Access to fisheries in the maritime frontier of Palawan Province, Philippines

Abstract

Globally, capital investments are intensifying extraction and contestation over resources in frontier spaces, yet most discussion has focused on terrestrial frontiers. This paper shifts this focus to bring a scaled political ecology approach to examine the access dynamics of fisheries trade in the maritime frontier of Palawan province, the Philippines. We adapt the linked concepts of access and exclusion to highlight how access dynamics unfold at multiple scales. At the local scale, social relations of class and ethnicity serve as important markers of difference that inform control over access to fisheries resources. At the regional scale, we show how engagement in fisheries trade is also shaped by broader historical and geographical contexts of migration and land use change. Access dynamics unfold at multiple inter-related scales to heavily influence the differentiated social outcomes of expanded fisheries trade.