EMERGENT FOREST AND LAND REGIMES IN INDONESIA: NEGOTIATING THE FOREST-FARM DIVIDE

• Sponsoring Institution: National Institute of Food and Agriculture
• Project Status: COMPLETE
• Funding Source: HATCH
• Reporting Frequency: Annual
• Accession No.: 0228767
• Project Start Date: Oct 1, 2012
• Project End Date: Sep 30, 2017
• Program Code: [(N/A)]- (N/A)

Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
(N/A)
BERKELEY,CA 94720

Performing Department
Society and Environment

Non Technical Summary
States and global land and forest institutions invoke "land governance" to add value to and resolve conflicts over land. Land governance attempts to rationalize decision-making on the access to and use of land, how decisions are implemented, and how conflicting interests are negotiated, with a strong emphasis on the creation of formal, and generally private, property rights. However, while land governance agendas conjure rational solutions to land conflict, land governance itself remains a deeply politicized process. In particular, the programs and mechanisms through which land governance is put into practice have generated new sites and forms of contestation over land, and revived land conflicts that are deeply rooted in the histories of forests and nation-states. A fundamental aspect of both land governance and conflict has been a forest-farm divide: the imposition of a conceptual distinction between forests and agriculture and its translation into political-economic categories and sets of management practices that divide agrarian environments into jurisdictional management agencies with their own legal codes and state mandates, based on territorialized political arrangements. In Indonesia, historically, governmental efforts to separate farms from forests under the discrete jurisdictions of agricultural or forestry agencies have had profound impacts on production processes and ecologies as wells as on rights of access to and control over land. Research questions include: Under what conditions have new forms of the forest-farm divide generated contestation on the ground What new forms of forest and agricultural land use and control have resulted from recent changes in national and local governance How have migrations of capital and labor affected the constitution of forests I will examine two regional cases of land/forest governance in Indonesia: the teak forests of Central Java, and the border dipterocarps forest of West Kalimantan. I will compile a critical forest history that traces changes in governance in these two differently managed state forests, focusing on the last two decades. I will document the forms and reproduction of the historical forest-farm divide the specific institutional mechanisms and practices invented and deployed by state and other institutions to govern the forest-farm divide, the challenges by new institutions such as certification groups, agrarian reform NGOs and peasant organizations, and massive illegal logging operations in both sites. I will also examine how patterns of labor migration from forest areas in Java to sites of labor intensive production in cities and industrial areas are affecting the practice of forestry in labor source areas. This study will make important theoretical and empirical contributions to understanding the ways new forms of land and forest governance are being constituted and the ways that land is being struggled over in this neoliberal age. It will have implications for studying institutional and land use changes in forests and on private lands in California and the US.

Animal Health Component

(N/A)

Research Effort Categories

Basic

(N/A)

Applied

(N/A)

Developmental

(N/A)

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
604	1499	3080	10%
604	1122	3080	10%
604	6030	3080	10%
604	6230	3080	20%
608	6040	3080	10%
608	6099	3080	10%
608	6299	3080	10%
608	6010	3080	20%

Knowledge Area
608 - Community Resource Planning and Development; 604 - Marketing and Distribution Practices;

Subject Of Investigation
1499 - Vegetables, general/other; 6040 - Real estate; 6230 - Marketing systems and sectors thereof; 1122 - Strawberry; 6010 - Individuals; 6099 - People and communities, general/other; 6030 - The farm as an enterprise; 6299 - Marketing, general/other;

Field Of Science
3080 - Sociology;

Keywords

forests

land

management

history

society-environment interactions

Goals / Objectives
1.Annotated bibliography of Indonesian, English, and French language materials on Land and Forest Governance in Indonesia. 2.A book on the history of forest and land governance in two Indonesian forest regions, examining labor migration, eco-certification, illegal logging, and agrarian reform on policy and practices. 3.A research protocol for studying locally manifested global changes (labor migrations, illegal logging networks, eco-certification by private agencies, and agrarian movements) in forests applicable outside Indonesia.

Project Methods
1. Historical research in primary (archival) and secondary sources. 2. Interviews and multi-sited ethnography 3. Analysis of case study histories (to be selected) using extended case method.

