The Politics of Deforestation and REDD+ in Indonesia: Global Climate Change Mitigation 1032213388, 9781032213385

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The Politics of Deforestation and REDD+ in Indonesia

This book reflects on Indonesia’s recent experience with REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), all set within a broader discussion of neoliberal environmentalism, hyper-capitalism, and Indonesian carbon politics. Drawing on the author’s political ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Jakarta, Central Sulawesi, and Oslo, where the author examined Norway’s interests and role in implementing REDD+, this book discusses the long evolution of the idea that foreign state and private financing can be used to protect tropical forests and the carbon stored within them, resulting in both local economic development and global climate benefits. It shows how neoliberal environmental approaches to climate change, of which REDD+ is a leading example, increase the severity of political contestations that must be overcome to reach global climate mitigation goals, and how recent incarnations of REDD+ have tended to forget earlier scholarly advice to couple anti-deforestation approaches with policies that reduce industrial carbon emissions. In Indonesia, tectonic political and economic forces are shown to have negatively impacted REDD+ implementation. Using a political ecology approach, the book links the literature on REDD+ with that covering Indonesia’s recent democratic regression, highlighting how the country’s environmental performance is inextricably linked to the timbre of its political governance. Given the severity of the political contestations that must be overcome to reach its stated goals, REDD+ cannot replace global policies that drastically reduce industrial carbon emissions. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of political ecology, deforestation, climate change, environmental politics, natural resource management, and environmental conservation. David Aled Williams holds a PhD in Development Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies at University of London, UK. He is currently Senior Researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute, Norway.

Routledge Studies in Political Ecology

The Routledge Studies in Political Ecology series provides a forum for original, innovative and vibrant research surrounding the diverse field of political ecology. This series promotes interdisciplinary scholarly work drawing on a wide range of subject areas such as geography, anthropology, sociology, politics and environmental history. Titles within the series reflect the wealth of research being undertaken within this diverse and exciting field. Political Ecology of the State The Basis and the Evolution of Environmental Statehood Antonio Augusto Rossotto Ioris Political Ecologies of Meat Edited by Jody Emel and Harvey Neo Political Ecology and Tourism Edited by Sanjay Nepal and Jarkko Saarinen Environment and Society in Ethiopia Girma Kebbede Political Ecology of REDD+ in Indonesia Agrarian Conflicts and Forest Carbon Jonas I. Hein Roots of Power The Political Ecology of Boundary Plants Michael Sheridan The Politics of Deforestation and REDD+ in Indonesia Global Climate Change Mitigation David Aled Williams For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Studies-in-Political-Ecology/book-series/RSPE

The Politics of Deforestation and REDD+ in Indonesia Global Climate Change Mitigation David Aled Williams

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 David Aled Williams The right of David Aled Williams to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Williams, Aled, 1977– author. Title: The politics of deforestation and REDD+ in Indonesia : global   climate change mitigation / David Aled Williams. Description: New York : Routledge, 2023. | Includes bibliographical   references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022059333 (print) | LCCN 2022059334 (ebook) |   ISBN 9781032213361 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032213385 (paperback) |   ISBN 9781003267898 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest   Degradation (Program) | Political ecology—Indonesia. |   Deforestation—Political aspects—Indonesia. Classification: LCC JA75.8 .W58 2023 (print) | LCC JA75.8 (ebook) |   DDC 304.209598—dc23/eng/20221214 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022059333 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022059334 ISBN: 978-1-032-21336-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-21338-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-26789-8 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003267898 Typeset in Goudy by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of Figures List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements

Introduction: curbing deforestation in the hyper-capitalist age

vi vii ix 1

1 REDD+ as neoliberal environmentalism: a political ecology perspective

23

2 A brief political history of Indonesian forest governance

44

3 Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual? REDD+ and related forest policies in Indonesia

66

4 Success and failure in the UN-REDD pilots: REDD+ as viewed from Central Sulawesi

91

5 Winners and losers in the Indonesia–Norway REDD+ story

110

Conclusion: beyond REDD+, towards regenerative nature–society relations

128

Index

146

Figures

0.1 3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4

Razor Wire in Front of the KPK Building, October 2019, Jakarta Distribution of REDD+ Projects in Indonesia, October 2013 Primary Forest Loss in Indonesia, 2002–2021 Forest Cover Loss in Indonesia for 2001–2010 (A) and 2001–2021 (B) Darker shading indicates forest loss Approximate Locations of Talaga and Lembah Mukti, Central Sulawesi Central Sulawesi Primary Forest Cover Loss, 2002–2021 Primary Forest Cover Loss in Talaga and Lembah Mukti Area, Central Sulawesi, 2001–2021 Darker shading indicates forest cover loss Tree Cover Gain in Talaga and Lembah Mukti Area, Central Sulawesi, 2000 and 2020 Darker shading indicates tree cover gain

2 70 83 84 93 104 105 106

Abbreviations

AMAN Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara (Alliance of Indigenous Peoples of the Archipelago) BAL Basic Agrarian Law bce Before Common Era BFL Basic Forest Law BPDLH Badan Pengelola Dana Lingkungan Hidup (Indonesian Environment Fund) BP REDD+ National REDD+ Agency CCP Chinese Communist Party ce Common Era CDM Clean Development Mechanism CIA Central Intelligence Agency (United States) CIFOR Center for International Forestry Research COP Conference of Parties COVID-19 Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 CO2 Carbon dioxide CO2e Carbon dioxide equivalent DPR-RI House of Representatives of the Republic of Indonesia EEA European Economic Association EUR Euros FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FCPF Forest Carbon Partnership Facility FIP Forest Investment Programme FMU Forest Management Unit FPIC Free, Prior and Informed Consent GCS Global Comparative Study for Achieving REDD+ Results GDP Gross domestic product GHG Greenhouse gas Golkar Partai Golongan Karya (Party of Functional Groups, Indonesia) G20 The Group of Twenty (major world economies) IDR Indonesian rupiah IUCN International Union for the Conservation of Nature KFCP Kalimantan Forest and Climate Partnership

viii  Abbreviations KPK Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi (Corruption Eradication Commission, Indonesia) LoI Norway–Indonesia Letter of Intent on REDD+ MDGs Millennium Development Goals MES Markets for Ecosystem Services MIT Mujahidin Indonesia Timur (East Mujahidin Indonesia) MODIS Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer MoEF Ministry of Environment and Forestry (Indonesia) MPR Majelis Permusyawratan Rakyat (People’s Consultative Assembly, Indonesia) MRV Monitoring, Reporting and Verification Mt Million tonnes MW Megawatts NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration (United States) Nasakom Nationalisme, agama, komunisme (nationalism, religion, communism) NGO Non-governmental organization NICFI Norwegian International Climate and Forest Initiative OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development PAN Partai Amanat Nasional (National Mandate Party, Indonesia) PES Payment for Ecosystem Services PD Partai Demokrat (Democratic Party, Indonesia) PDI Partai Demokrasi Indonesia (Indonesian Democratic Party) PKI Partai Komunis Indonesia (Communist Party of Indonesia) PKS Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (Prosperous Justice Party, Indonesia) PPP Partai Persatuan Pembangunan (United Development Party, Indonesia) REDD+ Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation RPJMN Indonesian National Long-Term Development Plan SBY Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono SDGs Sustainable Development Goals STRANAS Indonesian National Anti-Corruption Strategy TORA Land for Agrarian Reform Objects TNI Tentara Nasional Indonesia (Indonesian Armed Forces) UKP4 Delivery Unit for Development Monitoring and Oversight (Indonesia) UNEP United Nations Environment Programme UNFCCC United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change UN-REDD United Nations REDD Programme USD United States dollars WWF World Wildlife Fund

Acknowledgements

This book could not have been written without crucial support from those around me: my family, friends, colleagues, and, not least, research participants. First, I warmly thank all participants in the research process in Jakarta, Bogor, Oslo, and Central Sulawesi, small fragments of whose stories this book attempts to tell. I truly appreciate your generosity of spirit and time. Excellent research assistance, translation, and companionship in Jakarta and Central Sulawesi were provided by two anonymous Indonesian colleagues. This book grew out of my doctoral thesis at SOAS University of London, and, there, I am grateful to my supervisors Peter Mollinga, Leandro Vergara-Camus, and Andrew Newsham, as well as Rosaleen Duffy, now at the Sheffield Institute for International Development (SIID). I am thankful for good conversations, too, on theory and methods with my doctoral cohort at the SOAS Department of Development Studies and for incisive and helpful remarks from my examiners Tim Forsyth (LSE) and Philippe Cullet (SOAS). Many thanks go to the specialist librarians at SOAS in London and the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) in Bergen, Norway, for their patient assistance identifying literature. I  am grateful for the kind support of colleagues at CMI—Odd-Helge Fjeldstad, Aslak Orre, Kari Telle, Arne Strand, Anwesha Dutta, and many others over the years, including staff at the U4 Anti-Corruption Resource Centre. Warm thanks also go to Philippe Le Billon (University of British Columbia), Paul Robbins (University of WisconsinMadison), Sarah Milne (Australian National University), Jacqui Baker (Murdoch University), Tina Søreide (Norwegian School of Economics/Norwegian Competition Authority), Luca Tacconi (Australian National University) and Michael Buehler (SOAS) for interesting exchanges on Indonesia, political economy and ecology, corruption challenges and solutions, and research methods over the past few years. I  am greatly appreciative of the positive reception my book proposal received at Routledge, not least from my commissioning editor Hannah Ferguson. I also owe gratitude to Katie Stokes at Routledge, Liz Goldman and Kaitlyn Thayer at Global Forest Watch-World Resources Institute, and to Florian Eisele at the UN-REDD Programme, for their helpful assistance. I warmly thank all my family and friends who supported me in producing this work in countless ways: Diolch yn fawr am eich cefnogaeth dros y blynyddoedd. Finally, I wish to thank my loving wife Kari and my wonderful son Daniel for their stamina, strength, and humour, both while I was on fieldwork and writing or revising chapters.

Introduction Curbing deforestation in the hyper-capitalist age

It is Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, September 2009. The leaders of the world’s largest economies, the G20, are meeting at the David L. Lawrence Convention Centre, downtown. They attend a working dinner at the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, chosen to highlight its environmentally friendly features. On the city’s streets, demonstrators and activists have, meanwhile, begun to gather. On the 23rd, a Wednesday, environmental activists from Greenpeace hang a banner, warning of the dangers of increased CO2 emissions, from the West End Bridge over the Ohio River (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 2009). On Friday, an estimated 5,000 to 8,000 people join rallies downtown to the steps of city hall. One speaker reportedly explains to the crowd: “We’re rallying here just a few miles from where the corporate robber barons have settled down to divide up the planet, that group of bankers, financiers and political leaders who have wreaked havoc upon our world” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 2009). Inside the G20 venue, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (abbreviated SBY) of the Republic of Indonesia is delivering a speech. Yudhoyono, representing Southeast Asia’s largest economy and sole member of the group, is pitching to his colleagues. His government will cut carbon emissions by 26% by 2020 from business-as-usual levels, through investing in renewable energy and curbing deforestation and land-use changes (Reuters 2009). And, with outside help, his government will do even more. It will cut carbon emissions as much as 41% by the same year (Reuters 2009). Later explaining the vision behind his Pittsburgh pitch, Yudhoyono said: As a developing nation, we prioritize the promotion of growth and the eradication of poverty. But we will not achieve these goals by sacrificing our forests. We must attain both development and the management of our forests— simultaneously. Success in managing our forests will determine our future and the opportunities that will be available to our children. (Yudhoyono 2011, p. 5) Fast forward to Jakarta a decade later, where I  am attending a workshop in October  2019 hosted by the outgoing leadership of Indonesia’s Corruption Eradication Commission, the KPK. Outside, riot police in armoured personnel carriers, reams of razor wire, and military field tents line the streets (see DOI: 10.4324/9781003267898-1

2  Introduction

Figure 0.1  Razor Wire in Front of the KPK Building, October 2019, Jakarta Source: Photograph by the author

Figure  0.1). The heightened state security is in response to a series of mass protests led by students in cities across the country since September. They are the largest since the 1998 student movement at the end of Suharto’s authoritarian New Order regime (Widianto and Suroyo 2019). The students are protesting new legislation that threatens to reduce the authority of the KPK and

Introduction  3 a new criminal code penalizing extramarital sex and defamation of the president. Having made some inroads in prosecuting high-level corruption offenders actively undermining Indonesia’s forest laws, the House of Representatives (DPR-RI) appears to be penalizing the KPK for its dogged pursuit of corruption convictions (Schuette 2019). In secretive proceedings lasting only a week, the once formidable anti-graft agency is reduced to a shadow of its former self, its leadership replaced and many of its staff fired. The KPK will now no longer be the independent state agency it once was, capable of conducting its own investigations (The Jakarta Post 2019). As the nationwide protests subside, leaving hundreds wounded and several dead in the streets, one of seven core demands of the protestors, that the state investigate and try elites responsible for environmental damage in several regions of the country, remains conspicuously unanswered (Widianto and Suroyo 2019). What happened in the decade between Pittsburgh and Jakarta? Did Indonesia make good on its promise to cut carbon emissions and deforestation, while still promoting growth and economic development? Why did so many Indonesian students turn out to protest against environmental crimes in 2019? And why did a legislative assault on the KPK undermine its abilities to tackle environment-related corruption, just as it was poised to systematize its approach to such investigations? This book attempts to answer these, and other, pressing questions about the politics of deforestation, including institutionalized attempts to curb it, in this hyper-capitalist age. Although focused on the country case of Indonesia, and in particular on its experience with the global anti-deforestation scheme known as REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, of which more is to come later in this introduction), this book uses the lens and language of political ecology to address a common paradox confronting all nations, post-industrial, high and lower income, forested and otherwise. How do elites square, politically, present economic needs with those of the future? How do major proposed solutions to the dual crises of extreme biodiversity loss and dangerous climate change pan out in reality when implemented? What can we learn from early institutionalized attempts to solve these crises about the remaining challenges for achieving spatially well-distributed and inter-generationally just global environmental outcomes? And what are the respective roles of political-economic power, regulation, and social conflict in struggling towards and, hopefully, delivering these outcomes? Before explaining this book’s approach to understanding REDD+ in Indonesia and its implications, and prior to introducing this volume’s structure and the subjects covered in various chapters, I  first present a brief refresher on global deforestation. After casting a look backwards over global deforestation trends in a historic perspective, I address the drivers of contemporary deforestation in the hyper-capitalist age. Deforestation’s role in climate change is then asserted, before we turn to the question of how anti-deforestation interventions, including REDD+, became a central element of contemporary efforts to tackle the climate crisis.

