Recent Development and Conservation Interventions in Borneo

In the hierarchy of Indonesian and Malaysian official development priorities, Borneo occupies a unique niche. While its peoples and their local political economies are regarded as backward or uncivilised by officials, the natural resources which these same people manage are considered rich.^[2] The combination of economic poverty and natural resource wealth provides prime sites for ‘development’, mostly for the good of the majority or the national good. However, towards the end of the 20^th century ‘development’ changed direction. Through Indonesia’s decentralisation policy and Sarawak’s land development policy targeted specifically at Native Customary Land, ‘development’ has been more intensely localised than in earlier decades. One goal of this book is to draw attention to state processes at the end of the 20^th and beginning of the 21^st centuries that appear to be responding to global economic development in ways that have dramatised the strengths and weaknesses of local political economies and natural resource management. A second objective is to address the changing histories and identities of local communities and institutions as they are reshaped, rejuvenated or weakened in the face of state and economic pressures.

This book evaluates development and conservation interventions that are taking place on the island of Borneo. Its strength lies in its attempt to evaluate change processes affecting both the Indonesian and Malaysian parts of the island (see Figure 1.1). The contributors examine changes associated with two major economic activities that have affected Bornean landscapes and livelihoods over the last 30 years; namely, large-scale timber and oil palm production. Reflecting conditions in the field, logging, whether legal or illegal, drew the attention of contributors from Indonesian Borneo in a more fundamental way than oil palm production. By contrast, contributors from Malaysian Borneo took greater heed of changes associated with oil palm than with timber production, without underestimating the continued impact of logging on landscapes and lives. Nevertheless, the chapters resonate with common themes across current topics enabling comparisons on important issues including customary or indigenous tenure, borders and their porosity, the potential for conflict resolution among stakeholders and the role of non-government organisations (NGOs) as intermediaries between ‘communities’ and the state.

The authors in this volume have benefited from recent theoretical debates in political ecology, development studies, environmental sociology and social anthropology. Such debates have produced a more critical examination of development, in particular top-down (state-driven) development (Ferguson 1996), of concepts concerning ‘community’ (Agarwal and Gibson 1999), identity and difference (Li 2003), and of conservation agendas themselves (Brosius 1999). Although benefiting from the philosophical standpoint of post-developmentalism (Rahnema 1992; Escobar 1995), the contributors are consistent in their position of adopting a critical engagement with alternative development approaches. This means unpacking notions of ‘community’, ‘participation and empowerment’, ‘local capacity building and partnership’, to name but a few (Friedmann 1992; Brohmann 1996). This engagement is particularly potent since some of the authors are or have been directly involved in implementing these notions on the ground, and therefore experienced the ‘unpacking’ process directly as they worked in projects supported by NGOs (Deddy, Vaz and Eghenter, Chapters 5, 7 and 8).