippines in search of signs of environmental devastation, Robin Broad and John Cavanagh found themselves face-to-face with more evidence than they cared to deal with. The typhoon that suddenly marooned them in the fishing village of Mindoro was not exceptional - typhoons are common to this part of the world - but the storm surge that moved in after the typhoon was another story.

For two days, waves pounded the shore, uprooting trees and collapsing bamboo huts. The pair looked to their local host for reassurance, but saw only fear in his face. "This is the first time I've experienced anything like this," he muttered as water and sand washed into the house.

Safely back in Manila, Broad and Cavanagh discussed their experience with several marine resource experts. Why, they asked, would storm surges be greater than before? They learned that a deadly chain of events had weakened the coral reefs that once shielded Mindoro from the ocean's fury. Silt from deforested mountain slopes, gaping holes made by fisherman blasting the reefs with dynamic for quick catches, and dead zones created by entrepreneurs collecting aquarium specimens by squirting cyanide into the reefs to stun the fish had taken their toll. Greater surges could lie ahead, they were told.

In an account of their travels through the Philippines in 1988 and 1989, Broad and Cavanagh examine the unforeseen consequences - and unintended price - of the past decade of "development" in the Philippines. Plundering Paradise is a chronicle of short-term gain for the few, and long-term decline for the many. But, it is also at times a story of hope, of how the people most immediately threatened by the loss of their trees, fish, and farmland are fighting back.

The story of how prawn farming came to the Philippines, for example, illustrates how seemingly brilliant ideas for economic improvement carry unforeseen ecological and social costs. Over lunch, they discuss the economics of prawn farming with Godofredo Galicia, the mayor of Bataan, who makes a handsome income from his 50-hectare network of ponds. Each hectare of pond brings in $90,000 for every $5,000 in costs, Galicia explains. The returns are compelling, but startup costs of around $50,000 guarantee that only a few islanders reap the rewards.

But Broad and Cavanagh find that for every islander who does, many more people are paying an unintended price. Investors like Galicia once raised milkfish - a staple in the diet of Bataan's poor. When they switched to raising prawns, which are exported to Japan instead of being consumed locally, the price of milkfish shot up (50 percent between 1987 and 1988), and so did the rate of malnutrition, according to the head of the provincial bureau of fisheries Broad and Cavanagh interviewed.

As fish are the main source of protein for Bataan's 425,000 inhabitants, the shift to prawns has exacted a high social cost. And it is not only the food supply that is undercut. In other regions of the Philippines that have been prawn farming longer, the use of huge amounts of fresh water for the ponds has lowered water tables, resulting in salinized farmland and rationed water.

Broad and Cavanagh later interview an unnamed undersecretary from the Department of Trade and Investment in Manila, who calls prawns a "miracle export" and speaks of plans to greatly expand aquaculture. The pair asks him if this is wise, considering the possible adverse ecological costs. He looks at them with surprise. No one, he says, has briefed him on this.

The authors balance such disheartening stories, however, with some encouraging tales of resistance to resource plunder - such as that of the villagers of Palawan, who twice blockaded the road in front of their village to keep loggers from passing. The loggers had been clear-cutting trees without replanting, and the resulting erosion had ruined their farmland and silted their water. In the first blockade, the military stepped in after 12 days and beat the villagers with sticks. News of the attack was picked up by the international press, and the government suspended its concessions to the logging companies. When the logging continued illegally, the villagers blockaded the road again and forced the government to revoke the concessions. Although inadequate enforcement leaves the situation unresolved, the people are reportedly still fighting to protect their livelihood.

Broad and Cavanagh describe evidence of rural fishing villages organizing to fight back as well. They watch a slide show in a church in a remote village. The projector is powered by a gas generator that organizers from the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement, one of the Philippines' oldest nongovernmental organizations, have brought along with them. The slides feature pictures of Japanese trawlers and graphs showing the changes that have devastated the Philippines' fishing industry. Organizers from an advocacy group called LAMBAT, standing for "united Bataan fisherfolk," but also meaning "fishnet" in Tagalog, accompany the Rural Reconstruction workers. LAMBAT calls for more equitable division of fishing resources, rehabilitation of Manila Bay and Bataan's rivers, and stronger sanctions against companies dumping wastes into the bay. After watching the show and realizing they are not alone in their struggles, the villagers decide that they too should organize.

At times, Broad and Cavanagh push too hard to prove their thesis that big business and conventional development are to blame for all of the nation's woes, slipping into oversimplification. The authors also occasionally summarize conversations when the reader would rather hear the voice of the people without the benefit of filtering. Even so, the stories arc compelling. At the end of the book, Broad and Cavanagh widen their focus to draw out the implications of their travel experiences, both for the Philippines and for other parts of the developing world where resources are being plundered. At this point, given the relatively few detailed examples of successful local resistance to the forces of conventional development, the authors seem to leap beyond the book's supporting evidence to conclude that there is a new sustainable development movement that is likely to alter the course of the Philippines.

Rather than leap with the authors, the reader is left behind to wonder if the scattered activists aren't, like their compatriots in Palawan, standing in the path of a juggernaut too big to be stopped, propelled as it is by an immense foreign debt and the momentum of too much greed - and by too many impoverished Filipinos' undeniable instinct for basic survival. With an eye toward their children's futures, a few brave souls may decide not to yield. But, based on the evidence Broad and Cavanagh present, the trucks seem likely - at least for the time being - to keep coming.