Participation and power in Indonesian oil palm plantations

Abstract

Participation is commonly accepted to be a process that brings stakeholders together to define issues and create mutually beneficial outcomes. In the fields of development and natural resource management, participation is such a widely accepted part of policy that it is rare to find a project or programme that does not exhort the practice of participation and stakeholder engagement. However, despite the considerable weight of orthodoxy advocating greater participation and stakeholder engagement in development, the participative processes and power relations underpinning such engagement are rarely analysed in careful detail. This is particularly the case with oil palm plantations in frontier Indonesia and the interactions between the principal stakeholders at the plantation-community level. There has been minimal analysis to date appraising how such stakeholders interact in relation to a plantation, and there is limited description outlining the divergent viewpoints from such stakeholders. The paper argues that one local stakeholder group, oil palm smallholders, usually possess some agency in their decision-making and interactions with a plantation organisation but that existing structural and informal modes of interaction often limit the transformative potential of participation for all stakeholders.

Social learning through a REDD+ ‘village agreement’: Insights from the KFCP in Indonesia

“…Other evidence is shown when a large proportion of community members move towards concerted action as a result of changes in understanding a particular issue (Ison and Watson, 2007). While there is a risk that action-based consensus may advantage powerful vested interests (Mohan, 1996;Mohan and Stokke, 2000;Gillespie, 2012;Howitt et al, 2013), this risk can be minimised via an appropriate design for community participation in the decision-making process (Brewer, 2013). Moreover, project proponents must pay careful attention to the complexities of power and power relations among community members, and between the community and project developers (Cooke and Kothari, 2001).…”

Economic Analysis of Diesel-Fuel Replacement by Crude Palm Oil in Indonesian Power Plants

“…Replacing diesel with CPO to fuel a power plant could eventually reduce production costs by between 40% and 60%, according to Indonesia-Investments [25]. Based on the current price of oil, the conversion of a 15-MW diesel-fueled power plant will save up to $4.5 million per year in electricity production costs [25,44].…”

Political contestation, resource control and conservation in an era of decentralisation at Indonesia's Kerinci Seblat National Park

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