Progress 10/01/12 to 09/30/17

Outputs
Target Audience:Forest, land, and other resource managers as well as governing institutions who are dealing with questions of changing property relations, migration in and out of forest and land management areas, and dependence on global commodities-- rubber, palm oil, livestock, gold, timber--for livelihood improvement. Relevant to NGO activists as well as environmental social scientists, government officials, land use planners. Changes/Problems:I did not compile an annotated bibliography on forest and land governance; rather, I compiled a bibliography on issues related to migration and forestland use. This bibliography was central to the development of the additional proposals for research funds. I also did not write a book but rather a series of articles on land and forest governance in Indonesia (on the same topics listed in my objectives). What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Field assistants in Indonesia have been trained and worked with me in these villages. For the NSF, my co-PIs and I have just hired 12 field research assistants and coordinators and have begun planning for the first ot 3 research training workshops. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Academic talks, meetings in Indonesia with government forestry officials, specifically the DirGen of Social Forestry and the Director of Forest Productionin Indonesia; meetings withland management NGOs, consultation with human rights groups in Indonesia; participation in a major Indonesian conference on land and forest tenure. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? I was awarded anNSF from the Geography and Spatial Sciences group.Published 3 additional articles in major journals. I gave at least 10 talks on the findings from my research in the US, Australia, China, Indonesia, Sweden, Finland, and France.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: 2017 "Review essay on Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act." Classic Reviews in Agrarian Studies Series. Journal of Peasant Studies 44:1, 309-321, DOI: 10.1080/0366150.2016.1264581.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: 2017 "Plantations and Mines: Resource Frontiers and the Politics of the Smallholder Slot." The Journal of Peasant Studies, 44:4: 834-869. DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2017.133969
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2017 Citation: 2017 "Entangled Territories in Small-scale Gold Mining Frontiers: Labor Practices, Property and Secrets in Indonesian Gold Country." World Development http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.11.003

Progress 10/01/15 to 09/30/16

Outputs
Target Audience:Forest, land, and other resourcemanagers as well as governing institutionswho are dealing with questions of changing property relations, migration in and out of forest and land management areas, and dependence on global commodities--rubber, palm oil, livestock, gold, timber--for livelihood improvement. Relevant to NGO activists as well as environmental social scientists, government officials, land use planners. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Used materials and practices and findings from the field in my classes, outside lectures, and with my graduate student group (in Landlab) to help them design their own long term field work and writing strategies. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Yes. Articles sent in draft and when finished to various participants, colleagues, and students. I gave several invited talks: What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Complete articles by June 2017, travel for research to Indonesia in summer of 2017, designing a course on "Violence and Natural Resource Management," hope to start work on a book manuscript in the summer. I am also invited to give several talks in 2017.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Based on the findings from fieldwork in 2015 and on the above goals, I submitted three major collaborative proposals : To NSF, NASA, and The Australian Research Council. Published 2 articles and have 3 more being revised to resubmit. Co-organized a conference on land in Indonesia. Invited speaker for the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography : gave annual lecture at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Accepted Year Published: 2016 Citation: 2016 Smallholder Gold Territories in an Urbanizing Space: Practice, Property, and Secrets in Indonesian Gold Country. World Development (in press).
• Type: Book Chapters Status: Published Year Published: 2016 Citation: 2016 The Plantation and the Mine: Agrarian transformation and the re-makings of land and smallholders in Indonesia. Indonesia Update 2015, Canberra: The Australian National University.

Progress 10/01/14 to 09/30/15

Outputs
Target Audience:Forest and land managers who are dealing with questions of changing property relations, migration in and out of forest and land management areas, and dependence on global commodities--rubber, palm oil, gold, timber--for livelihood improvement. Relevant to NGO activists as well as environmental social scientists, government officials, land use planners. Changes/Problems:The project proposal was written before I applied for and was granted a Fulbright Resarch Fellowhip. For the project I proposed, I chose to apply an ethnographic-historical approach rather than a large formal survey approach. This allowed me to explore more detailed stories of migrants and resource users, farmers engaged in new forms of farming, agroforestry, and mining. I hope to produce a book that will be rich with the stories of the people who are living these changes. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?7/5/2015 Invited Lecture. Universitas Gadjah Mada, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. "Gold Frontiers, Mobile Labor, and Agrarian Transformation in West Kalimantan." 7/8/2015 Invited Lecture. University Pertanian Bogor, Forestry Faculty. Joglo seminar: "Gendered land use, livestock, and labor transformations in East Java's montane forests." 6/9/2015 Plenary Lecture. "Frontier Capitalisms." Land Deals Politics Initiative (LDPI) Conference, Chiang Mai, Thailand. "LDPI Chiangmai." 6/9/2015 "Labor Migration and Forest Transformations in Java." Panel Presentation, LDPI, Chiangmai, Thailand. 5/17/2015. "Gold Mining and Labor Migration in West Kalimantan." Presentation for Fulbright Conference, 2015, Indonesia. Yogyakarta, Indonesia. [by skype] How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?They have been published; I have given the talks listed in the previous item. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?I hope to finish a book, or at least a draft of the manuscript; I will publish papers from the most recent talks (on gold mining, territorial resource management, migration and agrarian change).

