In the Philippines, bans on the use of plastic bags have been enacted in 489 cities and towns as a means of stemming waste, while proposed legislation for a nationwide prohibition has been pending for several years. The national single-use plastic (SUP) ban is a significant step forward in mitigating plastic pollution and climate change, but it will have economic and employment impacts on firms and workers. This study fills in a gap by estimating the employment impact of a national ban using firm-level data from official surveys. An exploratory labour-centric methodology interrogates workers’ perceptions of a ban through interviews with unionists. The study finds the employment effect to be significant, as 32,000 workers in almost 500 SUP firms will be directly affected, and another 9.000 workers in the midstream plastic industry will be indirectly impacted. Workers have a range of opinions regarding a proposed ban – from opposition because of the expected layoffs to acceptance as a necessary solution to plastic pollution. However, support for a SUP ban is predicated on the existence of alternative employment for affected workers. The study reveals that workers are receptive to a message that integrates both environmental concerns and labour standards. However, there is a serious lack of information dissemination from plastic firms and government agencies about the proposed SUP ban and the necessary adaptation measures to prepare workers for a transition. The economic, sociocultural, and institutional barriers to an effective just transition for SUP workers are substantial but not insurmountable.

In this article, we investigate the semiotic practices of Filipino K-pop fans (KpopStans) who supported the 2022 presidential bid of former Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo. Through digital ethnography, we analyze the ways in which fans entextualized and resemiotized signifiers of K-pop (e.g., lyrics, imagery, fancams) to create hybrid political messages that translated familiar fandom aesthetics into forms of electoral participation. We argue these practices constitute “civic stanning”—enactments of fan-based citizenship that leverage the cultural resonance of K-pop to build solidarities around Robredo, exercise political agency, promote values of conviviality and progress, and navigate the restrictive political climate of the Philippines. The study highlights the role of popular culture in mediating transnational flows and shaping emergent modes of political activism.

Drawing on a range of fieldwork interviews, this paper discusses the opposition of civil society to nonferrous metals mining in the Philippines. The efforts of the Philippine government to enhance development by encouraging the extraction of the nation’s mineral resources by foreign corporations is discussed, as is the opposition of Philippine civil society to these efforts. This opposition to nonferrous metals mining has involved protests, litigation, administrative proceedings, and implementation of mining moratoriums by local governments. The paper concludes with an examination of the respective costs and benefits of a mining-based development paradigm in the context of the way in which many Filipinos view foreign extraction of their nation’s resources.

This paper discusses an emerging role for Philippine NGOs—building and maintaining intersectoral cooperation among various sectors of society to tackle key issues like agricultural development, HIV/AIDS, and agrarian reform. The three case studies elaborated in the paper show that Philippine NGOs play important intermediary and bridging functions crucial for the success of multistakeholder partnerships. NGOs are well equipped for this because of their middle-class and professional nature and because of various characteristics like autonomy, flexibility, and the ability to mobilize resources.

The Philippine nonprofit sector, including nongovernmental organizations, have enjoyed an enabling and facilitative state environment since the People Power Revolution of 1986. It currently faces a legitimacy challenge in terms of its ability to represent the people, to be accountable to them, and to show its autonomy and difference from the state. It also confronts the challenge of how it can deliver services more effectively as it expands and professionalizes. Raising resources through government, philanthropy, and income generation also continue to be major challenges.

Using novel nighttime lights and high-resolution atmospheric reanalysis, this paper exploits exogenous fluctuations in temperature and precipitation to identify the causal effects of weather disturbances on local economic growth in the Philippines – the world’s most disaster-prone country. Our findings reveal that heightened temperature variability significantly dampens growth, but only in poor municipalities. This effect persists for at least 2 years after the initial shock. Furthermore, the relationship between weather shocks and growth is nonlinear. We also demonstrate that adverse weather events impede growth by disrupting agricultural productivity and essential service sectors, including wholesale and retail trade, health and education. Overall, our results highlight the importance of understanding the distributional impact of climate change within countries, its underlying mechanisms, and how economic development policies can help shield poor municipalities from the vagaries of the weather.