4  Introduction

Global deforestation: scale and severity of the problem That the world faces an acute challenge from very high rates of deforestation across many countries will be news to few people. Given the attention devoted to high rates of deforestation by other scholars, environmental journalists, activists, and policymakers, there is widespread alarm about the vast scale of forest conversion in recent decades, particularly in the tropics. This is often expressed in calls by protestors to “Save the Rainforest” or, more specifically, to “Save the Amazon”—perhaps the most emotive example in the Western hemisphere. Nevertheless, a recap of the latest data, set in an historical perspective, can help us grasp the severity of the problem, as well as some important nuances across time, regions, and countries. First, a note should be given on terms used in this section and throughout this book. Forests are ecosystems with a minimum of 10% crown cover of trees and/ or bamboo, generally associated with wild flora, fauna, and natural soil conditions that are not subject to agriculture (FAO 2020, Grainger 1993). Deforestation, in turn, refers to changes in land use, which deplete tree crown cover to less than 10%, while forest degradation refers to changes within the class of forest (from closed to open forest) which negatively affect the site in question, for example, by lowering timber production capacity (FAO 2020). Net change in forest cover is not identical to the deforestation rate but rather measures the change in forest cover (e.g. through natural forest expansion or afforestation by tree-planting) minus deforestation (FAO 2020). Deforestation rates for a given location can thus be significantly higher than any net change in forest cover. Second, it is worth noting that, as often pointed out by proponents of forest conversion, deforestation is not a recent phenomenon previously unknown to humanity. Indeed, our societies have been cutting down trees for millennia. And it is for good reason—timber and non-timber forest products are vital components of socio-economic development, helping humanity thrive in a range of climates and ecosystems by providing the basic materials for warmth, shelter, clothing, tools, utensils, weapons, food, and medicine. As noted by Balée (2013) in his exposition of the cultural forests of the Amazon, indigenous Amazonians were, for example, interacting with, and changing, their forest surroundings long before the modern encroachments of industrial-scale loggers, miners, and soya bean magnates. These early interactions, in turn, left deep imprints on the indigenous languages, cultures, and rituals of the Amazon Basin. Europe, too, underwent significant forest cover change during the Holocene epoch, resulting from a mix of plant rangeexpansion due to climate amelioration, plant competition, and disturbance from human activity (Fyfe et al. 2013). These changes led to the cultural landscapes so familiar to the region today, reflected in its classical literature, poetry, and music. Third, connected to the highly emotive and contentious character of the problem, deforestation data are not immune from controversies surrounding their accuracy and reliability, either at a global or country level. Brown and Pearce (1994) show, for example, that historical data for tropical deforestation and forest degradation is often lacking and, when available, can be inaccurate. Grainger

Introduction  5 (1993) too shows serious data discrepancies in his comparison of various estimates of deforestation in the tropics from 1970 to 1990. So, while Sommer (1976) claimed somewhere between 11 to 15 million hectares of tropical forests were lost annually, Myers (1980) suggested tropical deforestation could be as low as 6.1 or 7.5 million hectares per year. At the same time, and partly in response to these data inconsistencies, recent years have seen methodological and technical improvements in assessing deforestation rates and net changes to forest cover. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, along with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), introduced in 1982 its first forest assessments, providing a statistically consistent method of analysis for the world’s forest resources, deforestation, and afforestation. The advent of Earth-observation satellites has also added to the deforestation analysts’ arsenal. NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors from the Terra (launched in 1999) and Aqua (launched in 2002) satellites, for example, capture data in 36 spectral bands, imaging the Earth every 1 to 2 days. This data is, in turn, processed by the University of Maryland’s Global Forest Watch project to produce high-resolution images of global forest loss, with data on tropical forests updated monthly.1 So, what does this data tell us about global deforestation trends over time? The FAO’s long-term projections show that, at the end of the last ice age, 10,000 years ago, around 57% (or about 6 billion hectares) of the world’s habitable land was forested (Ritchie and Roser 2021). As of 2018, only 4 billion hectares of forest were left, implying the world has lost a third of its forests—roughly equivalent to twice the size of the United States. The deforestation rate during this 10,000-year period has not been even, however. Only about 10% of forests were lost up until about 5,000  years ago, when the global population was still small and growing only very slowly. By 1700 ce, when the global population was about 600 million, agriculture expanded into previously forested land, though more than half of all habitable land was still forested (Ritchie and Roser 2021). It is from the turn of the 20th century ce that forest loss really accelerated: half of all losses occurred over this last 100 years alone. It is notable, however, that per capita forest loss was much greater in the past than it has been during the industrial and post-industrial eras. This is explained by our ancestors being particularly reliant on forest conversion for fuel and many other basic provisions. But what about the spatial distribution of recent deforestation and net forest loss? Again, the data show a nuanced picture. The world currently loses around six million hectares of forest each year, or an area the size of Portugal every 2 years (Ritchie and Roser 2021). The vast majority of this deforestation occurs in the tropics (about 95%), with Latin America accounting for 59% and 28% occurring in Southeast Asia (Ritchie and Roser 2021). Roughly half of all global deforestation nowadays occurs in just two countries: Brazil and, the focus of this book, Indonesia. Indeed, this is why major institutionalized attempts at tackling deforestation (such as REDD+) have particularly focused on these countries. We should be careful, however, not simply to blame deforestation on tropical forested countries. There are two main reasons for this. First, although temperate

6  Introduction forests now experience much lower deforestation rates than tropical forests, many temperate regions have significant histories of past deforestation, as mentioned before. Second, globalization means that deforestation occurring in the tropics today typically produces commodities (e.g. cocoa, paper, coffee, palm oil, soya bean, beef) that are traded and consumed elsewhere in the world, patterns based on frequently violent and extractive forms of development that were first laid down during European colonialism. European and other wealthy countries must therefore address their own historic and contemporary roles in forest destruction, for example through reducing their financing and consumption of goods whose production involves tropical deforestation. Finally, an important aspect of the spatial distribution of contemporary net forest loss/gain is that there can be several facets to the roles of individual countries. China is a pertinent example. Although it still deforests to a significant extent at home, it is nowadays able to replace its forests at a faster rate than it cuts them down. At the same time, like many other countries with a great deal of wealth, it consumes goods that contribute to significant deforestation elsewhere. In conclusion, the advent of industrialization saw the rapid acceleration of global deforestation, even as per capita forest use declined. Today, the chainsaw and axe are mainly wielded in deforestation hotspots across the tropics, particularly in Latin America and Southeast Asia, but also parts of sub-Saharan Africa such as the Congo Basin. The goods produced by deforestation are, however, often financed and traded internationally, including by countries currently experiencing net forest gains at home. Let us next, therefore, take a closer look at the drivers of contemporary deforestation in this age of hyper-capitalist consumption.

Deforestation drivers and hyper-capitalist consumption Since the industrial revolution that began in Europe in the 18th century ce, and most notably in the hyper-capitalist era since the Second World War, global human economic activity has rapidly accelerated (Raworth 2017, Piketty 2020). This great economic acceleration has given rise to huge improvements in human welfare, albeit with significant wealth inequalities between and within countries (Piketty 2020). China, for example, has achieved significant reductions in extreme poverty since the 1970s, though with highly uneven economic growth across both sectors and regions (Montalvo and Ravaillon 2009). Global economic acceleration has, however, also increased the pace of humanity’s natural resource consumption, deepening our impacts on the planet as never before. This has led to proposals for the naming of a new geological epoch to reflect recent human impacts on nature: the Anthropocene (Hamilton et al. 2015). In addition to an increased consumption of fossil fuels, land use changes including deforestation have, with geographic variations, particularly contributed to the present climate and biodiversity crisis, with around 75% of the Earth’s terrestrial environment severely altered to date by human activity (IPCC 2019, IPBES 2019). But what is it that really drives deforestation and how have these drivers changed over time and space? Scholars have differed in their answers to these

Introduction  7 questions. Reviewing the causes of tropical deforestation using 152 subnational cases, Geist and Lambin (2002) identify institutional governance factors as the main culprits. Contreras-Hermosilla (2000), on the other hand, identifies interrelated actions by a number of agents as the main causes of forest changes, while Sengupta and Maginnis (2005) distinguish between proximate and underlying causes of forest change. Proximate causes include agricultural expansion, infrastructure development, wood extraction, forest fires, alien invasive species, and climate change. Underlying causes include market failure, institutional and government policies, demographic factors, and poverty. Palo (1994) reflected on the neo-Malthusian tradition among biologists and ecologists to consider the causality of population pressure on deforestation. Noting that a fundamental feature of excess deforestation is that the causal factors of deforestation are linked together as various parts of a chain, Palo undertook multiple regression analysis of 60 tropical countries to find that population pressure was related to the extent of forest cover. Repetto and Holmes (1983) have argued that population growth, together with open-access, asymmetric land tenure and forest commercialization with increasing international demands, leads to faster deforestation than population growth alone. Barbier (1989) concludes that the socio-economic factors that induce households to expand populations can easily lead to cumulative and unsustainable demographic pressures on a fragile forest base. But other scholars, such as Westoby (1978 and 1989), have strongly criticized the notion that population pressure should be regarded as a cause of tropical deforestation, arguing that inequality and poverty are more important. Other drivers identified have been the structuring of international debt payments (Kahn and McDonald 1994) and the inappropriate market valuation of the global goods (e.g. carbon sinks/sequestration) tropical forests provide. While there is still disagreement on the underlying preconditions that lead to deforestation and forest degradation, the proximate drivers of contemporary forest loss have become fairly clear thanks to satellite data and other techniques. Using high-resolution Google Earth imagery to map and classify global forest loss since 2001, Curtis et al. (2018) found various factors to be immediate drivers, including commodity production, forestry activity, agriculture, wildfires, and urbanization. They found too that just over a quarter of global forest loss is due to deforestation through permanent land use change, for the production of beef, soy, palm oil, and wood fibre. Stark regional variations are also evident. In Latin America and Southeast Asia, in particular, commodity-driven deforestation, for growing palm oil and soy, or for beef production, accounts for almost two-thirds of forest loss (Curtis et al. 2018). In temperate North America and Europe, on the other hand, forest loss is now mainly the result of harvesting products from tree plantations or wildfires, while, in large parts of Africa, forests are typically cleared to make space for subsistence agriculture or to produce fuelwood (Curtis et al. 2018). Another way of putting this is that most temperate countries have completed a ‘forest transition’ whereas most tropical countries are still at the beginning, or are somewhere in the middle, of their transitions. Coined by Mather (1990), ‘forest transition’ refers to the fairly consistent pattern of change observed across

8  Introduction countries as they first lose forests, then begin to regain forest cover. Crudely put, forest transitions are triggered by demand for forest resources and land, which initially increases as populations grow and become wealthier. But as countries get even wealthier, population growth tends to slow, wood is replaced by other fuels, and crop yields improve. Countries with historically high levels of deforestation then typically enter a post-transition phase, in which forest cover may even increase due to reforestation efforts (Ritchie and Roser 2021). So, forest loss is simply part of the process of socio-economic development and a temporary problem that rights itself once a country’s population is rich enough. Unfortunately, it is not quite that simple. First, and as discussed in more detail later, forest loss is a major (though by no means the only) contributor to the alarming rise in carbon emissions behind climate change. If countries now at the beginning of their forest transition follow the same socio-economic development path as, say, the UK, there is little hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change. Second, and as noted before, rich countries continue to contribute to deforestation elsewhere by financing and consuming commodities produced from forest loss. Indeed, around 14% of contemporary deforestation is driven by consumers in rich countries (Ritchie and Roser 2021). Hyper-capitalist consumption through international trade is thus part of the problem because specific food, forestry, and other products consumed in post-transition countries can be linked back to deforestation elsewhere. This fact partly explains the proliferation of private and public initiatives promising, though not necessarily delivering, deforestation-free products. But, although post-transition countries should do more to curb their contributions to forest loss, fixing the international trade in deforestation-driving products is, on its own, not enough. This is because most forests are nowadays cut down for goods consumed in the countries where they are produced, that is because many Brazilians eat a lot of beef (Ritchie and Roser 2021). This implies actions are also needed in these countries, such as those involved in the anti-deforestation initiative REDD+ that is a focus of this book. Finally, it is frequently argued that tropical deforestation needs tackling because it is also typically associated with a range of other societal ills. Indeed, organized crime, money laundering, political corruption, land grabbing, and, not least, threats to life and killings, all confront those who seek to conserve these forests today.

