Political Ecology of Palm Oil Development in the Kapuas Hulu District of West Kalimantan

Abstract

This thesis examines how the enrolment of local communities into the palm oil economy is constructing a particular, and complicated, mode of agricultural transformation. I look at the ways that local livelihoods are negotiated in response to diverse palm oil development pathways across three villages in the Kapuas Hulu district of West Kalimantan, Indonesia. The thesis uses a political ecology approach to examine the ways agrarian communities adapt their local economic production and social relations in response to the forthright assertion of a capitalist economy upon their local landscape. I do this by examining: i) the multi-scalar institutional arrangements that shape agrarian change; ii) the processes through which land is made available for large-scale oil palm cultivation; and iii) the implications for local livelihoods and agrarian transformation. I apply ethnographic field work across three villages, with primary data collected through participant observation, semi-structured interviews, group discussion, and household economic survey. I argue that the broader institutional settings of the global value chain for palm oil provide a fundamental framework that limits and shapes possible livelihood pathways for rural communities in Kapuas Hulu. Buyer-driven governance structures also reach into Kapuas Hulu to provide market access opportunities and infrastructure development. I present a critical analysis of the political economy of palm oil that results in land dispossession and social differentiation in Kalimantan, but with a key contribution being the role played by customary Dayak elites in this process. However, I also find that the subjective well-being of many community members to have improved along with the expansion of oil palm, with many households generally appreciative of opportunities to participate and engage in smallholder oil palm production. Importantly, however, this only holds true when the nature of the engagement is on their own terms.