by George Banez
“Biologists seem to care more about eagles than the people living in the forests with them.” The executive director of the Social Development Research Center (SDRC), an anthropologist, told me that in 1989. The young me, a budding environmental biologist, disagreed.
I explained that we protect eagles because of the role they play in sustaining the environment where humans also live. Moreover, eagles struggling to survive could only be a sign of their home forest’s poor “health.”
In fact, human-driven environmental degradation that could potentially wipe out an eagle population poses a threat to all. As the forest disappears, so do the ecological services it provides –among them a steady water supply vital to growing food and human survival.
The director was not impressed. Nevertheless, he asked me to manage the information clearinghouse on the Philippine uplands under SDRC. I accepted the challenge. But coming from a natural sciences background, the word “uplands” meant nothing more than location to me. I soon realized that “uplands” carried with it socio-political and economic baggage – ownership, resource access, and land use conflicts.
To Each His Own Silo
Similarly, I learned on the job at SDRC that social scientists, or those focused on human welfare, tend to sidestep the underlying mechanisms that drive natural phenomena. What remained most salient to advocates are applications of scientific discoveries or “technoscientific imperatives” for profit. Yet paradoxically, scientists have often been excluded from capitalist ventures and their data overlooked in policymaking.
Today, this siloed misunderstanding reminds me of the parable, the blind men and the elephant; each one touches a different part and mistakes it for the whole. But encounters between social and natural scientists need not be antagonistic. Collaborations are necessary. Science and technology alone cannot solve human problems. But scientific breakthroughs are useful tools in overcoming them.
This conundrum came back to me last October 2025 as I listened to the launch of the book, “Halo Halo Ecologies, The Emergent Environments Behind Filipino Food.” It was déjà vu when I read it.
Released April 2025 by the University of Hawaii Press, the book is a collection of papers on the foodways of Filipinos and “Filipinx,” the gender-neutral term for the people of the Philippines. “Filipinx” here included those residing outside the Philippines, and second-generation immigrants to the U.S., or Americans born to at least one Philippine-born parent.
The book gave voice to the “Filipino diaspora,” those who sought better opportunities elsewhere. Those yearning to recapture their imagined Filipino identity were given as much presence as other groups constantly on the move– seafarers, displaced, or environmental refugees-to-be. After all, the emigrant, urban or rural poor, indigenous Igorot Kanakana-ey, “Lumad” student, and Tawi-Tawi seaweed farmer have the same need: Eat to survive.
Says the Blind Man to the Other
“Foodways,” the term book authors use, encompasses the entire system of food production, consumption, and their socio-cultural meanings. Somehow, I missed any reference to geography or the physical factors that shape these foodways, like the country’s tropical climate, shallow soil, or mountainous geology.
For instance, the Philippines is an archipelago of 7,641 islands on the Pacific rim. Ashfall from volcanic eruptions, landslides from earthquakes, flooding from typhoons, and the resulting siltation of coral reefs have happened long before exacerbation from climate change. These geological events naturally occur, and they influence foodways as much as cultural heritage or political history.
Editors Alyssa Paredes and Marvin Joseph F. Montefrio of the Chapter on “Agahan,” the Tagalog word for “breakfast,” introduced what the subtitle alluded to: how foodways intersecting with the environment is the new way of “gastroecological storytelling.” They frame the transformation of foodways through the lens of intensifying environmental problems. Contributing authors discuss not only the impact of these disruptions on vulnerable Filipino communities but also how they cope.
Written by young academics in the social sciences and humanities, the book contemplates the many disadvantages that beset Filipinos and Filipino societies, explained away by their colonial and post-colonial histories. Initially, I worried that with youthful eyes came “shifting baselines.” But I felt more unsettled sensing “victimhood” with every mention of discredited movements like “Green Revolution” or the enduring hegemony of corporate colonialism.
Not that I think that the “Green Revolution,” neoliberal ideologies, or unfettered capitalism have disappeared. In fact, they have been supplanted by much worse: “Agro-Industrial complex” and “conglomerate imperialism.” I know these words more aptly describe the world view of global actors in power. Understandably, the authors’ perspective reflects the lived experience of those at the receiving end of global economic and cultural domination.
