Theme: 1. Uneven Geographies, Ecologies, Technologies and Human Futures

Global Borneo: transnational actors and the global politics of resource governance in Borneo

Panel Convenor(s)

• DH

  David Henley

  Leiden University, Netherlands

Panel Chair(s)

• DH

  David Henley

  Leiden University, Netherlands

Presenter(s)

• DH

  David Henley

  Leiden University, Netherlands
• AD

  Ahmad Dermawan

  Norwegian Institute of Life Sciences, Norway
• RS

  Rizal Shidiq

  Leiden University, Netherlands

This panel explores the nature and consequences of engagement by transnational actors with environmental issues in Borneo. With its rich natural resources, imperilled rainforests, and social conflicts involving indigenous peoples, Borneo is a focus of international attention and engagement of many kinds. The commercial exploitation of Borneo's resources is of course the result of global commodity and consumer markets. More unusual is the heavy involvement in Borneo of transnational civil society organizations like WWF, Friends of the Earth, and the Forest Peoples Programme. Greenpeace has waged consumer-oriented campaigns against timber, pulpwood and palm oil concerns active in Borneo, and leveraged them to extract no-deforestation commitments from companies like Sinar Mas. Some overseas NGOs, such as The Borneo Project and the Bruno Manser Fund, are specifically oriented toward Borneo. The Sarawak Report is one of many philanthropic media organizations working to uncover environmental crime in Borneo. The Dutch-based Borneo Initiative promotes sustainability certification among timber companies. With state institutions in both Malaysian and Indonesian Borneo incapacitated by clientelism, the trend among conservationists has been to reach out to big business, with its greater ability to implement executive decisions, as a partner in forest stewardship. The advent of international carbon sequestration (REDD+) schemes, meanwhile, has for the first time made forest conservation a potentially lucrative field of investment for private capital. Besides corporations, foreign governments, notably that of Norway, have been directly involved in these interventions. Our panel evaluates the roles of diverse transnational actors in processes of environmental change on Borneo.

Presentations:

• 11:15 – 13:00 (GMT+7)

  Working around the state: conservation's desperate turn to capital in Borneo
  

  Presenter: David Henley – Leiden University
• 11:15 – 13:00 (GMT+7)

  Governing sustainable palm oil supply in Kalimantan: an interactive governance approach
  

  Presenter: Ahmad Dermawan – Norwegian Institute of Life Sciences
• 11:15 – 13:00 (GMT+7)

  The private sector, market mechanisms, and deforestation in Kalimantan
  

  Presenter: Rizal Shidiq – Leiden University