Anti-deforestation efforts and their connection to global climate change mitigation A healthy tree locks carbon into its biomass. Indeed, the world’s forests can be thought of as a vast carbon store, estimated to hold around 861 gigatons of carbon (Pan et  al. 2011). This is equivalent to nearly a century’s worth of annual fossil fuel emissions at current rates of consumption. Deforestation is therefore bad news for the Earth’s climate: harvesting trees releases stored carbon into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming (Dyson 1976). Just how significant a contribution forest conversion makes to climate change has been the subject of some debate. A typical estimate is that carbon emissions from deforestation and

Introduction  9 forest degradation account for around 20% of global anthropogenic CO2 emissions (Angelsen et al. 2009). But some have estimated the contribution to be lower: around 12–15% depending on whether emissions from peatland conversion are included (van der Werf et al. 2009). Contemporary anti-deforestation efforts are, nevertheless, typically rooted in the role forest loss plays in climate change. The basic idea is that countries at the beginning or middle of their forest transitions today should be helped along a less carbon-intensive socio-economic development path than taken by others in the past. But recent institutionalized anti-deforestation efforts, typified by REDD+, did not just emerge overnight as a major component of global climate change policy. Neither have recent anti-deforestation efforts remained static over time and space in Indonesia or elsewhere. As described later in the chapter, the ideas behind REDD+ have a longer history, going back at least to the emerging concept of ‘sustainable development’ in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The dilemmas posed to the world’s sustainability by continued global economic and population growth were a major concern at the UN Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972 (Sachs 2015). In the same year, the Club of Rome published its novel book Limits to Growth, arguing that economic growth along current patterns would collide with the planet’s finite resources, leading to an eventual future societal collapse (Meadows et al. 1972). While both of these events highlighted the world’s problems of sustainably managing future socioeconomic development, it was only in 1980 that the term ‘sustainable development’ was first used explicitly. A joint publication by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and World Wildlife Fund (WWF), World Conservation Strategy: Living Resource Conservation for Sustainable Development (IUCN et al. 1980, p. I), stated: [H]uman beings, in their quest for economic development and enjoyment of the riches of nature, must come to terms with the reality of resource limitation and the carrying capacity of ecosystems, and take account of the needs of future generations. The term ‘sustainable development’ was further popularized by the Brundtland Commission in 1987, whose report for the United Nations noted that: “Sustainable Development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland 1987, p. 41). The notion that socio-economic development today should not threaten the needs of future generations also became a main message of the declaration emerging from Rio Earth Summit held in 1992. And, in 2002, a UN World Sustainable Development Summit was held in Johannesburg, highlighting the need to integrate economic and social development with environmental protection (Sachs 2015). This focus, articulated by American economist Jeffrey Sachs in his 2015 book The Age of Sustainable Development, coalesced in the approval of 17 ‘Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’ that same year, succeeding the 15-year tenure of

10  Introduction the previous Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Martine (2015) notes that both the MDGs and SDGs owed much of their intellectual inspiration to Sachs, who was at the time UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon’s special adviser. Sachs’ influence is evident in several interconnected SDGs. For example, Goal 13 focuses on the need for urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts, in line with the Paris Climate Agreement of 2016; Goal 15 calls for the sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems and sustainably managed forests; while Goal 8 calls for the promotion of sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth.2 In addition to these intellectual innovations and policy goals on sustainable development, the World Bank and some global environmental NGOs began connecting climate change and forest loss, noting that unsustainable levels of deforestation were caused either by policy failures or by improperly accounting for forest loss as a socalled ‘economic externality’ (Hein 2013, McAfee 1999 and 2012). Private companies and NGOs, mainly based in the United States, voluntarily engaged in tropical forest conservation to offset their carbon emissions in the late 1980s, creating the first prototype market for forest carbon (Hein 2019). This was followed in 1997 by the Kyoto Protocol, which introduced the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as the first official system for trading carbon emission rights (Hein 2019). Interest in REDD+ can be traced back to the Kyoto Protocol’s land use, land use change, and forestry framework. However, natural forest conservation and reducing emissions from deforestation were not included in the final protocol because the European Union and some NGOs doubted the permanence of climate change mitigation on the basis of the conservation of forest carbon (Baeckstrand and Loevbrand 2006, Hein 2019). Trees, after all, are fairly easy to cut down. During negotiations on the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), REDD+ and the issue of deforestation were, however, reinserted through lobbying from the governments of Costa Rica and Papua New Guinea (Hein 2019). At the UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP) 13 on Bali, Indonesia, a decision was included to encourage developing countries to undertake efforts to address the drivers of deforestation relevant to their national circumstances (UNFCCC 2007). And at the UNFCCC COP in Warsaw, in December 2013, specific methodological and financing guidance for the implementation of REDD+ in the form of the Warsaw Framework for REDD+ was provided.3 REDD+ was then also recognized in Article 5 of the Paris Climate Agreement signed in 2016, where state parties reiterated encouragement to implement REDD+ activities. After years of evolving policy discussions and tough international negotiations, efforts to address climate change by tackling global forest loss were now firmly and formally enshrined in the United Nations Climate Accords.

Introducing REDD+ The centrality of the anti-deforestation initiative known as REDD+ to contemporary global climate change mitigation policy, as outlined before, is the reason why it takes centre stage in this book. Given the many eggs metaphorically placed

Introduction  11 in this policy basket, by a multitude of governments and organizations, this volume argues that it is vital to critically scrutinize the impacts and results of REDD+ in the political-economic contexts in which it must eventually succeed. But, before explaining in more detail the motivations, methods, approach, and structure of this book, let us first look more closely at REDD+ itself. What does it entail? Which actions does it envisage, where do they take place, and who is involved? Although it has many incarnations, at the core of REDD+ lies the notion that financial inducements can alter peoples’ incentives to harvest timber and other forest products (Angelsen et al. 2009). REDD+ acknowledges that temptations to deforest or degrade forests via industrial or artisanal logging and conversion to agriculture, plantations, mining, or other economic activities are great, particularly in countries experiencing high poverty levels, but that still have vast swathes of forest. REDD+ thus envisages paying people for forest conservation. Forest owners and users are to be paid to reduce forest carbon emissions, providing them with incentives to better manage forests and clear less forestland (Angelsen et al. 2009). In this sense, REDD+ can be categorized as a payment for ecosystem services or PES scheme. But it seeks to avoid problems considered to have undermined wide application of PES systems for forest conservation in the past, particularly unclear definitions of land tenure and forest carbon rights (Angelsen et al. 2009). Given that most deforestation hotspots are characterized by unclear and contested land rights, REDD+ is more than a simple PES system: it envisages an entire institutional apparatus for monitoring forest carbon, for managing payments to forest owners and users, and linking data from local PES systems to national and global REDD+ systems. Further, it has been noted (Angelsen et al. 2009) that effective implementation of REDD+ will only be feasible in a context of enabling policies, implying extensive institutional reforms. For example, reforming agricultural policies could limit pressure on forests by curbing demand for new agricultural land, thereby contributing to REDD+ goals. Given the many preconditions for its success, establishing a REDD+ scheme in a particular country cannot be achieved overnight. Indeed, three separate and defined activity phases are envisaged (UN-REDD Programme 2016): (i) The ‘readiness’ phase: during which countries design national strategies and action plans, build capacity to implement REDD+, work on related policies and measures, and design demonstration activities; (ii) the ‘demonstration’ phase: during which the national strategies, policies, and action plans proposed in the first phase are demonstrated and tested, potentially including results-based demonstration activities and requiring capacity building, technology development, and transfer; and (iii) the ‘implementation’ phase: during which results-based actions (i.e. forest conservation) are implemented at the national level and results measured, reported, and verified (abbreviated MRV), with countries accessing results-based payments when they have completed a reporting, assessment, and analysis process under the UNFCCC framework. Within each of the aforementioned technical phases, engagement with various state and non-state actors is considered indispensable (UN-REDD Programme 2016). UNFCCC decisions have called formally on all parties to ensure full and

12  Introduction effective participation of relevant stakeholders in the design and implementation of REDD+ national strategies. Strong demand, too, has been expressed for meaningful engagement from aid donors, Indigenous Peoples, civil society groups, and REDD+ implementing governments. And, because REDD+ can necessitate reforms in areas not related to forestry alone, its success has also been said to be dependent on partnerships across large sections of society. To facilitate such partnerships, a mapping and engagement protocol was developed under the auspices of the UN-REDD Programme. Entitled Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), a guidance document (UN-REDD Programme 2013) defines FPIC in relation to its constituent components: it is free in the sense that consent is given voluntarily, without coercion; prior in the sense that consent is sought sufficiently before the commencement of any activities; and informed in the sense that accessible and understandable information is made available to stakeholders about the activities. Finally, consent implies a collective decision made according to the customary decision-making processes of the relevant rights holders. In terms of the actors involved in REDD+, several layers of them exist at the global, national, provincial, and local levels, with significant interactions supposedly occurring among them. At the global level, the exchange-based logic behind REDD+ is that deals should be struck between richer countries interested in mitigating climate change and poorer countries that nonetheless possess large proportions of the world’s remaining forests. The deal is that richer countries (with either or both advanced extractive industry-based economies and degraded forest resources that have contributed to historic carbon emissions) pay poorer countries (with much still to gain economically from forest conversion) to retain their standing forests. In other words, the richer countries pay the poorer countries for the opportunity costs of not continuing to develop at least parts of their forestlands according to an extractive socio-economic development model. Norway, not only a wealthy OECD and European Economic Association (EEA) country with an extensive contemporary extractive industry but also an historically important timber producer with a large renewable energy sector, is recognized as the primary instigator and funder of REDD+.4 As the single largest funder of REDD+ (Norman and Nakhooda 2014), Norway entered bilateral agreements from 2007 with a group of poorer (in terms of per capita GDP) yet forest-rich countries, including not only Indonesia but also Brazil and others. Through its International Climate and Forest Initiative, Norway earmarked around USD 500  million for REDD+, supporting the establishment of the UN-REDD Programme, the World Bank’s Forest Investment Programme (FIP), and the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF). A  further regional initiative supported by Norway is the Congo Basin Forest Fund hosted by the African Development Bank. But Norway has not been alone in supporting REDD+. In 2007, the UNFCCC COP integrated the conservation of forests as a critical factor for limiting global heating to 1.5–2°C (Angelsen 2016). In all, donors initially pledged around USD 10 billion to fund this UNFCCC effort, with more than 20 donor countries financing 80 recipient countries (Norman and Nakhooda 2014). That said, funding has been relatively concentrated with Norway, the United States, Germany,

Introduction  13 Japan, and the United Kingdom providing the lion’s share and ten countries receiving the majority of finance. Indonesia and Brazil together were to receive a large proportion of funding, with a smaller proportion going to global programmes or research and for supporting REDD+ in other countries (Norman and Nakhooda 2014). In total, the UN-REDD Programme and World Bank’s FCPF have supported 64 national REDD+ initiatives around the world (Angelsen 2016). In addition, NGOs have been involved in hundreds of diverse REDD+ labelled projects worldwide (Angelsen 2016). REDD+ can therefore be said to be a truly international anti-deforestation approach, involving projects across Africa, Asia, South and Central America, and Melanesia. Extending from the global to the national level and from there into particular provinces and locales in implementing countries, a very wide range of institutional and individual actors are involved in one way or another with REDD+ (Angelsen et  al. 2009). Bilateral and multilateral development agencies, national ministries of environment, research institutions and academics, as well as all manner of firms, NGOs, and journalists have engaged with REDD+ in donor countries. In implementing countries, actors include national parliaments and members of parliament; presidential offices; ministries of agriculture, energy, planning, forestry, and environment; universities and academics; provincial-level executives and national park authorities; national and local NGOs and civil society organizations; individual activists and journalists; consultancies and lobbyists; as well as forest owners and users intended to directly benefit from REDD+ payments, including actors ranging from large-scale corporate owners of forestland to villages and individuals holding customary rights to particular tracts of forest. This very wide range of societal actors involved in REDD+ is the reason why effective stakeholder communication, coordination, and engagement have been considered so crucial to the schemes’ success (Angelsen et al. 2009). But it is also a major reason why contestations at multiple levels hold potential to seriously undermine REDD+ goals.

Motivations, methods, and approach Narrowly put, this book is about what happened when an attempt was made, starting in the year 2010, to implement REDD+ in Indonesia. More broadly, it explains how political-economic conditions and contestations, over time and space, must be both keenly understood and carefully navigated if anti-deforestation interventions are to yield results as one part of global climate change mitigation efforts. This volume draws on the rich field of political ecology to critically assess the trans-local impacts of REDD+ as a neoliberal environmental policy developed to address the profound challenges of contemporary tropical deforestation. It shows how anti-deforestation efforts have arisen at a time when forested countries in the tropics face increased domestic pressures to further grow and restructure their economies, while historically high-carbon-emitting countries in temperate regions face increased calls to decarbonize theirs. But before turning to the book’s structure and what may be found in its various chapters, let us first look at the questions

14  Introduction motivating my research, and why REDD+ in Indonesia is of particular relevance in answering them. This introduction began by contrasting the neat, positive, visions of G20 policy elites with the messy realities found on the streets of Pittsburgh and Jakarta. Indeed, an important motivation for my research has been to understand why such contrasts exist in relation to anti-deforestation efforts. Surely, REDD+ is only to be lauded? After all, REDD+ aims to protect forests as carbon sinks to reduce the contribution of forestland conversion to CO2 emissions and climate change; it offers compensation for the lost opportunity costs forest users experience for being unable to use their forestlands for subsistence or larger-scale extraction; it seeks to rationalize the legal, economic, and institutional management of tropical forestlands to reduce conflicts and tensions around land tenure and rights to forests; and it aims to ensure payments are only made to forest users that can demonstrate actual reductions to deforestation and forest degradation. Yet, despite all of this, REDD+ has met with derision, suspicion, and opposition in many of the locations it has been attempted around the world, including Indonesia. A host of studies, evaluations, reports, blogs, and news stories indicate that REDD+ has not seen universal approval and has been actively campaignedagainst (Cabello and Gilbertsen 2012, Moeliono et al. 2014, and Lund et al. 2017).5 Why is this the case? Are these reactions rooted in a lack of appreciation among forest users of what REDD+ entails? Are they based on ill-founded yet genuine fears among defenders of forest peoples’ rights, which bear little resemblance to the realities of REDD+ implementation? Or are they understandable reactions to a neoliberal environmental scheme whose first concern is the conservation of tropical forests as global public goods, rather than improving the precarious rights and livelihood situations of forest-dependent peoples? A related motivation is to understand whether and how contestations surrounding REDD+ have affected its outcomes as a core component of climate change policy. REDD+ has been portrayed both as a quick win and a relatively cost-effective means of addressing climate change. A widely cited report by British economist Nicholas Stern (2006, p. 537) on the economics of climate change, for example, stated that: “curbing deforestation is a highly cost-effective way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and has the potential to offer significant reductions fairly quickly.” This view is founded on the assumption that, in order to address climate change, a price for forest carbon can be established and public funding used to create a global market for forest carbon credit trading (Stern 2006). But although REDD+ and other forest conservation projects have in theory been established to generate carbon credits that may eventually be traded on international markets, uncertainties around the permanence of carbon sequestration in trees have meant that the scope for selling forest carbon credits in both global compliance and voluntary carbon offsetting markets is still limited (van der Gaast et al. 2018). Forestry projects in the international carbon markets, such as those under the Kyoto Protocol or the Emissions Trading Scheme of the European Union, have not taken off as expected, with the main incentives for carbon-related forest activities to date being provided by public funds to governments (van der

