Development narratives, notions of forest crisis, and boom of oil palm plantations in Indonesia

‘The fridge in the forest’: Historical trajectories of land tenure regulations fostering landscape transformation in Jambi Province, Sumatra, Indonesia

“…Responsibilities were distributed amongst institutions in charge of forested areas and the remaining areas. The National Land Agency (NLA or Badan Pertanahan Nasional) governs land-use and land tenure for the non-forested area, while the Ministry of Forestry governs the area assigned as forest land (Hein, 2013;Indrarto et al, 2012;McCarthy, 2006;Rachman, 2011;Sahide and Giessen, 2015;Susanti and Maryudi, 2016). In the 1980s, a mapping exercise was carried out by the Ministry of Forestry to identify areas of responsibility.…”

“…Indonesia has attracted increasing global attention in recent years, due to deforestation, excessive resource extraction and large-scale cultivation of monoculture boom crops, especially oil palm (Potter, 2008: 69;Susanti and Maryudi, 2016). In the process of accelerating economic growth, land has been turned into a contested commodity.…”

Socio-economic factors influencing land-use and land-cover changes in the miombo woodlands of the Copperbelt province in Zambia

“…For example, Schwartz and Caro (2003) noted that socio-economic factors alter or deplete forest cover and also alter forest structure and species composition. Among the socio-economic factors, agriculture expansion (Defries and Pandey, 2010;Kamwi et al, 2015;Vu et al, 2014., Sunderland et al, 2017, population growth (Giliba et al, 2011;Kamwi et al, 2015;Ariti et al, 2015;Yohannes et al, 2018), daily livelihood needs (Giliba et al, 2011), oil palm plantation establishment (Austin et al, 2017;Susanti and Maryudi, 2016) and policy shifts and regime change (Ariti et al, 2015;Maryudi and Sahide, 2017;Yohannes et al, 2018;Rahman et al, 2018) are reported to be among the most critical factors driving LULC change. Furthermore, other studies noted that household size, education, period of residence, distance to forest reserve and farmland size (Mitinje et al, 2007;Giliba et al, 2011) influence deforestation and degradation of forest resources.…”

On yield gaps and better management practices in Indonesian smallholder oil palm plantations

“…In Rokan Hulu logging and oil palm companies recently developed the infrastructure necessary to open new lands, and land is now more easily available than labour (Feintrenie et al, 2010a). Although for large companies opportunities for expansion are limited nowadays, there still are plenty of smaller 'empty' lands which appear to be grabbed by relatively small-scale investors (Susanti and Maryudi, 2016;Bissonnette and De Koninck, 2017). Whilst the goal of intensification for land saving appears worthwhile, a Jevons paradox lurks as intensification makes it more interesting to transform land into oil palm.…”