Disaster Capitalism in Post-Yolanda/Haiyan Eastern Visayas

Abstract

More than 6000 people died in Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan in November 2013. Four years later, the people of the Eastern Visayas are the most impoverished in the Republic. This is a consequence of the Aquino and Duterte governments' approach to postdisaster reconstruction. The approach can be characterized as disaster capitalism, undergirded by neoliberalism. The withdrawal of the United States from the 2015 Paris Agreement will likely lead to more disasters of such magnitude in the future. Furthermore, without opposition from organized masses, the disaster capitalism regime will likely be the operant approach to future disasters. The people of the Eastern Visayas have organized to oppose the Philippine government's lack of action and to demand just distribution of the governmental and international support.

With winds of 195 mph (315 km/h), Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan of November 2013 was the most powerful cyclone in recorded history to make landfall. The withdrawal of the United States from the 2015 Paris Agreement is expected to lead to accelerated global warming and more severe weather. As tropical cyclones draw their energy from the heat at the ocean surface, the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones will increase in the coming years, especially in the western North Pacific, already the region with the strongest and the highest number of storms.¹ In addition, sea level rise will lead to increased flooding from tropical cyclones.² The people of the Philippines will thus continue to be on the receiving end of climate injustice exacerbated by the failure of the United States to live up to its historical responsibility for global warming.³

An examination of the aftermath of Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan 4 years after the storm reveals yet other influences of policies emanating from Washington, DC. In Shock doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism, Naomi Klein argued that terrorist acts, wars, and disaster become opportunities for advancing the profits of the private sector disaster complex.⁴ Although the Trump administration did not invent disaster capitalism, many of its members have long been its proponents and beneficiaries.

As noted by Klein in No is not enough,⁵ Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has spent his career at Exxon, which suppressed its own corporate research that concluded that industrial emissions were causing climate change in 1978.⁶ Within 2 weeks of the flooding of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, then Indiana Congressman Mike Pence, the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, led the drafting of “Pro-Free-Market Ideas for Responding to Hurricane Katrina and High Gas Prices.” Among the policy recommendations were the suspension of the requirement that federal contractors pay prevailing, living wages, waiving environmental regulations, giving vouchers so that parents could send children to private and charter schools, and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

In the case of the Philippines, climate change and natural disasters have become opportunities for the political and economic elites of the Republic as well as transnational interests to assert their dominance over Filipino society. The Philippines, dominated by the United States since the end of the nineteenth century, continues under the sway of U.S. interests. Under the guise of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, the U.S. military has reinserted itself into the Philippines.⁷ Of note, the Benigno S. Aquino administration did not institute a disaster capitalism regime post-Yolanda under U.S. direction (as far as we know). The elites of the Philippines have been under U.S. tutelage for long enough to come up with neoliberal solutions on its own.

Underlying the workings of disaster capitalism is the ideology of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is perhaps best understood as an updating and intensification of capitalist ideology. The ideology holds that the solution to every problem is the so-called free market. The government is largely held to be an impediment to private competition. Winners in the marketplace are morally deserving of their riches, and losers have only their lack of fitness to compete to blame for their penury.⁸

Although the ideology is that the free market is paramount—in actuality, private, corporate interests are eager to feed at the trough of the public funds of the state.⁹ In the case of a high-profile disaster such as Yolanda/Haiyan, the coffers of the state were supplemented by international donations. The psychological and societal shock induced by a disaster is viewed by power elites as an opportunity to direct these funds to their corporate cronies.

The Typhoon and the Emergency Phase

Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan made landfall in southern Samar in the Eastern Visayas Region of the Philippines on November 8, 2013. It then cut a wide swath of destruction through the central Visayas. The city of Tacloban and the towns of Palo and Tanauan on Leyte suffered the largest number of casualties, mostly from the storm surge. The Philippine government's messaging failed to emphasize that a storm surge is akin to a tsunami. Residents of the coastal areas were not instructed to evacuate to higher ground, and the vast majority of the mortality was from drowning.

