Since his election in 2016, Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has directed a brutal anti-drug campaign rife with extrajudicial killings. Interpreting the war on drugs through the conceptual frameworks of penal populism, noble cause corruption, revanchism, and state terrorism, William N. Holden argues the war on drugs has failed to achieve its purpose, follows trends of authoritarian populism, and overlooks a more pressing social issue-the vulnerability of the Philippines to climate change.

William N. Holden is associate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Calgary and research associate with the Canadian Institute of Resources Law.