Scalar Fixes of Environmental Management in Java, Indonesia

Article Nature and Space ENE: Nature and Space Scalar fixes of environmental 0(0) 1–25 ! The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: management in Java, sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/2514848619844769 Indonesia journals.sagepub.com/home/ene Martin C Lukas and Michael Flitner University of Bremen, Germany Abstract This paper analyses the emergence and fixing of scales in struggles over environmental issues. Using the example of watershed and coastal management in Java, we show how political framings of environmental matters and struggles over resources are linked to scalar regimes. We conceptualise these regimes as scalar fixes in which scales of intervention and scales of knowledge production are bound by environmental narratives and social–ecological processes to produce lock-in effects for prolonged periods of time. In our empirical case, particular scales were central in providing ‘problem closure’ and legitimising interventions while precluding other problematisations. Sedimentation of the Segara Anakan lagoon, first desired to support conversion into a rice bowl, was later framed as threat caused by upland peasants. The lock-in of interpretive framings and scales of observation and intervention, which was linked to politics of forest control, impeded debate on the various causes of sedimentation. With our newly defined concept of scalar fixes we contribute to understanding environmental narratives and related knowledge, providing a complement to the micro-perspectives on the stabilisation of knowledge claims currently discussed in cultural and political ecology. In doing so, we offer an approach to scalar analysis of environmental conflicts linking environmental narratives with the material social–ecological processes enrolled. Keywords Scale, watershed management, knowledge claims, historical political ecology, Citanduy River Introduction The role of narratives and myths or, more broadly, interpretive framings of environmental matters has been intensely debated in the cultural and political ecology literature over the past two decades – empirically and conceptually (e.g. Bryant, 1998; Forsyth, 2008; Forsyth and Walker, 2008; Leach and Mearns, 1996; Zimmerer, 2007). Interpretations and valuations are part and parcel of the societal relationships with nature, and our knowledge of both nature and society is seen as situated, incomplete and uncertain to Corresponding author: Martin C Lukas, University of Bremen, Sustainability Research Center (artec), Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research, Enrique-Schmidt-Str. 7, Bremen 28359, Germany. Email: [email protected] 2 ENE: Nature and Space 0(0) varying degrees. This insight has led to a rising interest in the conditions and circumstances under which knowledge claims are being made, how they are deployed, how they gain authority and how they are contested. In dealing with these questions, cultural and political ecologists have found theoretical inspiration in the fields of environmental discourse and policy studies (Hajer, 1995; Roe, 1994) that have directed their interest to issues of discursive ‘problem closure’ as well as methods to analyse the underlying narratives (Forsyth, 2003: Ch. 2). In recent years, the debates around scientific knowledge and expertise were enriched by contributions from Science and Technology Studies that challenge the boundaries between scientific, technological and political issues and focus on the practical making and corroboration of claims (Goldman et al., 2011; Lave, 2012; Whatmore, 2002, 2009). A number of studies on environmental issues have shown how expert knowledge contributes to powerful narratives that bind together specific political and ideological constructions (Bixler, 2013; Davis, 2005), and how such expertise is co-produced with social identities, discourses, and political, economic and social institutions (Jasanoff, 2004; Sneddon et al., 2017: 677). In this paper, we add to the debates around the role of narratives and knowledge claims from a different angle, namely the process and politics of scale-making. We show how a focus on the scales implied and addressed in problematising environmental issues can improve our understanding of the ways in which knowledge claims are established and brought to bear. In particular, such a focus can elucidate why certain narratives are long- lasting and persistent, even if the underlying knowledge claims are doubtful or the related practices lead to unsustainable outcomes. We engage with the scale debate in this context for two reasons: First, we noticed early on in our research on watershed governance in Java that the definition of environmental problems, just as their explanation, was often couched in terms of spatial relations. The focus of political, scientific and practical attention seemed strongly directed and limited to distinct geographical areas and time scales, neglecting or avoiding other spatial and temporal scales and perspectives (Lukas, 2017). We also found discrepancies and mismatches between social–ecological processes and development- oriented interventions and the production of environmental knowledge regarding the questions at stake. Some scalar narratives were broadly accepted with little to no research or other scientific backing; they provided ‘problem closure’ and legitimised interventions for decades while impeding other problematisations. This triggered our interest in theoretical approaches that explicitly address spatial and scalar relations in the context of corroborating knowledge claims. Second, questions of watershed management have a quasi-natural connection to scale- making: Water-based processes unfold over large areas connecting places far apart from each other, and the drivers of these processes may operate far beyond the boundaries of watersheds. Related management approaches are not just constrained by lack of reliable knowledge; they are typically confronted with fragmented interests and polities, rendering the popular approach of ‘integrated management’ and according policy prescriptions ambitious or even naı¨ve (Blomquist and Schlager, 2005). In line with such arguments, several authors have called for specific attention to scale in watershed management, often referring to bio-physical and social processes and scalar politics (Molle, 2007; Norman et al., 2012; Swyngedouw, 2013; Venot et al., 2011). Watersheds can be seen as arenas of the politics of scale, where scales are constructed to favour, legitimise or exclude particular analyses and solutions (Molle, 2007). Hence, research in watershed contexts has become a fruitful ground for the development and refinement of scale concepts. Engaging with the ongoing scale debate, we examine Lukas and Flitner 3 political struggles over resources and environmental management in the catchment of the Segara Anakan lagoon in Java, Indonesia. Taking a political ecology perspective, we critically explore the unfolding of spatially shifting management interventions in the lagoon-watershed region along with related ways of knowledge production that we analyse in their scalar logic. In the following section, we briefly summarise key lines of recent work on scale and scalar politics to define our points of departure. Building on Rangan and Kull (2009), among others, we develop a new heuristics of scalar politics that focusses on two dimensions of scale-making. The scales of observation and the scales of intervention, as we term them, are shaped and articulated by interpretive framings and at the same time anchored in material social–ecological processes and relations. We see the material-cum-semiotic articulation of these two scales as crucial in explaining the formation and persistence of semi-stable arrangements and legitimation patterns for interventions. Drawing on a second strand in the scale debate, we conceptualise these arrangements as scalar fixes, thus giving a new theoretical underpinning to this latter notion. In the third part of the paper, we elaborate on our understanding of scalar fixes in exploring the empirical case of the Segara Anakan lagoon and its catchment, a long- standing priority area for watershed and coastal management in Java. We focus our account on critically developing two consecutive scalar fixes that prevailed in the second half of the 20th century. The first scalar fix was dominated by river and agricultural development experts, consultants and policy-makers framing the lagoon and the adjacent lower river basin as unproductive areas to be converted into a ‘rice bowl’, with lagoon sedimentation seen as a desirable process. They turned the lower river basin into the scale of intervention of the first large U.S.-Indonesian development project, an important endeavour related to nation building, agricultural development and other political goals. The ideas for this endeavour emerged at different (observational) scales, partly far beyond the region. The second scalar fix enrolled some new actors, including forest agencies, and centred on the framing of the lagoon as a valuable ecosystem and of lagoon sedimentation and upland degradation as major threats. It moved the lagoon and upland farmers’ plots into the political spotlight and turned them into hotspots of intervention. Entanglements between watershed conservation and state politics of forest control played important roles in shaping this second scalar fix; narrow scales of observation limiting knowledge production in line with the interpretive framings were key in its stabilisation. We analyse the formation of these scalar

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