Squatters

IN one of his recent weekly briefings, President Rodrigo Duterte reintroduced a seldom heard theory that squatters are responsible for deforestation and, consequently, flooding in low-lying areas. The main contention people have been used to hearing is that illegal logging and illegal mining are the major causes of deforestation. It is easy to equate squatting with all things that are illegal, and somehow this makes Duterte’s theory aligned with the main school of thought.

But his idea of squatters (categorized alongside the poor in general, which, similar to rounding off in numerical manipulations, is to me a lazy way of breaking down the attributes of poverty) being a driver of demand for forest products, and therefore blameworthy for deforestation, is a new topic which social scientists may find attractive to look deeper into.