• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Between localism and internationalism: multi-level governance, land use decision-making and REDD+ in Central Kalimantan province, Indonesia Anna Jeanne Power Sanders ORCID ID 0000-0001-5981-5640 Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy October 2019 School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences Faculty of Science The University of Melbourne Parkville, Australia Abstract While there has been considerable progress in developing global environmental policies and goals, implementing these at a local level has proven extremely challenging. This study explores how internationally formulated objectives for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) are implemented in frontier landscapes undergoing rapid transition. I focus on subnational implementation of REDD+ in relation to land use decision-making in Indonesia. International donors and agencies have actively promoted REDD+ to reduce carbon emissions, improve forest management and broaden livelihood options in developing countries. Indonesia has been a priority country for REDD+ due to high rates of deforestation and continuing land use change. In this thesis, I use multi-level governance (MLG) concepts to investigate how internationally formulated objectives for REDD+ interact with existing systems of land use governance at multiple levels. I incorporate actor-network theory (ANT) within an overall practice orientation to address the following questions: (i) how are land use decisions made, (ii) how is REDD+ being implemented within interacting multi-level governance arrangements, and (iii) how do decision-making processes in these arrangements relate to multiple outcomes? These questions are underscored by a concern with social and environmental justice, and related to this, a concern with ethics in global environmental governance and novel mechanisms such as REDD+. In 2010, Central Kalimantan was selected as the official REDD+ priority province of Indonesia. The province has had a long and complicated history of governance interventions and is currently undergoing rapid land use changes, such as the establishment of large industrial oil palm plantations. I used a case study approach, centring on the southern tropical peatlands of Central Kalimantan, where a variety of REDD+ projects have been implemented. Data was collected during 10 months of field research conducted between 2013 and 2015 and combined ethnographic techniques with document analysis, interviews and field observations. Data collection spread across government levels, actors, and locations. A total of 194 interviews and other field observations and documents were used to explore concepts of negotiation, translation, and learning. The findings show how successive interventions and negotiations over land have transformed the remote forested peat ecosystems into a complex, and contested, mix of land uses. Competing interests and interactions among land use changes are diminishing access to land for villagers and other local people. Processes to translate internationally formulated objectives through multiple layers of governance were difficult to control and lacked flexibility. REDD+ objectives were reinterpreted at each level, and discrepancies and disconnects emerged between higher level objectives and local realities. While learning was mentioned in REDD+ project documents, a reliance on experts, and an emphasis on training and livelihoods to villagers, allowed limited local input into project design. Due to competition for land, REDD+ becomes another powerful force for villagers to contend with. Rather than achieving any desired new status quo, attempts to implement pre-determined plans become entangled in these fluid and messy frontier processes. Overall, this thesis contributes to understanding how interventions for implementing global environmental goals relate to pre-existing, dynamic and emerging land use systems that I ii conceptualise as ‘frontiers’. It adds new insights into how negotiation, translation, and learning are linked in interactive networked processes and identifies implications for pursuing environmental reforms. I develop a new concept, the entry point, to describe political opportunities and limitations for how those implementing, and being subjected to, global environmental policies can navigate local land allocation systems. The thesis demonstrates the need for social learning in international environmental governance and suggests strategies to move beyond policy design and technical coordination to encourage long-term collaboration and integration of learning at all levels. A focus of REDD+ is carbon rich regions in developing countries that are undergoing rapid changes. Findings from this thesis have implications beyond Indonesia to frontier landscapes in other developing countries where there is competition between large-scale forest conservation and land conversion for local or national economic development. iii Declaration This is to certify that: • the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD except where indicated in the Preface, • due acknowledge has been made in the text to all other material used, • the thesis is fewer than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices ___________________________________ Anna Sanders October 2019 iv Preface When beginning this research project, I wanted to study state illegality and corruption in relation to the implementation of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) as a prominent global environmental scheme. Realising that my initial focus was too narrow, I opted to use ‘multi-level governance’ because it offered a mode for investigating how decisions are made from within existing systems of land use governance, and how REDD+ relates to processes of decision- making at multiple levels. I was interested in Indonesia’s legal framework and decentralised administrative arrangements, however I was unsure how exactly I would study these things, where, and what actors and government levels would be of focus. The opportunity to contribute to a global comparative study of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) on REDD+ subnational implementation and multi-level governance (MLG) coincided with preparation for field research.1 Refining the research design and methods for this thesis, therefore, took place in relation to this larger study, leading me to focus on subnational levels of government and implementation of REDD+ in Central Kalimantan province. I had not visited Central Kalimantan prior to commencing the fieldwork. There were many things that I did not consider initially. The physical and human dimensions of land use change in tropical peatlands—the materiality of the soil, vegetation, water, and how these have shaped interventions and people’s relations to land—are some of these things. My approach in the field needed to continuously adapt to this situation and my changing understandings of it. While early stages of fieldwork were guided by CIFOR approaches as noted above, and contributed both to this thesis and to CIFOR reports, the latter half of my time in the field was solely for the purpose of this thesis with a broader focus on data collection related to the land use situation in Kapuas district, and consideration of villager’s historical and current experiences with a wide range of land uses, such as oil palm plantations in relation to forest conservation and REDD+ projects. Later, when writing this thesis, I often returned to reflect on a handful of observations. Here, I mention three. One observation was at a meeting intended to support subnational REDD+ coordination, where a succession of English-speaking ‘experts’ offered their judgement, while those in the room who were being tasked with implementing REDD+ had limited opportunity to voice their opinion. Another observation was a villager’s narration, during an interview, of a visit to his house by a project director: what was significant was his expression of the respect that was paid to him by this visit. Qualities of leadership and respect were reflected in the latter, while absent from the former observation. The third observation was a group of men protesting the incorporation of their land into an industrial oil palm plantation. I met them at the edge of the plantation. An array of actors would have travelled the same route to get to a nearby REDD+ project. What struck me as odd and hard to reconcile was how the poverty and desperation of these villagers were invisible, ostensibly, to those reporting on the REDD+ project, it was as though the plantation infrastructure had swallowed them up. 1 General information about the CIFOR study is available at: https://www.cifor.org/gcs/modules/multilevel-governance/. Information about project methods is available at: https://www.cifor.org/gcs/modules/multilevel-governance/methods/. A background literature review and methods guide are also available (Ravikumar et al., 2015a; Saito-Jensen, 2015). v For those who have not travelled through the vastness of Indonesia’s oil palm plantations, it is hard to express the size and permanence of the land use changes. When poverty is woven into the fabric of people’s existence, it consumes future opportunities by limiting options and choices, and foreclosing prior modes of exchange. Also, it is hard to express the environmental devastation of the region known as the ‘Mega Rice Project’—how a degraded peat landscape looks and feels. My

Load more

  244

Copy Link