Still, I believe it would help to include a paragraph on the Philippines’ standing among 195 nations in the “Post-Post Cold War World.” Acknowledging that humans now live in a “Post-COVID Global Order” and an era of “Polycrisis” may ease my concern that the greater threat to food security from climate change is overlooked.
(Mis)Understanding Each Other
The natural scientist in me sees disruptions to foodways less as a function of inequity, but as damage to the environment that needs mending. Yes, humans suffer differentially, but scientists view those as problems to solve as well.
For example, scientists try to mitigate the effects of extreme weather on food production by addressing global warming. They find ways to reduce greenhouse gases by generating energy without burning fossil fuels.
This disparity in perspective is the reason why practitioners of both disciplines need to talk. Terminologies, particularly those borrowed from the other discipline, need to be defined or redefined in their new context.
Explaining “context” matters. For example, foodways cannot exist outside food chains within the environment’s food web. To survive, humans eat plants and animals that also eat plants or other animals. All life on earth requires energy to carry on living and a source of raw materials to build their bodies. Humans, including Filipinos, derive both from the food they extract or grow in the environment.
Clarification Needed
In the book title, “Halo Halo” shaved ice dessert represented well the “mix-mix” character of foodways and all 18 writers’ perspectives. But the word “Ecologies” clearly refers to something other than the plural form of “Ecology,” a branch of study in biology.
Ecology, as a discipline, investigates the relationship between living things and their surroundings. It is not synonymous to “environment” the same way that “sociologies” cannot stand in for “societies.”
However, “Environment” in the subtitle, “The Emergent Environments Behind Filipino Food,” could also refer to the scientists’ use of the word. So, as I continued reading, I often wondered whether authors were using scientific terminologies metaphorically or simply misappropriating them.
What Society Says
In the ‘90s, the young me learned that “uplands” were lands that tilted upwards to a height of 18 meters over a 100-meter stretch. Uplands in the Philippines, along with the resources in them, are state-owned. Fifty five percent (55%) of the country falls under this definition.
With a total land area of 115,831 sq mi (30 million hectares) fragmented into small islands, these uplands are next to the country’s 22,549 mi (36,289 km) coastline. Between housing needs for 116 million Filipinos and rice production, little flatlands are left for grazing animals, like cattle.
Last estimated in 2000, at least 20 million indigenous peoples and subsistence farmers lived in these state-owned uplands. Until the 1997 Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA) recognized Ancestral Domain rights, they were rendered “illegal” settlers.
Uplands are also considered “forestlands.” Regardless of whether they have trees or not, uplands are forestlands according to Presidential Decree No. 705, or the Revised Forestry Code of 1975.
Ecologists’ Word
In stark contrast, ecologists define “forest” as a self-sustaining unit of environment called “ecosystem.” Although trees may be the most noticeable, a wide variety of living organisms live in the forest. They interact with each other and the environment’s non-living components to keep the forest ecosystem “alive.”
Ecologists refer to this “variety” as “biodiversity.” The term “biodiversity” does NOT refer to flora and fauna, or the assembly of plants, animals, and microorganisms. So, the “loss of biodiversity” in a stable ecosystem means it goes from nurturing many kinds of organisms to sustaining just one or two in a monoculture, like a coconut plantation vulnerable to a pest. Introduced species, like imported cattle, that decimate others, threaten the diversity-dependent stability of a self-sustaining ecosystem.
Humans live in ecosystems. Human populations derive more than food, water, or air from them. Even non-extractive livelihoods rely on intact forests, lakes, or coral reefs. These ecosystems function together as units called “landscapes” or “seascapes.” Together under the earth’s atmosphere, they form the “biosphere,” the environment where all human economic-political activities also take place.
These technical terms encompass physical entities and the interactions among them at each level of organization. This biologist encourages greater care in the use of scientific jargon for more productive interdisciplinary problem-solving.
About the Author:
George Banez is a writer of Filipino descent and is a retired non-profit professional living in Florida.