“Kaingeros” (slash and burn farmers), San Fernando, Philippines. April 2015. 

During one of the hottest and driest summers on record, a mother and her young children tend a fire which threatens to spread to nearby forest. 

Since 1990 Palawan been a designated Unesco Biosphere Reserve, a place where the system of government is purposefully designed for people to live and work in harmony with nature. Yet shifting cultivation – slashing and burning vegetation to plant “kaingin” upland rice – is a tradition and way of life for many Palaweños. Back when the islands were sparsely populated the impact of this type of farming was minimal but since the islands’ population has increased more than tenfold over the past seventy years it is now seen by many as a threat to one of the last remaining havens for tropical wildlife and forests.