The official count of the dead was 6300, with an additional 1062 missing.¹⁰ However, the enumeration relied on survivors reporting on those who had died or were missing to government officials.¹¹ For families who were entirely obliterated, there were no survivors to report on them. Many inhabitants of the Eastern Visayas believe that the actual number was much higher, with estimates ranging as high as 18,000.^12,13

Having failed to anticipate the extent of the disaster, the Philippine government's response to the immediate aftermath was also inadequate. Basic necessities such as water, food, and shelter were lacking. Debris made the roads impassable. Law and order broke down, as survivors availed themselves of whatever was available. A state of emergency was declared in Tacloban, and the Armed Forces of the Philippines was deployed to quell popular unrest.

The Republic of the Philippines requested international assistance. The U.S. military provided much of the early heavy-lifting capacity to deliver supplies and equipment and evacuating survivors. Relief teams arrived from around the world, and governments pledged financial support.

Recovery, Rehabilitation, and Transition

In an iconic image, a man was photographed rebuilding his stilt house in the Bay of Tacloban on November 27, 2013, within weeks of Yolanda/Haiyan scouring bare the entire coastline.¹⁴ The viewer might ask, what would induce a man to rebuild his home in the same place where it had just been washed away? From an outsider's perspective, it would seem illogical to rebuild on the wreckage of disaster, on a site that continues to have obvious vulnerabilities. However, from the perspective of the resident of the Bay, to rebuild at the site of his former home is probably the conditionally rational¹⁵ choice. If one is poor, aid is not forthcoming from the government or any other source, and there are no better options—the rational path is to reclaim the right to occupy the space (not actually land) where one was before.

Before the storm, in 2012, the Eastern Visayas had the second highest prevalence of poverty (the first being the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao) in the nation, with 45.2% living below the poverty line, defined by the Philippine Statistics Authority as the minimum income to meet basic needs, including food.¹⁶ Subsequent to Yolanda/Haiyan, the Eastern Visayas has become the poorest region in the country.

The no build zone

Touted as “Build Back Better,” Reconstruction Assistance for Yolanda (RAY) [later renamed the Comprehensive Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Program] was promulgated by the Benigno S. Aquino administration a month after Yolanda/Haiyan. As part of the RAY, government authorities instituted a 40 m No Build Zone, which excludes the fisherfolk and others who lived and made their living on the shore—but which does not exclude business interests. The government has made a concerted effort to move people to the northern reaches of Tacloban, an area that has scarce water resources, as acknowledged by Mayor Alfred Romualdez.¹⁷

The great wall of Tacloban

In November 2015, the government of the Philippines announced an allocation of PhP 48 billion (∼$1 billion) to build a seawall or tidal embankment stretching 27 km from Tacloban to Tanauan, the areas of Leyte that were hardest hit by the storm surge. With financing from the national government's Department of Public Works and Highways, and technical assistance from the Japanese International Cooperation Agency, the 4 m high, 4 m wide wall is to be completed in 6 years.¹⁸

During the late twentieth century and into the present, the Japanese have constructed seawalls to protect their coastlines from tsunamis and typhoon storm surges. The town of Taro, on the northwest coast of Japan, built seawalls that were 10 m high. The March 11, 2011, Tōhoku Tsunami reached heights that easily breached the seawall.¹⁹ Many in Japan criticize the seawalls as wasteful projects that bestow public funds on politically connected construction companies. Some disaster experts believe that no matter how high seawalls are built, an tsunami that overwhelms them will eventually occur, and public funds are better spent on evacuation education and drills.²⁰

A simulation that superimposed tropical cyclones of the strength of Yolanda/Haiyan onto the historical tracks of storms in the Philippines demonstrates that much of the coastline of the archipelago is vulnerable to the level of damage wrought by Yolanda/Haiyan.²¹ For the Republic of the Philippines as a whole, this is a compelling reason not to expend a significant outlay in public resources on a massive public works project that would benefit at most a small portion of the coastline of one island.

Yolanda survivors, scientists, and environmental advocates note that the tide embankment project threatens a mangrove forest, swamps, and beach forests, and may lead to increased inland flooding. They note that the livelihoods of fisherfolks will be further endangered²² and that 14,000 households will be displaced.²³ Ric Saturay, resident geologist of Advocates of Science and Technology for the People, notes “The Tide Embankment is likely to disrupt sediment and water fluxes along the coastal areas, and across the structure itself. Inland drainage, wave dynamics and coastal sediment budgets will be affected by such disruptions.”²⁴

Corporate takeover of posttyphoon reconstruction

RAY largely funded infrastructure projects such as government buildings, roads, bridges, and flood control. Public funds were thus expended on contracts with already rich and powerful corporations rather than on the needs of the people, largely farmers who had lost their crops and their homes. Conditional cash transfers, microfinancing, and agricultural lending—rather than grants—were reflective of the neoliberal agenda of making disaster survivors further indebted to lenders.