Introduction  15 Gaast et al. 2018). Proponents of REDD+ have recognized that the road to full payments-for-results, or to a global forest carbon credit trading market, has been much rockier, longer, and will probably be more expensive, than earlier imagined (Angelsen et al. 2017). Why is this the case? And does it matter that REDD+ appears to be proving much more time-consuming and expensive to pursue as a climate change mitigation policy than earlier envisaged, given that it may yet lead to positive results and is arguably still cheaper than pursuing carbon emission reductions via, say, industrial sectors? These first two motivations relate to how REDD+ has been conceived in policy terms, how it has been practiced in specific instances, and what the reactions to and results of these policies and practices have been. But my interest in researching REDD+ in Indonesia also stems from more academic concerns. How tropical forests should be managed, for whom, and to what ends are core questions addressed in the literature on forestry and economic development (Forsyth 2009), and Indonesia has long been a locus of contestation over its formal forest policies and actual practices (Kingsbury 2005, Peluso 1992). So why pursue REDD+ in Indonesia over other possible forest policies? I take as a starting point the notion that decision-makers, although influenced by external events, actors, and wider circumstances, generally have a range of options in managing public policy challenges such as deforestation (Grindle and Thomas 1991). This constitutes the room for manoeuvre or policy space within which they operate on any given issue. By focusing on both REDD+ as a neoliberal forest conservation-enclosure intervention and the ‘messy’ world it would transform (Li 2007, p. 5), this book provides an empirical understanding of the factors that have shaped elite policymakers’ room for manoeuvre on REDD+ in Indonesia. A second academic motivation lies in understanding the theoretical roots of REDD+ and the extent to which it has influenced its actual practice in Indonesia. I subscribe to the view that making explicit the theoretical assumptions behind interventions is important to reveal how “social and political framings are woven into both the formulation of scientific explanations of environmental problems, and the solutions proposed to reduce them” (Forsyth 2003, p. 1). What motivates an individual, group, firm, or public agency to cut down a particular tree in a certain location and at a certain time; what motivates them to either conserve or sustainably manage it; and what motivation would be needed to change their decision from one outcome to another are seemingly straightforward questions. Yet, the literature on forestry and socio-economic development brims with competing views, arguments, evidence, and theories when it comes to answering these questions (Sayer 2005). The majority of the early literature on REDD+ appeared to me, when embarking on my research, to be written from a neoliberal environmental economics perspective, and the intervention itself (as a type of payment for ecosystem services, or PES, intervention) seemed to reflect this anchoring. This is hardly surprising. Yet, this realization motivated me to try to appreciate how this theoretical anchoring influenced the conception, design, and practice of REDD+ as a climate change intervention, and whether this anchoring has been misused or misinterpreted.

16  Introduction In summary, this volume asks how can we explain the contestations at multiple levels observed in Indonesia’s REDD+ implementation? How have these contestations affected REDD+ outcomes? What is it that explains opposition from, for example, indigenous forest communities and non-governmental organizations towards certain REDD+ pilots in Indonesia? Conversely, what is it that explains support for REDD+ among state forest institutions, national authorities, and foreign donors present in Indonesia? And, finally, what is the contemporary status of deforestation and forest degradation in Indonesia and how does this relate to the REDD+ activities conducted over the last few years? To answer these questions, this book draws on a decade of my research on REDD+ in Indonesia, which adopted a form of critical policy analysis rooted in the field of political ecology. Although focused on Indonesia nationally, I draw on fieldwork I  undertook in 2017 on two REDD+ pilots in northwestern Central Sulawesi, an Indonesian province with particularly high levels of contemporary deforestation (Rijal et al. 2019). Based on interviews and focus group discussions in Jakarta, Bogor, Oslo, and Palu and a systematic review of literature and environmental change data in the form of satellite imagery of deforestation, I show that contestations surrounding these pilots meant they did little to address contemporary drivers of deforestation. I argue too that a range of evidence show that REDD+ policies writ large in Indonesia have not significantly altered the extractive-oriented incentives and practices of the political and economic elites currently competing over the archipelago’s vast, yet still rapidly diminishing, natural resource wealth. But why study REDD+ in Indonesia in particular? Indonesia is a classic case for studying the politics of deforestation and anti-deforestation efforts, including REDD+, due to the immense importance of forest wealth to its culture, economy, and political system. With a population of more than 260  million people in a total land area of approximately 187 million ha, Indonesia is home to globally significant forest ecosystems and is the second-most biodiverse country in the world after Brazil (CIFOR 2015, Kartawinata et  al. 2001). As a tropical archipelago nation situated between mainland Southeast Asia and Australia, its flora and fauna reflect its location at the crossroads of these two landmasses (Kartawinata et al. 2001, Legge and Wolters 2018). Its biological diversity is also a product of the variety of its landscapes, including tropical rainforests in the northern lowlands, seasonal forests in the southern lowlands, and subalpine shrub vegetation in mountainous regions (CIFOR 2015). Indeed, Indonesia hosts more than 3,000 tree species, including durian, sandalwood, ebony, and the valuable timber varieties teak and ironwood (Legge and Wolters 2018). Their vast scale and rich biodiversity mean, however, that Indonesia’s forests and derivative commodities (e.g. spices, timber) have long been coveted sources of wealth. Prospective revenues from the lucrative East–West spice trade played a major role in motivating Portuguese and Dutch mariners to establish control over the Spice Islands from the 16th century ce (Acemoglu and Robinson 2012). The extractive regime centred on Banda adopted by the Dutch used violence against the local population to generate wealth that was largely taken abroad during the

Introduction  17 colonial era, resulting in local underdevelopment (Acemoglu and Robinson 2012, Ghosh 2021). The newly independent Indonesian republic, too, leaned heavily on its forests to fund national economic development and state-building aims following the Second World War: a process characterized by illegal wealth capture by the country’s elites, most notably former President Suharto and his associates (Kingsbury 2005). Today, economic rents from Indonesia’s vast forests are huge, with revenues counted in the billions of dollars (Mumbunan and Wahyudi 2016). This forest wealth means Indonesia has long experienced high levels of deforestation. Swidden agriculture alone may have been responsible for around 4 million ha of forest being lost during the 1990s (FWI/GFW 2001), although it has been less prevalent in recent years. Indeed, fire swiddening, where secondary forests are converted to fields for planting crops using slash and burn techniques to clear vegetation, has long been a cornerstone of agriculture across the archipelago (Deali 2019). But deforestation is also driven by larger-scale economic activities in the country, including palm oil production, mining, and logging (Indrarto et al. 2012). Indrarto et al. (2012) note that deforestation in Indonesia is both planned and unplanned, with planned deforestation constituting government-backed changes in forest area function in the interests of estate crops, agricultural or housing development, conducted according to legislation. Unplanned deforestation, on the other hand, refers to illegal activities (often linked to corruption) including illegal harvesting and timber theft, driven by a combination of high market demand, poor forest management, and the high cost of legal logging (Santosa 2003). Deliberately set fires to facilitate land conversion are also both a cause and consequence of deforestation in Indonesia (Indrarto et al. 2012). And although the area lost to fires is reportedly smaller than deforestation from other factors, it causes serious environmental, health, and economic impacts across Southeast Asia (Lohman et al. 2007). Faced with these challenges, it is little wonder, then, that along with Brazil and the countries of the Congo Basin, Indonesia should become a major focus for REDD+ anti-deforestation efforts. Devoted, as it is, to explaining what occurred as REDD+ encountered the messy political and economic realities of the Indonesian context, this book is structured as follows. Chapter 1 further expounds my theoretical and conceptual approach, rooted in critical policy analysis and the field of political ecology. There then follows, in Chapter 2, a brief political history of Indonesian forest governance; included so that we can understand the deep context in which REDD+ implementation took place. My description of REDD+ in Indonesia is then divided across two chapters, with Chapter 3 focusing on the developments at the national level and Chapter 4 discussing evidence collated from pilots in Central Sulawesi, one of the main Indonesian pilot provinces for REDD+. Chapter  5 then takes a step back to look at the bigger picture of REDD+ results in Indonesia and Norway’s role in this story, analysing the evidence collated through a political ecology lens. Finally, the book concludes by asking what implications should be drawn from Indonesia’s REDD+ story for reconfiguring nature–society relations in this age of hyper-capitalism and looming climate breakdown.

18  Introduction

Notes 1 In the Global Forest Watch dataset, ‘tree cover’ is defined as all vegetation greater than 5 meters in height and may take the form of natural forests or plantations across a range of canopy densities. ‘Loss’ indicates the removal or mortality of tree cover and can be due to a variety of factors, including mechanical harvesting, fire, disease, or storm damage. As such, ‘loss’ does not necessarily equate to deforestation. See https:// globalforestwatch.org/. 2 See https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2016/Overview/. 3 See https://unfccc.int/topics/land-use/workstreams/redd/what-is-redd. 4 Norway is one of four major OECD producers of oil and gas, along with the United States, Canada, and Brazil (IEA 2018) and invests tax revenues from its oil and gas sector in the Government Pension Fund Global (Norges Bank 2018). Norway’s per capita carbon intensity is close to the OECD average, with oil and gas production, along with chemical processes in aluminium production and alloys, accounting for a substantial share of its greenhouse-gas emissions (OECD 2018). 5 Studies include Cabello and Gilbertsen (2012), Moeliono et al. (2014), and Lund et al. (2017). Evaluations include Hewatt (2017). NGO reports include Global Witness (2011) and Freudenthal et al. (2011), while NGO campaigns include those of the Global Alliance Against REDD+ (see http://no-redd.com/). Blogs include the REDD Monitor (see www.redd-monitor.org). Media articles include the Jakarta Post (15 August 2013) and the Guardian (27 September 2017).

References Acemoglu, D. and J.A. Robinson. 2012. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty. Profile Books Limited: London. Angelsen, A. 2016. “REDD+ as Result-based Aid: General Lessons and Bilateral Agreements of Norway.” Review of Development Economics. Vol. 21. Issue 2. pp. 237–264. Angelsen, A., M. Brockhaus, A.E. Duchelle, A. Larson, C. Martius, W.D. Sunderlin, L. Verchot, G. Wong, and S. Wunder. 2017. “Learning from REDD+: A Response to Fletcher et al.” Conservation Biology. Vol. 31. Issue 3. pp. 718–720. Angelsen, A., M. Brockhaus, M. Kanninen, E. Sills, W.D. Sunderlin, and S. Wertz-Kanounnikoff. 2009. Realising REDD+: National Strategy and Policy Options. Center for International Forestry Research: Bogor. Baeckstrand, K. and E. Loevbrand. 2006. “Planting Trees to Mitigate Climate Change: Contested Discourses of Ecological Modernization, Green Governmentality and Civic Environmentalism.” Global Environmental Politics. Vol. 6. Issue 1. pp. 50–75. Balée, W. 2013. Cultural Forests of the Amazon: A Historical Ecology of People and their Landscapes. University of Alabama Press: Tuscaloosa. Barbier, E.B. 1989. Economics, Natural Resource Scarcity and Development. Earthscan: London. Brown, K. and D.W. Pearce (Eds.). 1994. The Causes of Tropical Deforestation: The Economic and Statistical Analysis of Factors Giving Rise to the Loss of the Tropical Forests. University College London Press: London. Brundtland, G.H. 1987. Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. Oxford University Press: Oxford. Cabello, J. and T. Gilbertsen. 2012. “A  Colonial Mechanism to Enclose Lands: A  critical Review of Two REDD+-Focused Special Issues.” Ephemera. Vol. 12. Issue 1–2. pp. 162–180. CIFOR. 2015. Forestry in Indonesia: An Overview. Center for International Forestry Research: Bogor.