On what basis may the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) exercise its jurisdiction over States that have withdrawn from the Rome Statute? Is it enough that the alleged crimes occurred before the State withdrew from the treaty? When acting proprio motu, does the Prosecutor have to seek authorization from a Pre-Trial Chamber before they are allowed to proceed with the criminal investigation post-State withdrawal? This issue has received only cursory attention from the ICC and the academic community but the lack of clarity around the Court’s post-withdrawal jurisdiction is a serious concern, and not only for States that have withdrawn their membership (such as the Philippines). It is important because, as things stand, and given what the Court has said so far, States parties cannot be sure of the parameters of the Court’s temporal jurisdiction, nor of the legal effects of a State’s withdrawal.

In this paper, I marked the critical alter-political works of urban scholar-activists in the Philippines. Slums are at the heart of capitalist dispossessions. Slumdwellers live, survive, negotiate, and resist on an everyday basis. In the Philippines, the struggles of slum community organisations are strongly influenced, formed, and pulled in divergent ideological trajectories by contending larger political formations.

I draw on my own experience and that of 20 Filipino urban scholar-activists with varied political commitments, reflecting on decades of community work, to highlight the alter-works and challenges of navigating the web of political heterogeneity within urban poor organisations and movements. By scholar-activists, I do not refer solely to those who are based in universities, but to the many who struggle every day to unearth subaltern political knowledges and collectively fight for the right to adequate housing, as well as, for some, the right to the city. I enumerate the multiple functions and necessary labours of being 'embedded' in these complex politics. We engage in political advising, framing, networking, organizing, translating, and capacity-building. Caught in a complex web that may necessitate strategic essentialisation, silencing, and foreclosures, scholar-activists play a crucial role of strategic facilitation that connects collective forms of living among urban surplus lives and corrodes neoliberal urban dispossessions. These alter-works are continuous efforts towards situated solidarities, where urban scholar activists critically draw from and reshape ‘inherited’ social movement frames and strategies grounded on actually existing subaltern realities, capacities, and political opportunities.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused massive disruptions in the job market. It also put the gig economy in the spotlight since many workers began seeing it as a viable career option to their 9-to-5 jobs. Even before the pandemic, the gig economy was forming a significant portion of the workforce in different countries. In light of these changes, this paper has sought to understand the journey and experiences of both location-dependent and purely online gig economy workers in the Philippines. We conducted focus group discussions (FGDs) to explore the experience of those working in the gig economy in the Philippines, with two out of the four groups working as location-dependent gig workers while the remaining two groups working as purely-online gig workers. The study revealed that while gig workers appreciated the flexibility of managing their own time, they also expressed the need for greater government support and regulation to ensure that their welfare is protected. Moreover, while gig work has created additional opportunities for many, certain drawbacks have also emerged over time. It is essential for the government to intervene to safeguard the well-being of these workers, and ensure that labour laws and regulations are adapted to these new circumstances.

Biodiversity knowledge gaps and biases persist across low-income tropical regions. Genetic data are essential for addressing these issues, supporting biodiversity research and conservation planning. To assess progress in wildlife genetic sampling within the Philippines, I evaluated the scope, representativeness, and growth of publicly available genetic data and research on endemic vertebrates from the 1990s through 2024. Results showed that 82.3% of the Philippines’ 769 endemic vertebrates have genetic data, although major disparities remain. Reptiles had the least complete coverage but exhibited the highest growth, with birds, mammals, and amphibians following in that order. Species confined to smaller biogeographic subregions, with narrow geographic ranges, or classified as threatened or lacking threat assessments were disproportionately underrepresented. Research output on reptiles increased markedly, while amphibian research lagged behind. Although the number of non-unique authors in wildlife genetics studies involving Philippine specimens has grown steeply, Filipino involvement remains low. These results highlight the uneven and non-random distribution of wildlife genetic knowledge within this global biodiversity hotspot. Moreover, the limited participation of Global South researchers underscores broader inequities in wildlife genomics. Closing these gaps and addressing biases creates a more equitable and representative genetic knowledge base and supports its integration into national conservation efforts aligned with global biodiversity commitments.