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The goals were too broad. I have published many articles and chapters on the topics of land and forest governance in Indonesia. I also was awarded a Fulbright Senior Fellowship to carry out new research that looked at the relations between labor migration and forests in West Kalimantan and East Java (separate sites that were accidentally connected by a government sponsored migration project). Rather than illegal logging (because forests in the areas I worked were largely logged out or converted to plantation agriculture), I looked at illegal gold mining. I developed a research protocol for each site based on the context and the specific patterns of migration and resource production and extraction that were taking place in those sites. I carried out the fieldwork.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Mathevet, Rapha�l, Nancy Lee Peluso, Alexandre Couespel, and Paul Robbins. 2015. "Using Historical Political Ecology to Understand the Present: Water, Reeds, and Biodiversity in the Camargue Biosphere Reserve, Southern France. Ecology and Society 20: 4:17. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol20/iss4/art17/
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Kelly, Alice, and Nancy Peluso. 2015 Frontiers of commodification: State lands and their formalization. Society and Natural Resources 28:5:473-495.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Sowerwine, Jennifer, Christy Getz, and Nancy Lee Peluso. 2015 The Myth of the Protected Worker: Southeast Asian Farmers in California Agriculture. Agriculture and Human Values 1:36. Published online at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10460-014-9578-3#.