Major corporations and business tycoons were placed in charge of various sectors. San Miguel Corporation, the Philippines largest brewery, was placed in charge of housing. Henry Sy and Lucio Tan, among the wealthiest corporate magnates in the Republic, were placed in charge of education.

Housing

One hundred days after the storm, only 0.17% of homeless families were housed in the so-called bunkhouses. Three years after the storm, in October 2016, Social Welfare Secretary Judy Taguiwalo, a progressive member of Duterte's Cabinet, noted that ∼200,000 victims of Yolanda did not receive emergency shelter assistance that was allocated for them.²⁵ Although the Aquino administration built 19,330 houses, under the Duterte administration, the total has reached 59,679 houses.²⁶

Livelihoods

Many people displaced from their communities, often by the 40 m No Build Zone (later renamed the No Dwelling Zone so as not to exclude commercial interests) rule, find themselves unable to make a living. Thus, fisherfolk are unable to pursue their prior occupation. Those living on marginal incomes, for example, pedicab drivers in Tacloban, find that most of their earnings go toward transportation to their jobsites.

The People's Response: People Surge

In the face of inaction by the government, farmers and workers of the Eastern Visayas first came together in the emergency phase to distribute water, food, and other supplies. They then came together to rehabilitate what had been destroyed by the typhoon. Farmers cooperated to work together to reclaim croplands. Communities pooled their resources to build typhoon-resistant shelters that could serve as community halls.

Farmers and workers organized into People Surge to demand services of the local and national governments.

The People's Agenda for change, presented to President Duterte on June 30, 2016, the day of his inauguration, included the following recommendations:

• Hold accountable government officials involved in the criminal neglect and corruption. … Typhoon Yolanda, and El Niño victims.

• Fast-track rehabilitation programs for the Super Typhoon Yolanda-affected areas and communities, and ensure to include livelihood concerns in housing and relocation programs.

• Legislate and enforce policies that will genuinely address the crisis of climate change by ensuring sufficient aid and reparations, community-based disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation, and social justice and human rights for climate refugees…²⁷

A year afterward, the people of the Eastern Visayas are disappointed that the Duterte administration has continued the pro-big business reconstruction programs of the preceding Aquino administration. Participants of a Disaster Survivors Summit held on July 24, 2017, on the occasion of President Duterte's second State of the Nation Address, emphasized their call for a focus on “livelihood, job security, and access to basic social services.”²⁸

As noted by Marissa Cabaljao, the Secretary General of People Surge,

For the past years, the poor have been blamed for their vulnerability. Whenever we assert for our right to stay in our dwelling places they dub as ‘danger zones’, the Yolanda card is thrown at us as if we had the luxury of choice to decide where to live. It is as if erecting our houses near the shorelines just so we can be closer to our sources of income is a choice, rather than a necessity, that we make for our daily survival.²⁹

Conclusion

Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan was an exceptional event on many levels. That it was the strongest typhoon to ever make landfall in recorded history is a consequence of anthropogenic climate change. The withdrawal of the United States from the 2015 Paris Agreement will ensure that the Philippines will continue to be battered by extreme weather. The poor planning for the deadly storm surge led to a death toll far higher than necessary. The inability of the government to adequately respond to the immediate aftermath became an opportunity for the United States to regain influence over its former colony.

Disaster capitalism, an ensemble of policies emanating from Washington, DC, was implemented in the Philippines in the aftermath of Yolanda/Haiyan. Of note, disaster capitalism was not directly imposed by the United States. Rather, the elites of the Philippines, as represented by the Aquino government, were sufficiently schooled in neoliberal doctrine to implement it themselves. Subsequent to the storm, the psychological trauma to the nation and particularly to the people of the Eastern Visayas made them vulnerable to the plans of the elites to “Build Back Better” through a neoliberal approach. A conscientized and organized populace has come together as People Surge to conduct popular disaster response measures, expose the workings of disaster capitalism, and demand that the government implement policies that assist them rather than its corporate cronies.

Footnotes

Author Disclosure Statement

No competing financial interests exist.

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