Environmental Restorative Justice in the Philippines: The Innovations and Unfnished Business in Waterways Rehabilitation

By enabling the voices of those afected by environmental harm to be heard through the courts and through organisational structures, the Philippines has made it possible to hold both governments and corporations accountable for harm, while creating a healing orientation. At the same time, applied case studies show that it can be very tricky to identify what harm clearly and defnitively can and should be repaired and who are the victims, ofenders, regulators, and broader community actors, when these roles are blurred and shifting across time and space. Tis chapter introduces and explores the innovations of the Philippines in ERJ and then looks at three examples showing how while national regulatory and legal frameworks may make ERJ possible, even sustained coordination and activism have not yet guaranteed happy endings for the waterways in question. Tree common threads unite the case studies: (1) questions of accountability across international borders; (2) complex trade-ofs between diferent livelihoods (which sustains life for the humans engaged) and more-than-human ecologies; and (3) the complexities about what relationships, places, bodies, and activities should be restored—and who gets to make those decisions.