Progress 10/01/13 to 09/30/14

Outputs
Target Audience:Forest and land managers who are dealing with questions of changing property relations, migration in and out of forest and land management areas, and dependence on global commodities--rubber, palm oil, gold, timber--for livelihood improvement. Relevant to NGO activists as well as environmental social scientists, government officials, land use planners. Changes/Problems:The project proposal was written before I applied for and was granted a Fulbright Resarch Fellowhip. For the project I proposed, I chose to apply an ethnographic-historical approach rather than a large formal survey approach. This allowed me to explore more detailed stories of migrants and resource users, farmers engaged in new forms of farming, agroforestry, and mining. I hope to produce a book that will be rich with the stories of the people who are living these changes. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?I engaged in training two Indonesian practitioners, one with a BA in Forest History and the other with an MSc in Development Studies, in fieldwork practice, in-depth interviewing, questionnaire design, oral history collection. This training also helped with their own professional development because they are employed by research NGOs. Professional development: keynote speeches, workshop attendance, conference talks : all listed below, from beginning of project until now. 12/5/2014. "Territory in a Time of Property; Smallholder gold mining in Indonesia." ESPM colloquium. 12/3/2014. "Territory in a Time of Property: Smallholder gold mining in West Kalimantan, Indonesia." University of Copenhagen. Workshop on Territory convened by Christian Lund and Matteus Rasmussin. 10/2014 "Circular Migration and the Teak Forest in Java". Invited Lecture. CIFOR, Bogor, Indonesia 3/2014 "Frontiers of citizenship? Productions of gold, property, and territory in Kalimantan." Invited lecture. Cornell University, Southeast Asia Program. 3/21/2014. "The plantation and the mine: Conversion landscapes in colonial and contemporary Indonesia." Invited lecture. Cornell University Development Sociology Series on Land. 3/24/2014. "Golden Enclosures? Creating Value in the Borneo Landscape." American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting, San Francisco. Panelist, and Panel Organizer. 3/29-31/2014. "Political Forests and the struggles over rights of "Indigenous" and forest-based peoples of Indonesia." Invited Panelist, Bienal12, Ecuador, Discursive Program. Cuenca, Ecuador 4/2014 "The plantation and the mine: Agrarian transformations in colonial and contemporary Indonesia." Invited lecture. U of Hawaii. 4/2014 "Frontiers of small-holder gold mining in contemporary West Kalimantan and pre-colonial western Borneo." AAG Panel on Small Scale gold mining. 10/2014"New frontiers of land control?" Universitas Pertanian Bogor. Bogor, Indonesia 7/2/2014"The Plantation and the Mine: Order and Chaos in a contemporary Indonesian frontier." Keynote speech. University of Copenhagen. International Conference on Carbon-Land-Property 6/2014"Gold past and present in Indonesian Borneo." Invited lecture, University of Copenhagen. 11/2013Keynote Speaker, "Migrations and Land Rights: A Provocation." Colloque sur les Nouvelles Agricultures, INRA, Dijon, France. 11/2013Invited Speaker, "Formalizations of State Lands in Cameroon, Indonesia, and Ethiopia." Series on The Anthropocene, Museum of Natural History, Paris, France. 10/2013Invited Speaker, Bogor Agricultural University. "New Frontiers of Land Control." 10/2013Invited Participant, Workshop on Migration and Forests, CIFOR, Bogor Indonesia. 4/2013Conference Organizer, "Activism during and after the Suharto Regime in Indonesia," held at University of California, Los Angeles. 3/2013 "De-agrarianization of SE Asian Livelihoods? Potential challenges to the New Received Wisdom." Paper presented at the Association of Asian Studies Annual Meetings, San Diego, March 2013. 3/2013Invited Speaker, UCLA, Conference on Global Ecologies. "An Indonesian Ethnography of the New Global Gold Rush." 6/2012Keynote Speaker, "Globalizing influences? Situating Borneo's Environments, Cultures, and Conversions." Borneo Research Council Bi-Annual Meeting, Bandar Sri Begawan, Brunei, June 25-27. 3/2012 "Studying Forests and Land Control." Presentation for Workshop on Research Methods and Approaches, Dept. of Development Studies, University of Zurich, Switzerland. March 13. 3/2012"Situating trajectories of violent takings, territory, and terror in "Post"-conflict West Kalimantan, Indonesia." University of Zurich Annual Lecture in Development Studies, Zurich, Switzerland. March 12. 3/2012"Does Land Control Always Matter? Perspectives from the Forests' Edge in Java." Public Talk, University of Edinburgh, March 11. 3/2012Keynote address, "Situating Forest Violence in 'Post-Conflict' Landscapes of Southeast Asia," University of Edinburgh Symposium on Security and Natural Resources. March 10. 2/2012 "Un-enclosing Teak? Trees in Strange Places in Java." Presentation at Annual Meeting of Association of American Geographers. New York, NY. 2/2012"What's Nature Got To Do With It? A Situated Historical Perspective on Socio-natural Commodities." UC Davis Institute for the Humanities Colloquium on Environments and Societies. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?They have been published; I have given the talks listed in the previous item. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?I hope to finish a book, or at least a draft of the manuscript; I will publish papers from the most recent talks (on gold mining, territorial resource management, migration and agrarian change).

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? The goals were too broad. I have published many articles and chapters on the topics of land and forest governance in Indonesia. I also was awarded a Fulbright Senior Fellowship to carry out new research that looked at the relations between labor migration and forests in West Kalimantan and East Java (separate sites that were accidentally connected by a government sponsored migration project). Rather than illegal logging (because forests in the areas I worked were largely logged out or converted to plantation agriculture), I looked at illegal gold mining. I developed a research protocol for each site based on the context and the specific patterns of migration and resource production and extraction that were taking place in those sites. I carried out the fieldwork.

Publications

• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2014 Citation: Fairbairn, Madeleine, Jonathan Fox, S. Ryan Isakson, Michael Levien, Nancy Peluso, Shahra Razavi, Ian Scoones & K. Sivaramakrishnan. 2014. Introduction: New directions in agrarian political economy. Journal of Peasant Studies 41: 5: 653-666.
• Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2012 Citation: Peluso, Nancy Lee. 2012. "Whats Nature Got to Do With it? A Situated Historical Perspective on Socio-natural Commodities. Development and Change, 43(1):79-104.
• Type: Book Chapters Status: Published Year Published: 2014 Citation: *2014 Peluso, Nancy Lee, and Peter Vandergeest. In Susanna B. Hecht, Kathleen D. Morrison and Christine Padoch (eds), " Jungles, Forests and the Theatre of Wars: Insurgency, Counter-insurgency, and the Political Forest in Southeast Asia," in The Social Lives of Forests: Past, Present, and Future of Woodland Resurgence. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
• Type: Book Chapters Status: Published Year Published: 2013 Citation: *2013 Peluso, Nancy Lee, and Michael Watts. "Resource Violence." Chapter 19 in Carl Death, Editor, Critical Environmental Politics. London: Routledge.
• Type: Book Chapters Status: Published Year Published: 2012 Citation: 2012 Peluso, Nancy Lee. "Situer les 'political ecologies' : l'exemple du caoutchouc." pp 37-64 in Gautier, Denis and Benjaminsen, Tor A. (Eds.) Environnement, Discours et Pouvoir. L'approche 'Political Ecology. Versailles, France: Quae.

