Grace Wong, Sarah Ali, Helena Varkkey, Gordon John, Maria Brockhaus
5th International Forest Policy Meeting
Panel 4.4a
11 April 2024
University of Helsinki, Finland
Forest and agricultural spaces in Southeast Asia have been subject to contestation throughout history.
Various actors have shaped forest-agriculture landscapes through the territorialization of spaces, in shaping of political narratives and in determining allocation of resources. The increasing involvement of international actors such as multinational corporations and global development agencies has introduced new dimensions to these dynamics.
One central question is then who are benefitting from former and current forest and land use dynamics? What and who is enabling such transformations? We argue that social and environmental outcomes in forest-agricultural frontiers have histories rooted in distal flows of ideas, commodities and finance, and a critical global political economy perspective help to dissect the different actors’ underlying worldviews and aspirations for development and gain.
In the north Borneo state of Sabah, tree plantations were seen as a silver bullet to poverty reduction, sustainable development and to meeting global and domestic demands for timber and biomass. Our case study of the Bengkoka Peninsular, built on a literature review and interview material, is one of the poorest regions in Malaysia, despite the presence and promises of domestic and international actors and activities. Distal flows are deeply linked to these dynamics.
Shifting cultivation practiced by the local Rungus people in the Bengkoka Peninsula was deemed as “primitive” by the Sabah government, a common colonial trope, and a resettlement and afforestation programme to plant 60,000 ha of Acacia Mangium was introduced in 1982 to encourage “start of a new life”. Initial financing came from a World Bank loan, and expertise were provided by the World Bank, and Australian and Japanese forestry and development consultants. As of today, plantation management, harvesting and processing is linked to complex and constantly changing public-private corporate structures with diverse flows of financing, including Australian, American and Finnish equity funds with global investors, accompanied by varied sustainability discourses. Such investments have led to territorial exclusion of local land users, who have also gained some power from everyday acts of resistance amidst precarity, desperation and conflicts.
See also: FairFrontiers Research Brief Series 1 – When distal flows meet local realities