Introduction  19 Contreras-Hermosilla, A. 2000. The Underlying Causes of Forest Decline (Occasional paper no. 30). Centre for International Forestry Research: Bogor. Curtis, P.G., C.M. Slay, N.L. Harris, A. Tyukavina, and M.C. Hansen. 2018. “Classifying Drivers of Global Forest Loss.” Science. Vol. 361. Issue 6407. pp. 1108–1111. Deali, W. 2019. Beyond Swidden Agriculture: Rethinking Approach to Fires. World Resources Institute Indonesia: Jakarta. Dyson, F.J. 1976. “Can We Control the Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere?” Energy. Vol. 2. pp. 287–291. FAO. 2020. The State of the World’s Forests—2020. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: Rome. Forsyth, T. 2003. Critical Political Ecology: The Politics of Environmental Science. Routledge: London. Forsyth, T. 2009. “Multilevel, Multiactor Governance in REDD+: Participation, Integration and Coordination.” in Angelsen, A. (Ed.). Realising REDD+: National Strategies and Policy Options. Center for International Forestry Research: Bogor. Fyfe, R.M., C. Twiddle, S. Sugita, M.J. Gaillard, P. Barratt, C.J. Caseldine, J. Dodson, K.J. Edwards, M. Farrell, C. Froyd, M.J. Grantj, E. Huckerby, J.B. Innes, H. Shaw, and M. Waller. 2013. “The Holocene Vegetation Cover of Britain and Ireland: Overcoming Problems of Scale and Discerning Patterns of Openness.” Quaternary Science Reviews. Vol. 73. pp. 132–148. Geist, H.J. and E.F. Lambin. 2002. “Proximate Causes and Underlying Driving Forces of Tropical Deforestation.” BioScience. Vol. 52. Issue 2. pp. 143–150. Ghosh, A. 2021. The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis. University of Chicago Press: Chicago. Grainger, A. 1993. Controlling Tropical Deforestation. Earthscan: London. Grindle, M.S. and J.W. Thomas. 1991. Public Choices and Policy Change: The Political Economy of Reform in Developing Countries. The John Hopkins University Press: Baltimore. Hamilton, C., F. Gemenne, and C. Bonneuil. (Eds.). 2015. The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis: Rethinking Modernity in a New Epoch. Routledge Earthscan: London. Hein, J. 2013. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+), Transnational Conservation and Access to Land in Jambi, Indonesia (Vol. No. 2. EFForTS Discussion Paper Series). University of Göttingen: Lower Saxony. Hein, J.I. 2019. Political Ecology of REDD+ in Indonesia: Agrarian Conflicts and Forest Carbon (p. 230). Routledge: Abingdon and New York. IEA. 2018. “Record Oil Outputs from US, Brazil, Canada and Norway to Keep Global Markets Well Supplied.” International Energy Agency. Available at: https://www.iea.org/ news/record-oil-output-from-us-brazil-canada-and-norway-to-keep-global-marketswell-supplied Indrarto, G.B., P. Murharjanti, J. Khatarina, I. Pulungan, F. Ivalerina, J. Rahman, M.N. Prana, I.A.R. Resosudarmo, and E. Muharrom. 2012. The Context of REDD+ in Indonesia: Drivers, Agents and Institutions. Centre for International Forestry Research: Bogor. International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and World Wildlife Fund (WWF). 1980. World Conservation Strategy: Living Resource Conservation for Sustainable Development. IUCN: Gland. Available at: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/91329?ln=en IPBES. 2019. Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services: Bonn. Available at: https://ipbes.net/global-assessment

20  Introduction IPCC. 2019. “Summary for Policymakers.” in Climate Change and Land: an IPCC Special Report on Climate Change, Desertification, Land Degradation, Sustainable Land Management, Food Security, and Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems [P.R. Shukla, J. Skea, E. Calvo Buendia, V. Masson-Delmotte, H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, P. Zhai, R. Slade, S. Connors, R. van Diemen, M. Ferrat, E. Haughey, S. Luz, S. Neogi, M. Pathak, J. Petzold, J. Portugal Pereira, P. Vyas, E. Huntley, K. Kissick, M. Belkacemi, J. Malley, (eds.)]. In press. Kahn, J. and J. McDonald. 1994. “International Debt and Deforestation.” in Brown, K. and D.W. Pearce (Eds.). The Causes of Tropical Deforestation: The Economic and Statistical Analysis of Factors Giving Rise to the Loss of the Tropical Forests. University College London Press: London. Kartawinata, K., S. Risawn, A.N. Gintings, and T. Puspitojati. 2001. “An Overview of PostExtraction Secondary Forests in Indonesia.” Journal of Tropical Forest Science. Vol. 13. Issue 4. pp. 621–638. Kingsbury, D. 2005. The Politics of Indonesia (3rd Edition). Oxford University Press: Oxford. Legge, J.D. and O.W. Wolters. 2018. “Indonesia.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/place/Indonesia/Plant-and-animal-life Li, T.M. 2007. The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics. Duke University Press: Durham. Lohman, D.J., D. Bickford, and N.S. Sodhi. 2007. “The Burning Issue.” Science. Vol. 316. Issue 5823. Lund, J.F., E. Sungusia, M.B. Mabele, and A. Scheba. 2017. “Promising Change, Delivering Continuity: REDD+ as Conservation Fad.” World Development. Vol. 89. pp. 124–129. Martine, G. 2015. “Reviving or Interring Global Governance on Sustainability? Sachs, The UN and the SDGs.” Revista Brasileira de Estud. Population. Vol. 32. Mather, A.S. 1990. Global Forest Resources. Belhaven Press: London. McAfee, K. 1999. “Selling Nature to Save It? Biodiversity and Green Developmentalism.” Environment and Planning. Vol. 17. pp. 133–154. McAfee, K. 2012. “The Contradictory Logic of Global Ecosystem Services Markets.” Development and Change. Vol. 43. Issue 1. pp. 105–131. Meadows, D.H., D.H. Meadows, J. Randers, and W.W. Behrens III, 1972. The Limits to Growth: A Report to the Club of Rome. Club of Rome: Rome. Moeliono, M., C. Gallemore, L. Santoso, M. Brockhaus, and M. Di Gregorio. 2014. “Information Networks and Power: Confronting the “Wicked Problem” of REDD+ in Indonesia.” Ecology and Society. Vol. 19. Issue 2. Montalvo, J.G. and M. Ravaillon. 2009. The Pattern of Growth and Poverty Reduction in China (Policy Research Working Paper). World Bank: Washington, DC. Mumbunan, S. and R. Wahyudi. 2016. “Revenue Loss from Legal Timber in Indonesia.” Forest Policy and Economics. Vol. 71. pp. 115–123. Myers, N. 1980. Conversion of Moist Tropical Forests. National Research Council: Washington, DC. Norges Bank. 2018. Government Global Pension Fund Website. Available at: https://www. nbim.no/no/ Norman, M. and S. Nakhooda. 2014. The State of REDD+ Finance (CGD Climate and Forest Paper Series #5). Center for Global Development and Overseas Development Institute: Washington, DC. OECD. 2018. Norway Overview. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Economic Survey. OECD: Paris.

Introduction  21 Palo, M. 1994. “Population and Deforestation.” in Brown, K. and D.W. Pearce (Eds.). The Causes of Tropical Deforestation: The Economic and Statistical Analysis of Factors Giving Rise to the Loss of the Tropical Forests. University College London Press: London. Pan, Y., R.A. Birdsey, J. Fang, R. Houghton, P.E. Kauppi, W.A. Kurz, O.L. Phillips, A. Shvidenko, S.L. Lewis, J.G. Candell, P. Ciais, R.B. Jackson, S.W. Pacala, A.D. McGuire, S. Piao, A. Rautiainen, S. Sitch, and D. Hayes. 2011. “A Large and Persistent Carbon Sink in the World’s Forests.” Science. Vol. 333. Issue 6045. pp. 988–993. Peluso, N.L. 1992. Rich Forests, Poor People: Resource Control and Resistance in Java. University of California Press: Berkeley, and London. Piketty, T. 2020. Capital and Ideology. Harvard University Press: Cambridge. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 2009. “G-20 Protestors Hold Peaceful March from Oakland to North Side.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Available at: https://www.post-gazette.com/local/ city/2009/09/25/G-20-protesters-hold-peaceful-march-from-Oakland-to-North-Side/ stories/200909250183 Raworth, K. 2017. Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist. Random House: London. Repetto, R. and T. Holmes. 1983. “The Role of Population in Resource Depletion in Developing Countries.” Population and Development Review. Vol. 9. Issue 4. pp. 607–632. Reuters. 2009. “Indonesia CO2 Pledge to Help Climate Talks.” Reuters. Available at: https:// www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-talks-indonesia-idUSTRE58S1CR20090929 Rijal, S., R.A. Barkey, N. Nasri, and M. Nursaputra. 2019. “Profile, Level of Vulnerability and Spatial Pattern of Deforestation in Sulawesi Period of 1990 to 2018.” Forests. Vol. 10. Issue 191. Ritchie, H. and M. Roser. 2021. “Forests and Deforestation.” OurWorldInData.org. Available at: https://ourworldindata.org/forests-and-deforestation Sachs, J. 2015. The Age of Sustainable Development. Columbia University Press: New York. Santosa, M.A. 2003. Penegakan Hukum Illegal Logging: Permasalahan dan Solusi. ICEL: Jakarta. Sayer, J. 2005. (Ed.). The Earthscan Reader in Forestry and Development. Earthscan: London. Schuette, S. 2019. “Why Fix KPK When It is Not Broken?” The Jakarta Post. Available at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2019/09/27/why-fix-kpk-when-it-not-broken.html Sengupta, S. and S. Maginnis. 2005. “Forests and Development: Where do We Stand?” in Sayer, J. (Ed.). The Earthscan Reader in Forestry and Development. Earthscan: London. Sommer, A. 1976. “Attempt at an Assessment of the World’s Tropical Moist Forests.” Unasylva. Vol. 28. pp. 112–113. Stern, N. 2006. The Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change. HM Treasury and Cabinet Office: London. Available at: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/ www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/sternreview_index.htm The Jakarta Post. 2019. “Legislative Assault on KPK.” The Jakarta Post. Available at: https:// www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2019/09/18/legislative-assault-on-kpk.html UNFCCC. 2007. Bali Road Map. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: Geneva. UN-REDD Programme. 2013. Guidelines on Free, Prior and Informed Consent. FAO, UNDP, UNEP: Geneva. UN-REDD Programme. 2016. UN-REDD Programme Fact Sheet about REDD+. FAO, UNDP, UNEP: Geneva. van der Gaast, W., R. Sikkema, and M. Vohrer. 2018. “The Contribution of Forest Carbon Credit Projects to Addressing the Climate Change Challenge”. Climate Policy. Vol. 28. Issue 2018.

22  Introduction van der Werf, G.R., D.C. Morton, R.S. DeFries, J.G.J. Olivier, P.S. Kasibhatla, R.B. Jackson, G.J. Collatz, and J.T. Randerson. 2009. “CO2 Emissions from Forest Loss.” Nature Geoscience. Vol. 2. Westoby, J.C. 1978. “Forest Industries for Socio-Economic Development.” Commonwealth Forestry Review. Vol. 58. pp. 107–116. Westoby, J.C. 1989. Introduction to World Forestry. People and Their Trees. Basil Blackwell: Oxford. Widianto, S. and G. Suroyo. 2019. “Anger on Campus: Behind the Student Protests that have Rocked Indonesia.” Reuters. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/article/ us-indonesia-politics-rights-student-ins-idUSKBN1XH2XI Yudhoyono, S.B. 2011. Speech Given at the Forests Indonesia Conference. Shangri-La Hotel: Jakarta. Accessed at: www.cifor.org/fileadmin/fileupload/media-release/27_Sep_SBY_ Speech.pdf

1 REDD+ as neoliberal environmentalism A political ecology perspective

REDD+ can be thought-of as a vast, global experiment. Essentially, this experiment is inspired by and rooted in ideas on the ‘value of nature and the nature of value’ found in neoliberalism (Daily et al. 2000, p. 1), whose ideas now dominate much public policy. With this starting perspective in mind, this first chapter aims to achieve six main goals. First, it reviews the early roots of REDD+ as a forest enclosure-conservation intervention in order to help us understand its theoretical and disciplinary anchoring. Second, it asks what implications these roots might hold for the way REDD+ has been designed and implemented. Third, it draws on the recent REDD+ literature to consider the value of studying REDD+ from perspectives other than the lenses of environmental economics and forest science. Fourth, it addresses what I consider to be the most salient factors when considering a theoretical frame-of-reference for studying REDD+ in Indonesia. Fifth, it provides the reader with some background on the origins, ideas, and narratives contained in the field of political ecology. And, sixth, it makes a case for the relevance of political ecology as a theoretical lens for analysing REDD+ implementation in Indonesia. In this final section, I reflect on the theoretical narratives that most resonated with me as I approached the Indonesian case that is the main focus of this book.

