Trajectories of land acquisition and enclosure: development schemes, virtual land grabs, and green acquisitions in Indonesia’s Outer Islands

McCarthy, John F.; Vel, Jacqueline A.C.; Afiff, Suraya

doi:10.9774/gleaf.9781315829654_14

Cited by 39 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…So-called 'green grabbing conservation organizations' (green grab being a style of land grab to ostensibly pursue conservation or environmental outcomes as core objectives) have also perpetuated the notion that conservation can succeed in the long run in places where people continue to live in poverty [41][42][43]. This is contrary to evidence that while a population is living in poverty, they will continue to exert pressure on natural resources with negative conservation outcomes [44][45][46].…”

Section: Flawed Assumptionscontrasting

confidence: 49%

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Estate Crops More Attractive than Community Forests in West Kalimantan, Indonesia

Langston

Riggs

Sururi

et al. 2017

Land

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Smallholder farmers and indigenous communities must cope with the opportunities and threats presented by rapidly spreading estate crops in the frontier of the agricultural market economy. Smallholder communities are subject to considerable speculation by outsiders, yet large-scale agriculture presents tradeoffs that they must navigate. We initiated a study in Sintang, West Kalimantan in 2012 and have returned annually for the last four years, building the baselines for a longer-term landscape approach to reconciling conservation and development tradeoffs in situ. Here, the stakeholders are heterogeneous, yet the land cover of the landscape is on a trajectory towards homogenous mono-cropping systems, primarily either palm oil or rubber. In one village on the frontier of the agricultural market economy, natural forests remain managed by the indigenous and local community but economics further intrude on forest use decisions. Conservation values are declining and the future of the forest is uncertain. As such, the community is ultimately attracted to more economically attractive uses of the land for local development oil palm or rubber mono-crop farms. We identify poverty as a threat to community-managed conservation success in the face of economic pressures to convert forest to intensive agriculture. We provide evidence that lucrative alternatives will challenge community-managed forests when prosperity seems achievable. To alleviate this trend, we identify formalized traditional management and landscape governance solutions to nurture a more sustainable landscape transition.

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Section: Flawed Assumptionscontrasting

confidence: 49%

“…Kenyabur Baru is a frontier village, specifically an agricultural market frontier village [42]. Frontier and disputed areas are where pressures for deforestation and degradation are increasing, and control is often insecure and in conflict.…”

Section: A Forest At Stakementioning

confidence: 99%

Estate Crops More Attractive than Community Forests in West Kalimantan, Indonesia

Langston

Riggs

Sururi

et al. 2017

Land

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“…This phenomenon of only partial implementation of plantation plans, or even no implementation at all, was not new. McCarthy et al [17] have situated the experiences with large Jatropha schemes in their historical context in Indonesia: many ambitious land use projects have led to unplanned results in the field, and failed projects have been succeeded by new initiatives. This history of large-scale land use projects also indicates that where projects have failed in terms of their original long-term objectives, some of the actors who have been involved might have benefitted for a limited short-term period.…”

Section: National Policies and Jatropha Projects In Sumbamentioning

confidence: 99%

Trading in Discursive Commodities: Biofuel Brokers’ Roles in Perpetuating the Jatropha Hype in Indonesia

Vel¹

2014

Sustainability

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Hypes about wonder crops raise critical questions about the actors and mechanisms that link optimistic narratives about the crops' potentials to actual production in the field. Jatropha curcas has been such a wonder crop, with a wide discrepancy between plans and reality. While many studies focus on agronomic or technological explanations of discrepancy and how to decrease it, much less is known about the influence of specific actors on creating a gap between high expectations and actual production in the field. This paper highlights the role of commercial brokers, who link potential investors and their capital to land and labor in the production areas. How have such commercial brokers contributed to perpetuating the optimism regarding the potentials of Jatropha plantations? The article presents the results of ethnographic research in a case study of commercial biofuel brokers at work in Sumba, one of the marginal areas in Indonesia targeted by policy makers for Jatropha cultivation. The study indicates that these actors have assembled their own short-term projects, translated narratives about future potential activities into the objects of trade in the present and produced optimistic figures about their projects to attract investors. In the conclusion, the paper warns against the unintended effects of green biofuel policies and discourses, when the latter get translated into a business opportunity for short-term private benefits instead of for the social and environmental goals for which the policies were originally intended.

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“…To answer these questions, a socio-legal approach was used [2,3], to analyze how law functions in society while taking a jatropha value chain as organizational unit of research. There can be various types of jatropha value chains, depending on the business model (e.g., whether production is for domestic use or export and the extent to which efforts are made to valorize side-products).…”

Section: Conceptual Framework and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Pioneering in Marginal Fields: Jatropha for Carbon Credits and Restoring Degraded Land in Eastern Indonesia

Rooijen

2014

Sustainability

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This paper highlights the role of a national Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in Indonesia as "pioneer" actor in the jatropha global production network, linking solutions for local problems with narratives concerning global concerns. Analysis of previous activities of the NGO positions their jatropha project as one period in a sequence of donor-funded appropriate technology programs. On the island of Flores in Eastern Indonesia the NGO aimed to establish community based jatropha cultivation exclusively on "degraded land", avoiding threats to food cultivation, and responding to local problems of land degradation and water resources depletion. In contrast with investors interested in jatropha based biofuel production for export, the NGO aimed at developing biofuel for local needs, including jatropha based electricity generation in the regional state-owned power plant. Anticipating progress in international and national regulations concerning the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) the 2008 project's design included carbon credit income as a main source of future project financing. Using methods of socio-legal studies and political ecology, this study indicates that when the economic feasibility of a project is based on the future financial value of a legally constructed commodity like carbon credits, the sustainability of the project outcome can be questionable. The author recommends precaution when it comes to including anticipated income from carbon credits in calculating the economic viability of a project, as price developments can fluctuate when political support and regulations change.

show abstract

Trajectories of land acquisition and enclosure: development schemes, virtual land grabs, and green acquisitions in Indonesia’s Outer Islands

Cited by 39 publications

References 14 publications

Estate Crops More Attractive than Community Forests in West Kalimantan, Indonesia

Estate Crops More Attractive than Community Forests in West Kalimantan, Indonesia

Trading in Discursive Commodities: Biofuel Brokers’ Roles in Perpetuating the Jatropha Hype in Indonesia

Pioneering in Marginal Fields: Jatropha for Carbon Credits and Restoring Degraded Land in Eastern Indonesia

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