"Critical Reflections on the Politics of Redistributive Land Reform in the Philippines"
Saturnino M. Borras Jr. St. Mary's University, Nova Scotia

One of the most politically contentious social issues in the Philippines is land ownership distribution as well as the attempts at carrying out redistributive land reforms. When the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law was passed in 1988, peasant movements rejected it as 'pro-landlord' and 'anti-peasant', and critics dismissed it and predicted a complete failure. Twenty years into its implementation, the land reform program was able to redistribute half of the total agricultural land (6 million hectares) to about two-fifths of the total agricultural households (3 million households). It is a significant partial land reform, in the Philippine context and in comparative perspective. How do we interpret and explain this unexpected outcome? What are the possible socio-political and economic implications of this partial reform? What are the key political issues at the agrarian reform front today and in the near future? These are some of the key issues that will be discussed in the presentation.

Saturnino ('Jun') M. Borras Jr. (PhD in Development Studies, Sept. 2004, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague) is Canada Research Chair in International Development Studies at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His research interests include (trans)national agrarian movements, state-society relations in rural development, and land issues. He is the author of Pro-Poor Land Reform: A Critique (2007), Competing Views and Strategies on Agrarian Reform, Volume 1/International Perspective and Volume 2/ Philippine Perspective (2008). He (co-)edited the volume Transnational Agrarian Movements Confronting Globalization (2008, with Marc Edelman and Cristóbal Kay) and Critical Perspectives in Rural Development Studies (2009). He is Adjunct Professor at the College of Humanities and Development (COHD), China Agricultural University in Beijing. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Journal of Agrarian Change and is the new Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Peasant Studies. He tries to contribute towards bridging academic research, development policy practice and political activism. He is a Fellow of the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute or TNI (www.tni.org) and of the California-based Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy (www.foodfirst.org). He has been deeply involved in rural social movements in the Philippines and internationally since the early 1980s. He is one of the founders of the international agrarian movement La Via Campesina. He was a member of its International Coordinating Commission in 1993-1996. He was born and grew up in a small agricultural town in the Bicol region of the Philippines. Email address: sborras@smu.ca

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