Theoretical and disciplinary roots of REDD+ In the 2000s, a literature emerged that placed particular emphasis on the role tropical forest conversion plays in human-induced climate change (see Kanninen 2007; Kaimowitz 2008; Angelsen 2009; Motel et  al. 2009; Palmer and Engel 2009). Drawing on earlier evidence and ideas from the literature on tropical forest management, particularly on issues of governance and market failure in relation to tropical forests (e.g. Angelsen and Kaimowitz 1999), this literature focused on what were perceived as two related gaps in earlier studies: (i) how to reduce tropical forest conversion (or deforestation and forest degradation) specifically for the purpose of reducing forest carbon emissions into the Earth’s atmosphere and (ii) how to integrate the carbon storage and sequestration services provided by tropical forests into local, national, and international decisions about their use (Angelsen 2009). The various owners and users of tropical forests, it was argued, DOI: 10.4324/9781003267898-2

24  REDD+ as neoliberal environmentalism had not been made to pay for the forests ‘ecosystem services,’ among them carbon sequestration, and this was at least part of the reason why forest conversion continued to remain a lucrative source of economic rents (Emerton 2003). The notion that ecosystems provide ‘services’ that can be compensated-for financially was not, in itself, new to the 2000s. In fact, this idea grew out of earlier utilitarian framings in the late 1970s of the benefits of ecosystems to societal life (Gómez-Baggethun et al. 2010, Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1981). Research interest in ecosystem services had continued throughout the 1990s, with a particular focus on developing methods for estimating their economic value (GómezBaggethun et al. 2010, Costanza et al. 1997). But, since the 2000s, ecosystem services ideas previously confined to the environmental economics literature increasingly reached into actual economic policy through the promotion of market-based instruments for conservation, such as Markets for Ecosystem Services (MES) and Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes (Gómez-Baggethun et al. 2010, Wunder et al. 2008). REDD+ has indeed been described as “the world’s largest experiment in Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES)” that “promotes the commodification of ecosystems carbon storage and sequestration functions on a global scale” (Corbera 2012, p. 1). The pervasive logic expressed in the early REDD+ literature of the 2000s is that financial compensation for foregoing economic opportunities from forest conversion for agricultural, plantation development, or other purposes, would motivate forest users towards tropical forest conservation (Angelsen 2009, Palmer and Engel 2009, Phelps et al. 2010). REDD+ would enable, it was argued, conserved forests to remain economically, socially, and politically viable in landscapes able to meet multiple human needs (Angelsen 2009). Backed by monitoring systems paid for by development institutions and government agencies, REDD+ would generate income to actors that conserve forests only if actual, verifiable, forest protection was achieved, and only if related social benefits were shared. Over time, it was argued that the public financial resources made available to establish REDD+ schemes by aid donors (particularly Norway, but also the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom) and partly implemented via multilateral institutions (the World Bank and UN system) would make way to a global carbon market, where forest owners and users would “simply sell forest carbon credits and less cattle, coffee, cocoa or charcoal” (Angelsen 2009, p. xiii).1 In this way, forest carbon was envisaged to become a resource commodity (de Gregori 1987). But can the early REDD+ literature really be said to belong to a particular perspective? If we consider, for example, the much-cited book “Realising REDD+: National Strategy and Policy Options,” published by the Centre for International Forestry Research (Angelsen 2009) and funded by REDD+ donors, the majority of chapters are rooted either in a branch of economics or forest science, with only four rooted in political analysis (i.e. political science or political-economy). Indeed, the prevalence of economists and forest scientists in Angelsen (2009) is repeated in other REDD+ literature published during the 2000s, including Palmer and Engel (2009), Phelps et al. (2010), and Corbera and Schroeder (2011). At the same time, a few studies rooted in other disciplines do exist from this period,

REDD+ as neoliberal environmentalism  25 including from anthropologist Michael L. Brown (2010). Although not all early REDD+ studies during the 2000s are rooted in environmental economics and forest science, both proponents (e.g., Angelsen et al. 2017) and critics of REDD+ (e.g., Corbera 2012) recognize, unsurprisingly, that the core ideas behind it, namely PES and the application of market-based incentives for forest conservation, are firmly rooted in the economic orthodoxies of neoliberalism. Indeed, McAfee (2012, p. 107) has previously suggested that controversies surrounding PES and REDD+ must be understood “within wider debates about neo-liberalization of nature and post-neoliberal development policy.”

Implications of the theoretical and disciplinary roots of REDD+ Does it matter that early analyses of the feasibility and potential of REDD+ during the 2000s, when concrete REDD+ interventions were being designed, financed, and rolled-out by official development cooperation actors, were largely rooted in particular theoretical and disciplinary perspectives? Again, I  follow Forsyth’s (2003) view that understanding the theoretical assumptions behind interventions is indeed important if we are to appreciate their true origins and provide a deep evaluation of their performance. What, then, could the implications of the rooting of many REDD+ studies during the 2000s be for REDD+ as a neoliberal solution to deforestation? One set of implications is derived from recent critiques of neoliberalism. McAfee (2012, p. 108) observes that, in keeping with neoclassical economic principles, neoliberalism emphasizes “individual and corporate property rights and the primacy of the ‘market’ in determining the uses of productive resources” and equates the value of things with their exchange or transaction value. In policy terms, neoliberalism diverges from neoclassical economics in that it advocates certain forms of intervention by states and supra-state institutions: forms of regulation that support private capital accumulation (McAfee 2012, Jessop 2002).2 It also emphasizes the benefits of globalization and GDP-defined economic growth through competitive exporting. These benefits are, however, being questioned and challenged by various strands of recent economic scholarship (McAfee 2012, Raworth 2017, Piketty 2020). For example Raworth (2017) and Piketty (2020) have both taken issue with the 20th-century ce economic orthodoxies underpinning neoliberalism, advocating a more empirically grounded understanding of the relationships between GDP-defined growth, biophysical properties, and ecological limits. REDD+ can, indeed, be viewed as a particular incarnation of PES rooted in a form of neoliberal environmentalism. Through publicly funded REDD+ projects, national REDD+ frameworks, the development of international policy architecture, and, possibly eventually, a global forest carbon market, forest carbon becomes a resource commodity to be valued (via monitoring, reporting, and verification techniques, or MRV) and exchanged like any other. Through the creation of this new commodity form and its related market, local actors in tropical forested countries, it is suggested by REDD+ proponents, will have greater economic

26  REDD+ as neoliberal environmentalism opportunities, not all of which need involve environmental degradation or extractive wealth-creation (Angelsen 2009). REDD+, as a form of neoliberal environmentalism, thus promises to “foster greener economic growth, but with a human face: a multiple-win outcome for nature, private investors and publics, including the poor” (McAfee 2012, p. 109). A main critique of the neoliberal ideas behind REDD+ is that they offer an inaccurate view of the dynamic functioning of institutions and political-social processes or behaviours (Peet and Hartwick 2009). It is assumed that free economic actors in tropical forested countries are in a position to make rational economic choices about investment and employment opportunities. Or that through appropriate state-led policy reforms that are implemented, they can over time be in a position to do so. There is already evidence, however, that national governments’ adoption of REDD+ policy reforms has been slower and more expensive than expected (Howell and Bastiensen 2015, Riksrevisjonen 2018) with more forest loss at REDD+ implementation sites occurring than hoped for and less interest than expected from the private sector (Angelsen et al. 2017). Cases of REDD+ implementation from various countries show that financial transfers to ecosystem service providers have been minimal, or in some cases negative where costs have exceeded payments, while ecosystem service markets have tended to reinforce inequalities between poorer and wealthier landholders (McAfee 2012). Because it emphasizes market-oriented conservation decisions, there is a concern that REDD+ will involve the peripheralization of climate policy, whereby the greatest mitigation burdens are placed on vulnerable populations across the tropics, rather than those mainly responsible for carbon emissions.3 A related critique is that a focus on establishing REDD+ as a type of PES could result in viewing related processes of forest carbon measurement and valuation as primarily technical endeavours rather than as sites of potential political contestation. As recognized by Gupta et al. (2012, p. 1) in their review of social science analyses of MRV for REDD+, MRV processes involve the exercise of “disciplinary power (through standardization, simplification and erasing the local).” To counteract this tendency, Gupta et al. (2012) advance the notion of carbon accountability, suggesting that REDD+ interventions should approach forest carbon measurement and valuation not merely in straightforward accounting terms, but should also enable a holding to account of those actually performing MRV. Another set of implications is derived from the closeness of neoliberal environmentalism to the venture of neoliberal capitalism itself. Peet and Hartwick (2009, p. 102) suggest, [E]conomics faithfully serves the capitalist system in which a minority owns and controls the means by which existence is collectively reproduced, determining thereby the character and direction of development, the social relations with nature, and the way people are created as kinds of human beings. The promise of globalization on neoliberal terms to deliver both consistent poverty reduction and social peace through an emphasis on GDP growth and competitive

REDD+ as neoliberal environmentalism  27 exports has, however, partly failed (Wolf 2004, Raworth 2017). Rising inequalities both within and among countries in the era of hyper-capitalism following the Second World War have been coupled with more frequent and deeper economic and ecological crises: outcomes that climate change is likely to further exacerbate (Wade 2004, Storm 2009). Piketty (2020) demonstrates, for example, how socio-economic inequality has increased in all regions of the world since 1980, with extreme wealth inequalities characterizing a number of countries. Indonesia is a case in point. In 2016, the wealthiest 1% of the population owned nearly half (49%) of total wealth, with the collective wealth of the richest four billionaires (USD 25  billion) being more than the total wealth of the bottom 40% of the population, or about 100 million people (Oxfam 2017). Overall, these insights beg the question whether REDD+ simply seeks to rejig the neoliberal capitalist system, itself predicated on GDP-defined economic growth and the continued exploitation of nature and people, when what is instead required is a tectonic shift in thinking about and approaches towards not only deforestation but overall human security as well. As suggested by Death (2016, pp. 3–4): “forging new ways of living with each other on this planet, more sustainably, securely, and equitably will require revolutionary upheaval of existing ways of life, changes that will threaten entrenched elites, and anthropocentric conceptions of development.”4 The risk with REDD+ is that these important issues simply fall beyond its frame of reference.

Recent approaches to studying REDD+ Much REDD+ literature in the 2000s focused on the practical tasks of marshalling evidence and outlining policy frameworks to mobilize government decisionmakers to establish new international and national rules for reducing deforestation and forest degradation. Palmer and Engel (2009) explain that reducing emissions from deforestation was excluded from the Kyoto Protocol of the 1990s, and a key aim of subsequent state-to-state climate negotiations at Poznan and Copenhagen was to outline an explicit global climate regime including measures for REDD+. Core issues addressed in this literature include how to push forwards national level implementation of REDD+ schemes in light of a lack of clarity over the global policy architecture for REDD+ (Wertz-Kanounnikoff and Angelsen 2009), how to integrate forest communities themselves in forest carbon monitoring for REDD+ (Skutsch et al. 2009), how governance systems at local and national levels should evolve to allow actors with varying interests and political influence to effectively participate (Forsyth 2009), and how REDD+ could reflect local needs and aspirations in its design and implementation (Larson and Ribot 2009). More recently, however, the literature on REDD+ has also tended to adopt a more critical stance towards the intervention’s design and implementation, with a wider range of perspectives represented than in the 2000s (see Karsenty and Ongolo 2011, Gupta et al. 2012, Lovell 2014, McGregor et al. 2014, Lund et al. 2017, Dawson et al. 2018). Tropical forest economist Alain Karsenty has, for instance, teamed up with political scientist Symphorien Ongolo (2011) to

28  REDD+ as neoliberal environmentalism question the extent to which the national policy coherence, upon which REDD+ success is partly predicated, is achievable in some of the countries in which the intervention is playing out, pointing to governance and institutional failures as reasons why REDD+ may not perform as anticipated. A team of researchers led by mixed-methods social scientist Neil Dawson (Dawson et  al. 2018) has also identified that national interpretation processes related to global environmental or climate governance interventions, of which they view REDD+ as one type, have been the subject of limited scholarly attention. For Dawson et al. (2018), despite the introduction of ‘safeguards,’ positive outcomes for Indigenous Peoples, communities, and the vulnerable are still areas of contention for REDD+. Indeed, they identify a dearth of empirical research on the actual dynamics of national REDD+ processes. As pointed out by Dawson et al. (2018), there are several reasons why national interpretations of global REDD+ policies may fail to address local equity concerns. First, although it is assumed that national REDD+ processes are grounded in particular countries’ political contexts, in reality they usually include extensive top-down involvement of international organizations (e.g., the World Bank, the UN-REDD Programme, and bilateral donor agencies). Second, national REDD+ processes are guided by externally designed administrative procedures in the guise of monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) processes that are commonly reduced to technical monitoring and reporting exercises that do not involve meaningful political debates. And, third, the participatory political space assumed to exist in REDD+ implementing countries tends to be dominated by the state or political actors to the extent that the ability of civil society to raise questions of rights or justice may be severely constrained. Reflecting on national REDD+ processes in Uganda and Nepal, for example, Dawson et al. (2018, p. 9) conclude that: “REDD+ risks reproducing injustices for local communities and marginalised groups, which can in turn undermine project support at local and intermediary level and impair efforts to reduce deforestation and forest degradation.” The value of such recent critical REDD+ studies is that they bring the political and power dynamics of REDD+ implementation, and specifically questions of rights-resolution and the prospects for the pursuit of environmental justice, to the fore—thus serving as a crucial corrective to the early emphasis in the REDD+ literature on environmental economics and forest science-based analyses, which tend not to view political contestations as important variables.

Adopting a frame-of-reference for studying REDD+ in Indonesia Research on REDD+ has been described as typically falling into two camps: the first comprising critical researchers that are somewhat disconnected from the practical matters of REDD+ implementation and the second comprising researchers preoccupied with making REDD+ a success (McGregor et  al. 2014). Both approaches have their pitfalls: critical research can sometimes lead to perverse outcomes for practitioners with similar goals (e.g., tackling deforestation), while

REDD+ as neoliberal environmentalism  29 less critical research can dilute a focus on environmental justice. In this book, I try to heed McGregor et al.’s (2014) advice for bridging these two communities by researching REDD+ in ways that hold practical values while maintaining critical insights. My motivations for studying REDD+ stem from both practical and academic concerns. Practically, I wanted to understand why REDD+ policies and practices in Indonesia specifically have been so divisive, time consuming, and expensive, ultimately so that I might contribute to the improvement of approaches for tackling the country’s grave deforestation challenges. Academically, I have been interested in furthering understanding of how and why a particular multistakeholder incarnation of REDD+ first came to dominate Indonesia’s forest policies among other options, only later to be deprioritized, and whether this can be linked to the neoliberal rooting of REDD+. A challenge I have been confronted with in studying REDD+ in light of McGregor et al.’s (2014) insights has been to identify a relevant theoretical home for my research, and it is to an exposition of my approach that we now turn. In considering a relevant theoretical home for studying REDD+ in Indonesia, four main features of REDD+ appeared to be salient. First, REDD+ is a type of technical aid intervention, specifically a neoliberal forest conservation-enclosure intervention involving payment for ecosystem services (PES), which to date has largely been funded by public aid budgets and involves public donor organizations, such as the Norwegian Agency for International Development (Norad) and the UN-REDD Programme, and their partners in particular countries. As such, REDD+ is a set of institutionalized processes, policies, and practices, grounded in neoliberal environmentalism, which are carried out by particular actors in particular locations. Second, REDD+ relates to forest ecosystems and their intended conservation in that it seeks to enclose and protect specific forests from (further) deforestation and forest degradation, the intention being that they then act as carbon sinks. More broadly, it also relates to issues of neoliberal environmental governance, biodiversity protection, and land use change. Third, REDD+ aims to provide socio-economic benefits to populations in intervention areas. Forest users and populations dependent upon and/or living close to the forest conservation enclosures that REDD+ entails are therefore directly concerned with this intervention, as are questions of their livelihoods, their civil and human rights, and their cultural and legal relationships to particular forest ecosystems and land. And, fourth, although a more critical strand of research on REDD+ has emerged since 2010 to challenge assertions contained in the early literature, there is still a relative dearth of empirical studies on the national and subnational dynamics of REDD+ as a climate change intervention (Dawson et al. 2018). This includes a lack of studies on how REDD+ interventions relate to and affect power dynamics and equity concerns at pilot sites. With these four factors in mind, I realized my research would require critical analytical and conceptual tools to investigate REDD+ not only as a technical, neoliberal environmental intervention set within particular forest ecosystems and affecting specific forest users. It would also have to enable a deep understanding

30  REDD+ as neoliberal environmentalism of power relations and equity considerations at particular pilot sites within specific ecologies.