Progress 01/01/13 to 09/30/13

Outputs
Target Audience: Primarily other scientists; perhaps some NGOs; possibly some community members resident in villages or regions studied. Also relevant to researchers and practitioners (foresters and other land use planners) in California and other parts of the world with significant forest cover remaining. Changes/Problems: Nothing Reported What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? I have begun working with a graduate student on interdisciplinary approaches to studying land and forest transformations in Indonesia; I have also identified an Indonesian colleague through whom young Indonesian researchers will be recruited and trained to collect and analyze data in comparative sites. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Meetings with NGOS in Indonesia; lab meetings with interested graduate students and faculty at UCB. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Plan a field trip to Java and Kalimantan in the summer or fall to identify research districts for tracking land use and property changes in and around forest areas. Will increase intensity of data collection based on the findings of the Indonesian student employed for preliminary (secondary) data analysis. Will try to map circular migration out of forest areas in selected forested districts of Indonesia.

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? I have co-authored an NSF proposal to exapnd on these topics in Indonesia. Partial bibliography completed with English and Indonesian language materials. I have also begun working with an Indonesian colleague to analyze data on circular migration out of forest areas and data on forest cutting.

Publications

Progress 01/01/12 to 12/31/12

Outputs
OUTPUTS: Land Formalization paper presented at a meeting of the sub-group on Livelihoods in Brussels, June 2012. Comments received for publication in a journal and for presentation to EU sponsors. Book and Special Issue were distributed widely on line and in print. The Special Issue's introduction written by Peluso and Lund has already become one of the top ten most-downloaded articles of the journal. The piece on Forest and Land Issues in Java has been translated into Indonesian and is being disseminated via the Bogor Agricultural University and various land reform and forest management NGOs in Indonesia. I will present findings from it at the Association of Asian Studies meetings on an invited panel on "land" in March 2013. With another ESPM colleague, I have written a larger proposal, submitted it to NSF, and we are hoping to hear by June if we were successful. If successful, we will conduct 5 years of research in 3 parts of Indonesia looking at forest-agricultural plantation impacts, and have a comparable project looking at these interactions in Sonoma or Mendocino counties. PARTICIPANTS: Not relevant to this project. TARGET AUDIENCES: Students, NGOs, government officials in Indonesia, researchers PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.

Impacts
The EU is planning to use findings from the Land Formalization paper and other papers presented at the Brussels meeting in its upcoming proposals and policies concerning formal and informal rights to land and resources in the Global South. The book has already been cited a great deal, despite being very recently published. NGOs in Indonesia are using the materials to consider strategies for advocacy around land rights; officials in the forestry department have also read the material and it is being used in some classes in the UGM agricultural school. I am teaching a graduate class in interdisciplinarity next year, with an emphasis on land and I will use these papers in the class.

Publications

• Peluso, Nancy Lee, Alice Kelly, Kevin Woods. 2012. "Land Formalization: Sedimented Histories and Society-Nature Relations." Bogor, Indonesia:Center for International Forestry Research.
• Peluso, Nancy Lee and Christian Lund (eds). 2012. New Frontiers of Land Control. Taylor and Francis. Book version of Peluso, Nancy Lee and Christian Lund (eds). Special Issue of Journal of Peasant Studies 38:4 (Sept.) 667-681.
• Peluso, Nancy Lee, 2012. "Emergent Forest and Land Regimes in Java. In New Frontiers of Land Control. Taylor and Francis. Book version of Peluso, Nancy Lee, and Christian Lund (eds). Journal of Peasant Studies 38:4(Sept.)811-836.