READ Public lecture: Diverging interests and discourses in frontier change: Case studies from Sabah, Malaysia and Mai Ndombe, DR Congo

Over the past decades, forest and agrarian ‘frontiers’ have been transformed into sites of export‐oriented resource extraction, whether in the conversion of vast swaths of forests to oil palm, rubber and tree plantations across Southeast Asia or to mining and oil extraction in the Congo Basin. The drivers are various and nuanced, but broadly they have been stimulated by a boom in investments by transnational companies and institutions to fill consumption demands elsewhere, and in collaborations anchored in global supply chains.

Forest frontiers are also spaces of contestation where government authorities, private sector actors, conservationists, development actors, indigenous peoples and local communities, and members of civil society organizations jostle for their divergent interests. Yet, there are persistent power imbalances among these actors and persistent inequalities in the outcomes, often a relic of underlying politics, histories and institutions. More recently, narratives that are used to legitimate dominant interests in the frontier are often embedded within discourses of sustainable development, green growth or agrarian reform, and tapping into diverse flows of finance and capital such as REDD+, blended public-private funds, value chain commitments, green bonds and ESG funds that all aim to support more ‘ethical’ development.

This talk highlights the assemblage of actors, interests, discourses, and finance in the case studies of Mai Ndombe in DR Congo and Pitas in Sabah, Malaysia. Recognizing that local land uses and practices are often problematized as drivers of frontier change, this work leverages on diverse open-source data to examine global flows of public and private finance and trace corporate ownership of investments in the regions. Our (ongoing) analyses highlight the complexity of transnational influences on frontier change for development and conservation interests, the reach of persistent infrastructures beyond boundaries and their consequences on local contestations over land and forest commons.

Bio:

Grace Wong is trained as a natural resource economist and sociologist. Over the past two decades, she has carried out research on policy and social-ecological dynamics in forest, biodiversity conservation and climate change governance. Grace current leads the FairFrontiers project at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) in Kyoto, Japan. This research takes a critical view on forest-agriculture frontiers in Southeast Asia and Central Africa and examines the underlying aspects of politics, power and justice driving change. Grace enjoys visiting Zen temples, and hiking and camping in the long Nordic summer days.