Introducing political ecology: origins, ideas, narratives A field with particular relevance to the questions of power, equity, and the broad relationships between nature and society that are important to address in studying REDD+ in Indonesia is that of political ecology. In this chapter, I briefly recount the emergence of political ecology and the core ideas and narratives this disparate set of writings concerns itself with, including its grounding in the political theories of Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault, before explaining why it is valuable to study REDD+ in Indonesia through a political ecology lens. Political ecology focuses on the relationships between political, economic, and social factors, on the one hand, and environmental issues and changes, on the other. Rather than viewing environmental change as being distinct from societal change, political ecology combines societal analysis with ecological studies by politicizing environmental phenomena (Peet et al. 2011). The notion that a dialectic approach to the study of nature (or ecology) and society or politics (the political) constitutes a worthwhile area for research has a long tradition. Robbins (2012) establishes a sense of the roots of such an approach by going back to the writings of early geographers and naturalists including Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), Alfred Russell Wallace (1823–1913), and Pyotr Alexeevich Kropotkin (1842–1921), then tracing a route through cultural ecology, and its focus on the expression of culture on and within the environment, to arrive at the first explicit coining of political ecology in the 1970s by Eric Wolf (1972).5 Peet and Watts (2004) ascribe the intellectual origins of this dual interest in politics and ecology to the wish among several writers to distance themselves from mainstream accounts of environmental crises in this period, which sought to locate the causes of these crises in technology, population pressures, or poor cultures and land use practices. The concern of political ecologists was to bridge issues of ecology with, broadly speaking, issues of political economy that would encompass “the constantly shifting dialectic between society and land-based resources, and also within classes and groups within society itself” (Blaikie and Brookfield 1987, p. 17). Dominant contemporary explanations of environmental crises were argued to essentially ignore political-economic factors and, worse, despite their claims to objectivity were themselves implicitly political in the sense that they privileged certain types of knowledge and explanation over others (Robbins 2012). Since the 1970s, political ecology has attracted scholars from the fields of anthropology, forestry, development studies, environmental sociology, environmental history, and geography. All political ecologists consider the linkages between environmental change and political-economic dynamics, although there are some variations in the approaches they adopt. Some stress political economy (Blaikie and Brookfield 1987), while others point to more formal political institutions (Peet and Watts 2004). Some identify environmental change as most important (Watts 1985), while others focus on narratives or stories about that change

REDD+ as neoliberal environmentalism  31 (Escobar 1996). In general terms, however, political ecology as an approach is at the intersection between ecologically rooted social science and the principles of political economy. It highlights that ecological arguments are never socially neutral, just as socio-political arguments are not ecologically neutral (Harvey 1993). Political ecology has emerged as a particularly rich field since the early 1990s by focusing on convergences of power, culture, and political-economy as analytical entry points (Peluso and Watts 2001). Over the last two decades, it has tried to establish and strengthen linkages between the environment and politics by providing analytic tools for thinking about conflicts produced by forms of access to and control over natural resources. It is also a field that is self-reflective of its own genealogy. West (2018), for instance, has emphasized how male political ecologists tend to be valorized despite significant contributions from female scholars such as Nancy Peluso, Tanya Murray Li, and Rosaleen Duffy. In an attempt to make some sense of political ecology, Robbins (2004, 2012) has identified five recurrent narratives in this rich and diverse field: (i) degradation and marginalization, or the idea that modernist development efforts contradictorily decrease the sustainability of local practices; (ii) conservation and control, where benign local natural resource production practices are characterized as unsustainable; (iii) environmental conflict and exclusion, in which shortages produced through resource enclosure or appropriation accelerate conflict between groups; (iv) environmental subjects and identity, where new environmental regimes and conditions open up opportunities for political representation; and (v) political objects and actors, which focus on the material characteristics of non-human nature and analyse how these are intertwined within human, political struggles. Discernible throughout these five narratives are both a concern with the way the non-human world (nature) relates to the human one (society) and a preoccupation with the politics and power relations deemed to be at the root of environmental degradation. The way that control is exercised on the flow of value from nature, whereby capital accumulation exacts a terrible price both on the environment and on society (Robbins 2012), is a major shared interest among political ecologists, with the worry being that capital accumulation may eventually threaten the conditions of production upon which even capitalism depends. These concerns are not, however, entirely original to political ecology, and the shadows of earlier political theorists, particularly Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) and Michel Foucault (1926–1984), are evident in much of the political ecology literature. Although, as pointed out by Loftus (2013), their respective influences wax and wane at different stages of the field’s development. Gramsci’s pivotal contributions to political ecology revolve around the concept of cultural hegemony and the distinction he makes between two key elements of state power: political society and civil society. Reacting to what he perceived as overly economistic analyses of state power, Gramsci argued that the 1917 Russian revolution was not repeated in Great Britain or the United States because, in these advanced capitalist countries, political society (i.e. the state as a site of coercion and domination) was buttressed by civil society (Forgacs 1988). This buttressing

32  REDD+ as neoliberal environmentalism meant, for Gramsci, that even in dire economic periods, like the Great Depression (1929–1939 ce), Western countries were better protected against frontal assaults on state power than their Eastern counterparts. Opposition movements in the West needed to adopt different strategies accordingly. The correct role for the intellectual, for example, was “active participation in practical life, as constructor and organizer, as ‘permanent persuader,’ not just simple orator” (Gramsci 1977, p. 21). For Gramsci, the core of state power was geared towards the needs of the ruling political classes and was preoccupied with extending the productive forces of development. In the United States, he argued, the marriage of political and civil society had led to a type of industrialism that continually aimed to subjugate the natural (i.e. the animal and primitive) to ever new and more complex rules and norms necessary to sustain cultural life. These observations on state power and cultural hegemony have supported analytical and conceptual approaches in the political ecology literature (Loftus 2013). Donald Moore, an historical ethnographer, argued that Gramsci’s work not only gave “life to analytical categories through his focus on historically and geographically situated practices” but also enabled others to conceive of natural resource struggles “within the cultural production of landscape and resources” (Moore 1996, p. 139). Although not the first scholar to emphasize the cultural aspects of landscapes, Gramsci further contributed to an understanding where “man’s interaction with nature mediated through labour and technology initiates the historical process through which humanity achieves consciousness of itself” (Fontana 2013, p. 123). Foucault’s contribution to political ecology, on the other hand, arguably lies in his conceptualization of a new form of state power, which he terms biopower (Foucault 1988). For Foucault, the mechanisms of power in the West experienced profound change since the classical age (circa the 8th to the 5th or 6th centuries bce). The disciplinary power of the state to seize objects, time and bodies, modelled on the right of the Roman father to dispose of the life of his children and slaves, over time became only one among many expressions of power. The state’s formidable power of death could begin to represent itself as “the counterpart of a power that exerts a positive influence on life, that endeavours to administer, optimize, and multiply it” (Foucault 1976, p. 137). Beginning in the 17th century ce, he argued that this power over life evolved into two basic forms: first, as power over the human body as a machine; second, as power over the human species itself, including its ability to propagate. These two forms of biopower were, Foucault argued, necessary conditions for the emergence of capitalism, since the latter would not have been possible without “the controlled insertion of bodies into the machinery of production” (Foucault 1976, pp.  140–141). The threshold of modernity was reached, for Foucault, when the life of the human species began to be directed by its own political strategies: the modern human was an animal whose very politics placed his or her own (ecological) existence as a living being in question. Like Gramsci, Foucault is commonly portrayed as believing that power consisted of, and was exercised in relation to, more than the state itself, extending across all social interactions and spatial territory (Walker 2014). For Foucault,

REDD+ as neoliberal environmentalism  33 however, nothing is considered fundamental in the analysis of society or social phenomena; there are only “reciprocal relations, and the perpetual gaps between intentions in relation to one another” (Foucault 1988).6 Although Gramsci’s work stresses a reciprocal relationship between cultural hegemony and material conditions (including ecological conditions), he nonetheless “retains a claim to positivism in his appeal to be able to know the structural and material basis of society” (Walker 2014, pp. 336–350). This ontological tension between Foucault’s post-positivism and Gramsci’s positivism continues to be an important one in the political ecology literature. Indeed, Gramsci’s positions on the relationships between theory and practice, and the ideal and the real, continue to be subjects of wider academic debate.7 The Gramscian theory of cultural hegemony rooted in an understanding of domination by consent has also been challenged via scholarly critique. Comparing the Gramscian notion of hegemony by consent with that of Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic domination, sociologist Michael Burawoy (2012), for instance, has pointed out that there is more to hegemony than consent alone. The mystification of exploitation helps explain why hegemony is so effective in advanced capitalist contexts, yet so fragile in others, for example state socialist regimes (Burawoy 2012). More recently, other writers have suggested that power is the ability to benefit from things and stratifies how people gain access to the things they need to sustain life (Giddens 1984). For Ribot and Peluso (2003), ability is akin to power in that it relates to the capacity of some actors to define the acts of others. Power is causality, given its importance in explaining socially differentiated outcomes, but it is also banal because in order to understand where people’s abilities and access come from, we must first understand both the production and failure of their entitlements. The political ecologist must therefore ask what shapes the political economy of entitlement and precarious lives. Hall et al. (2011) further built on Ribot and Peluso’s definition of power by referring to exclusion, or the ways people are prevented from benefitting from things. They suggest exclusion is not a random process but is structured by power relations, which can be understood in terms of the interactions among regulation, force, the market, and legitimation. Hall et  al. (2011) note the multiple scales and actors involved in exclusionary practices, recognising that force, for instance, is not a monopoly of the powerful but can also be used by marginal peoples such as poor smallholders. They also remind us that exclusion from land is nothing new nor necessarily a problem to be corrected, since every productive use of land requires some form of exclusion. At the same time, the who and how of exclusion from land are central, they argue, to understanding reconfigurations of power in society. A core task of the political ecologist is therefore to outline society’s ‘sloped surfaces and tilting fulcrums of uneven power,’ tracing the local and immediate factors directing certain outcomes while also mapping the manner in which value flows from particular landscapes, through local institutions and actors, towards distant sites of accumulation in capital cities and more prosperous nations (Robbins 2012, p. 88). A distinction is made (e.g., Gale 2003) between the roles of actors located close to the resource itself (chainsaw operators, plantation managers, forest

34  REDD+ as neoliberal environmentalism dependent villagers, forest wardens) and those that, although more removed from it, wield considerable influence (such as politicians, bureaucrats, donors, and business executives). Understanding of the roles of such agents is, however, set within a broader structural context, while the dialectic approach of political ecology emphasizes complex interactions between different actors, their environmental settings, and outcomes, rather than more simplistic cause-and-effect models.

