Contested territorialization and biophysical expansion of oil palm plantations in Indonesia
Introduction
Palm oil, made from the mesocarp of the palm fruit, plays an increasingly important role in human nutrition both in terms of its direct use and as an ingredient in processed foods. Between 1962 and 2012, global palm oil consumption increased by a factor of 7 from 0.3 to 2.2 kilograms per person and year (kg/cap/a); only for soybean oil is consumption in human nutrition higher (FAO, 2014). However, palm oil is not used for food alone: While, in 1962, approximately one quarter of global palm oil production was used for non-food industrial purposes, this share increased to over 50% by 2009, corresponding to a higher amount than for any other vegetable oil (FAO, 2014).1 Vegetable oils are the most important feedstock for biodiesel production and in 2013, approximately 10% of global vegetable oil production was used for biofuels (OECD and FAO, 2014). The majority of this vegetable oil stems from rapeseed and, to a lesser degree, sunflower seed; palm oil only makes up a small share globally but is an important biofuel feedstock in Southeast Asia (Zhou and Thomson, 2009). At the same time, with comparatively high yields per hectare, palm oil output is expected to continue to grow, most notably in the major producers and exporters Indonesia and Malaysia as well as in some Latin American and African countries (OECD and FAO, 2014).
Between 1962 and 2012, global oil palm land expanded by approximately 13 million hectares (Megahectares: Mha), making oil palm plantations the fastest growing monoculture in the world (Gerber, 2011). Almost half of this growth (6 Mha) occurred in Indonesia which produced 47% of global palm oil output in 2012 (FAO, 2014). While Indonesia’s history of palm oil production dates back to the early 20th century when large plantations were first established in Sumatra (Hartley, 1977), the growth of palm oil production in the latter half of the 20th and the early 21st century was unprecedented. By 2011, oil palm fruit accounted for 35% of the country’s total agricultural harvest in units of mass. In the two decades between 1991 and 2011 alone, oil palm plantations expanded from an area corresponding to less than 0.5% to more than 3% of Indonesia’s land area (FAO, 2014).
This oil palm expansion constitutes a risk to ecosystems and biodiversity (Fitzherbert et al., 2008, Koh and Wilcove, 2008) and has a significant impact on climate change through associated deforestation and drainage of peat lands (Fargione et al., 2008, Germer and Sauerborn, 2008, Hooijer et al., 2006, Reijnders and Huijbregts, 2008). The magnitude and speed at which these changes occurred have lead to social conflict and the dispossession of people from their livelihood resources. This link has been observed for the expansion of oil palm plantations in Indonesia (Colchester et al., 2006, Colchester and Chao, 2013, Larsen et al., 2014, Marti, 2008) and in other countries (e.g., Cramb and Sujang, 2011, Mingorría et al., 2014), as well as more generally for the growth of industrial tree plantations in the global South (Gerber, 2011).
Along with the physical expansion of oil palm plantations, Indonesia faced deep shifts in the economic and political organization of society, from a military coup in 1965 and the subsequent centralization and authoritarian rule of President Suharto under the “New Order” regime (orde baru, 1966–1998) to the decentralization process during the reform period (reformasi) following the 1997/1998 Asian crisis and the fall of Suharto in 1998. For this article, the specific patterns of land control under both regimes were investigated and related to the biophysical expansion of oil palm plantations. Following political ecology research on the importance of land control for agricultural expansion and state power (Hall et al., 2011, Peluso and Lund, 2011, Vandergeest, 1996, Vandergeest and Peluso, 1995), the expansion of oil palm plantations in Indonesia is linked to processes of territorialization and reterritorialization. By examining the interlocked yet distinct processes of land control during two specific periods in time, (re)territorialization is identified as an important strategy in securing control over plantation land and in enabling the continuous expansion of oil palm plantations. The (re)territorialization processes since Indonesian independence in 1945 are linked to scalar reconfigurations of centralized to decentralized land control and to the establishment and continuation of an extractive regime (Gellert, 2010). The concepts of territorialization, and reterritorialization are presented in Section 2. The contribution of oil palm plantations to the extractive regime is analyzed on the basis of quantitative material flow and land use data and qualitative data from literature and interviews as described in Section 3. Results on territorialization and reterritorialization processes are presented in Section 4 and their contested nature is discussed based on four claims for alternative territorialization in Section 5.
Section snippets
Territorialization and reterritorialization
In capitalist societies, the specific relationship between society and land-based resources is geared toward the accumulation of capital (Smith, 1984). The valorization of nature, i.e., the incorporation of non-capitalist areas into the capitalist mode of production, is a precondition for the control of land and the subsequent accumulation process (Altvater, 1993, Görg, 2004). Marx (1867/1990) referred to this development as primitive accumulation (Ursprüngliche Akkumulation), describing “the
Material and methods
While territorialization and reterritorialization are politico-economic processes, the expansion of plantations, the growth of palm oil production, and the extraction of raw materials for export require an analysis of Indonesia’s biophysical parameters. Linking the analysis of politico-economic and biophysical processes is necessary in analyzing the establishment of an extractivist development model and the contested yet continuous expansion of oil palm plantations along with the state and
Territorialization and reterritorialization in the expansion of oil palm plantations in Indonesia
Between 1965 and 2012, the production of palm oil and the area harvested for oil palm fruit in Indonesia grew exponentially (Fig. 1). Under New Order, Indonesian palm oil production increased by an order of magnitude from 0.17 million tons5 (Megatons) per year (Mt/a) in 1967 to 5.39 Mt/a in 1997. In the reformasi period following the 1997/1998 Asian financial crisis and the fall of Suharto in 1998, production grew by more
Contested territorialization and competing claims over territories
Territorialization during New Order and reterritorialization processes during the Indonesian reform period were strongly tied to the expansion of oil palm plantations. These territorialization processes, i.e., the enclosure of land and the exclusion of actors with competing claims on these territories, foster conflicts and struggles to reclaim access to the land in question (Hall et al., 2011, pp. 170–171). Whereas territorialization processes were major sources of conflict since the beginning
Conclusions
Since the military coup of Suharto in 1965 and the subsequent establishment of New Order, Indonesia has undergone rapid and far-reaching political, economic, social, and environmental change. Between 1960 and 2010, the Indonesian population more than doubled, making the country the fourth most populous country in the world. GDP (in constant 2005 US$) grew by a factor of almost 12 during the same period of time. Throughout both territorialization and centralization processes under Suharto’s New
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank four anonymous reviewers whose comments helped improve the quality of this article.
The Indonesian material flow data was prepared as part of the Global Metabolic Transitions project (P21012 G11) funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF.
Alina Brad, Christina Plank, and Anke Schaffartzik are recipients of a DOC-team fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW).
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2022, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and GeoinformationCitation Excerpt :Oil palms produce ten times more oil per hectare than their closest competitor, soybean (Mayes, 2020; Sumathi et al., 2008), making oil palm a key crop worldwide for the production of vegetable oil over the last century (Okolo et al., 2019). Nowhere is this truer than in parts of SE Asia (Brad et al., 2015), for instance Indonesia- where palm oil accounts for around 10% of total national exports and is central to the livelihoods of countless people (Beyer et al., 2020). However, this rapid rise in the demand for oil palm has come at a huge environmental cost, with the growth of the oil palm industry leading to the large-scale conversion of regions of tropical forest into monoculture plantations.