Political ecology’s relevance to studying REDD+ in Indonesia But just how relevant is political ecology, and the ideas and narratives this literature contains, to the study of REDD+ in Indonesia? I suggest that there are three main reasons why political ecology offers useful analytical and conceptual approaches for analysing my chosen case. First, political ecology, through an emphasis on questioning mainstream policy approaches to environmental challenges (e.g. deforestation), provides a useful framework for critically examining the assumptions and findings in the existing literature on REDD+ globally, particularly the early literature which has largely been rooted in environmental economics and forest science. Studying REDD+ using a political ecology lens holds the promise of reinserting questions of power dynamics, equity, rights, and environmental justice into the analysis of the risks and rewards of this particular type of neoliberal forest conservation-enclosure intervention. For example does REDD+ necessarily involve the peripheralization of global climate policy by placing the largest burden on poor and vulnerable people in the tropics? Second, political ecology offers narratives capable of providing theoretical guidance for, and opportunities for reflection upon, empirical data derived from specific instances of political contestations in REDD+ interventions in peripheral parts of Indonesia. These, in turn, can offer insights for further nuancing existing theoretical political ecology narratives. Third, political ecology analysis of the relationships between Indonesia’s tropical forest resource and the set of actors living with, affected by, and pursuing REDD+ activities is likely to yield empirical insights to enrich understanding of the rationalities and practices at the heart of REDD+ implementation. Understanding who are the losers and winners in political contestations around REDD+ interventions, and what are the costs and benefits of these interventions, could in turn allow a better appreciation of the room for manoeuvre of contemporary forest policymakers in Indonesia. This may ultimately help improve approaches to the complex conundrums of deforestation and land conversion in the country. Before concluding this theory-focused chapter, let us look in more detail at each of the three aforementioned arguments in turn. First is the notion that a political ecology lens is useful for critically reflecting on the assumptions and findings in the existing literature on REDD+. As discussed before, REDD+ is a form of payment for ecosystem services (PES) intervention that entails enclosing particular tracts of forest to conserve them as future global carbon sinks. Given the existence of considerable economic opportunities that incentivize forestland conversion for agricultural, plantation development or other purposes, REDD+ aims to provide

REDD+ as neoliberal environmentalism  35 financial compensation and institutional governance frameworks to motivate actors to resist actions towards tropical forest conversion (Angelsen 2009). From a political ecology perspective, however, it is possible to cast REDD+ as a particular and recent incarnation of Big Conservation as opposed to a form of Little Conservation (Alcorn 2005). Whereas the latter refers to the conservation activities of ‘ordinary people,’ the former refers to the large, and usually well-financed, conservation programmes of Western institutions, including international nongovernmental organizations and official bilateral and multilateral development cooperation agencies. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the idea that community-based forms of forest management could be successful was challenged, with Brechin et al. (2002), Oates (1999), and Terborgh (1999) noting that newer and larger-scale models of forest conservation were required to overcome basic incentive problems. The somewhat later REDD+ literature took these ideas further and operationalised them in the form of a global, neoliberal, forest conservation-enclosure intervention (Lund et  al. 2017). Crucial questions we must ask with regard to REDD+, however, are whether the financial incentives and policy frameworks it provides are sufficient to overcome opposing motivations towards forest conversion in particular contexts, and whether it leads to better outcomes than other, alternative, forest conservation approaches, including those contained under the rubric of Little Conservation. The well-documented inadequacy of previous state- and privatesector-centric forest management regimes (including forest enclosure interventions) in the prevailing political and economic conditions found in tropical forest countries is a major reason why it is necessary to engage in empirical analysis of REDD+ interventions.8 Political ecology offers just such a critical theoretical lens for empirical investigation of REDD+ as a form of Big Conservation and neoliberal environmentalism practiced at specific sites. A crucial issue is whether REDD+ may promote exclusionary outcomes whereby people at the periphery of the global economy will be unable to benefit from forestlands they have accessed in the past, to which they may hold some form of tenure rights, and which they may be actively seeking to conserve. A  political ecology lens offers the possibility of investigating whether REDD+ interventions generate either or both pernicious socio-economic and ecological outcomes. It is particularly relevant for studying contexts, such as Indonesia, where natural resource management has historically been defined by oligarchic interests that control natural resource wealth, and where political-economic elites are characterized by an existential motive to defend access to this source of wealth (Robbins 2000, Winters 2011).9 Although I do not subscribe to Robert Michels’ so-called ‘iron law’ that any complex organization will eventually develop into an oligarchy (counterexamples of relatively well-functioning democratic institutions exist), the concept of oligarchy, defined as minority rule by a wealthy elite, is still analytically useful given its focus on how extreme wealth can, when left unchecked, profoundly influence policy in democracies (Michels 2001, Leach 2005). Specifically, in socio-economic terms, a political ecology approach may help us unpack whether REDD+ increases security for some members of societies that

36  REDD+ as neoliberal environmentalism tend towards oligarchy (the winners) but increases insecurity for others (the losers) (Hall et al. 2011). In ecological terms, political ecology analysis can also help us understand whether REDD+ protects forests against some types of encroachment (e.g., small-scale use) but not against others (e.g., larger-scale plantation or mining developments). An overarching issue of concern, which a political ecology lens provides opportunities for reflection upon, is what long-term effects might arise from any exclusionary outcomes of REDD+, given that—as Polyani (1957) observed—land is no ordinary commodity but the basis for life, meaning exclusion from access to land will always tend to promote ‘counter movements.’ Next, what of the practical value of the narratives contained in the political ecology literature, and their usefulness in providing theoretical guidance for, and opportunities for reflection upon, empirical data from REDD+ in Indonesia? There is existing support in the literature for the use of political ecology to study REDD+, with Bumpus and Liverman (2011, pp. 223–224) arguing that the implementation of forest conservation through REDD+ is a key issue for such analysis in order to understand ‘the translocal impacts of REDD policy.’ Political ecology has provided a theoretical lens to study REDD+ efforts in Nigeria’s Cross River (Asiyanbi 2016) in Jambi, Indonesia (Hein 2019), and the Sungai Lamandau REDD+ project in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia (McGregor et al. 2015). In the latter study, McGregor et al. explore the usefulness of Foucault’s concept of governmentality in understanding REDD+, drawing in particular on Fletcher’s environmentalities (Fletcher 2010) to investigate REDD+ as a form of forest conservation. Adding to Agrawal’s (2005) notion of disciplinary environmentalities, or practices of government that seek to internalize pro-environment norms and values, Fletcher adds four other environmentalities evident in forest conservation efforts: (i) neoliberal environmentality, which embraces market mechanisms as the primary means of managing populations; (ii) fortress conservation environmentalities, which rely on sovereign power to pursue ‘fences and fines’ strategies; (iii) truth environmentalities, which are based on claims about essential cultural and spiritual connections between humans and forests; and (iv) liberation environmentality, which is more concerned with social and environmental justice than biodiversity preservation (Fletcher 2010). While appreciating McGregor et al.’s (2015) Foucauldian approach to the political ecology of REDD+ in Indonesia—particularly their focus on the production of contestable truths in climate governance that render neoliberal forms of environmentality in REDD+ as common sense approaches—I took a somewhat different track in my research. Recognizing the importance of Gramsci’s ideas on the mutual co-production of superstructure and structure, nature and society, theory and practice, and the difficulty of neatly distinguishing between “the ways we represent the world and how we live in it” (Chagani 2014, p. 434), I investigate REDD+ in a peripheral part of Indonesia via three political ecological narratives, namely: (i) the conservation and control narrative, (ii) the environmental conflicts and exclusion narrative, and (iii) the political objects and actors narrative. For me, these narratives offer rich opportunities for shuttling back and forth between the political ecology literature and empirical evidence.

REDD+ as neoliberal environmentalism  37 REDD+ is portrayed both as a form of environmental conservation and as “a ‘spatial fix’ for capitalism’s ongoing ferocious growth” (Peet et al. 2011, p. 28), placing the greatest conservation burdens on peripheral actors and locations in the tropics. Such readings place REDD+ within a ‘conservation and control’ perspective, where forest landscapes are wrested from local communities by hegemonic groups in order to create the types of controls needed to satisfy global capitalist interests. It has also been suggested that REDD+ may be impossible to implement in the prevailing conditions found in tropical forested countries without causing environmental conflicts and exclusionary outcomes for the vulnerable (Karsenty and Ongolo 2011). Indeed, for REDD+ to work at all, some suggest that it must exercise a form of disciplinary power that necessarily erases local political identities (Gupta et al. 2012). But does empirical evidence from Indonesia’s REDD+ pilots support such readings? Is REDD+ a threat to existing Little Conservation activities of forest communities at pilot sites, to the local political identities of forest users, and to their livelihoods? Or are these threats overemphasized by counterhegemonic actors (e.g., local environmental NGOs) in order to protect funding for (ineffective) conservation-from-below projects and goals? Finally, what of the benefits of political ecology-type analysis for helping refine policy and practice approaches to the complex forest conservation conundrums faced in Indonesia? As outlined by Peluso (1992) and Kingsbury (2005), Indonesia has long been a locus of contestation over its formal forest policies and actual practices, including pre-REDD+ era forest conservation-enclosure interventions. Tanya Murray Li (2002, 2007, 2010) in particular has painstakingly delineated the costs and benefits of, and the winners and losers in, social struggles over forest enclosures involving upland peoples across the archipelago. With the collapse of Suharto’s repressive New Order (Orde Baru, 1966–1998) regime, with its closely controlled monopoly on forest wealth extraction, identity-based claims to forestlands were again voiced. The year 2000 saw an upsurge in mobilizations of social minorities seeking to reclaim territories where they had been historically dominant, with access to land as a productive resource a consistent theme (Hall et al. 2011). In contrast to the earlier land movements of the 1960s and 1970s, social mobilization now tended to be framed in terms of indigeneity and as claims to forest stewardship, and, by 2006, officials were announcing that reforms promised in the 1960 Basic Agrarian Law would be revived (Hall et al. 2011). Under these reforms, it was envisaged that 8.15 million ha of state land under the jurisdiction of the Forest Department and the National Land Board would be re-distributed (Hall et al. 2011). But how, precisely, should this be done? To observers including Hall et al. (2011), this announcement pointed to a particularly complex feature of the recent forest conservation situation in Indonesia: that claims to forestland arising from indigeneity, ethno-territorial, and land reform arguments often collide with each other, with often no obvious resolutions. While villagers may contest the state’s claim to land in the name of indigenous rights and seek to reclaim political forest held by the state, land reformists argue that the core question is who needs land as the basis for an agrarian livelihood. Hall et al. (2011) note that while land reformists tend to look to the state to set the rules of access (and exclusion) on behalf of the people as a culturally neutral whole, villagers

38  REDD+ as neoliberal environmentalism resort to ancestral claims both to safeguard or reclaim territories as well as exclude others’ claims. In conclusion, political ecology offers a useful conceptual language that enables an appreciation of the complex rationalities of various actors in different locations engaged with REDD+ in Indonesia: rationalities that any effective form of forest conservation policy and practice must consider and respond to. Accordingly, this book applies the conceptual language of political ecology to critically examine REDD+ implementation in Indonesia. Before getting to this, however, it is imperative that we first understand the context in which REDD+ was introduced in 2010. The next chapter therefore gives an overview of the political history of forest governance in Indonesia, paying particularly close attention to Central Sulawesi as the provincial location of the REDD+ pilots examined later.

Notes 1 Both the global compliance and voluntary carbon offsetting markets have engaged in selling forest carbon credits only in a very limited way due to uncertainties around the permanence of carbon sequestration in trees (van der Gaast et al. 2018). 2 McAfee (2012) notes that the ecosystem services discourse echoes the emphasis of neoliberalism on private initiative, monetary valuation, and cost–benefit analysis. Zuidhof (2014) views neoliberalism as a political rationality characterized by market constructivism. 3 A term from spatial studies, peripheralization refers to the dynamic political, social, economic, or communication processes by which peripheries emerge and are replicated (Kühn 2015). 4 For a discussion of the problems associated with perpetual economic growth, see Raworth (2017). 5 Humboldt (1807, 1811, Humboldt and Bonpland 1815) was notably an early proponent of the notion that humanity’s influence on nature was global, not just local or national. 6 See https://foucault.info/documents/foucault.spaceKnowledgePower/. 7 Gramsci’s argument that the capacity of an ideal to become real was the test of its truth is fundamental for understanding his view of the relationship between theory and practice. But it has also been argued to be at the heart of problematic aspects of Gramscian thought, such as his equation of truth with success. Bellamy (2001) notes that Gramsci had little appreciation of what Max Weber called the ‘ethical irrationality of the world,’ where good could lead to evil and vice versa. 8 Reflecting on case studies from the Philippine, Malaysian, and Indonesian tropical timber sectors, Ross (2001), for example, finds that collusion between public and private sector actors led to considerable ecological, economic, and social damage in these countries from the 1950s to the 1990s. 9 Winters (2011) notes that extreme wealth has a profound influence on oligarchs’ ability to extend and defend their interests. Oligarchy generates both the political problem of how to defend this wealth, as well as the means by which to do so.

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REDD+ as neoliberal environmentalism  41 Kanninen, M. 2007. Do Trees Grow on Money? The Implications of Deforestation Research for Policies to Promote REDD. Centre for International Forestry Research: Bogor. Karsenty, A. and S. Ongolo. 2011. “Can ‘Fragile States’ Decide to Reduce Their Deforestation?” Forest Policy and Economics. Vol. 18. pp. 38–45. Kingsbury, D. 2005. The Politics of Indonesia (3rd Edition). Oxford University Press: Oxford. Kühn, M. 2015. “Peripheralization: Theoretical Concepts Explaining Socio-Spatial Inequalities.” European Planning Studies. Vol. 23. Issue 2. pp. 367–378. Larson, A.M. and J. Ribot. 2009. “Lessons from Forestry Decentralization.” in Angelsen, A, M. Brockhaus, M. Kanninen, E. Sills, W.D. Sunderlin, and S. Wertz-Kanounnikoff (Eds.). Realising REDD+: National Strategy and Policy Options. Center for International Forestry Research: Bogor. Leach, D.K., 2005. “The Iron Law of What Again? Conceptualizing Oligarchy Across Organizational Forms.” Sociological Theory. Vol. 23. Issue 3. pp. 312–337. Li, T.M. 2002. “Engaging Simplifications: Community-Based Resource Management, Market Processes and State Agendas in upland Southeast Asia.” World Development. Vol. 30. Issue 2. Li, T.M. 2007. The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics. Duke University Press: Durham. Li, T.M. 2010. “Indigeneity, Capitalism and the Management of Dispossession.” Current Anthropology. Vol. 15. Issue 3. Loftus, A. 2013. “Gramsci, Nature, and the Philosophy of Praxis.” in Ekers, M., G. Hart, S. Kipfer, and A. Loftus (Eds.). Gramsci: Space, Nature, Politics. John Wiley & Sons: Malden. Lovell, H. 2014. “Measuring Forest Carbon.” in Stripple, J. and H. Bulkeley (Eds.). Governing the Climate: New Approaches to Rationality, Power and Politics. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Lund, J.F., E. Sungusia, M.B. Mabele, and A. Scheba. 2017. “Promising Change, Delivering Continuity: REDD+ as Conservation Fad.” World Development. Vol. 89. pp. 124–129. McAfee, K. 2012. “The Contradictory Logic of Global Ecosystem Services Markets.” Development and Change. Vol. 43. Issue 1. pp. 105–131. McGregor, A., E. Challies, P. Howson, R. Astuti, R. Dixon, B. Haalboom, M. Gavin, L. Tacconi, and S. Afiff. 2015. “Beyond Carbon, More Than Forest? REDD+ Governmentality in Indonesia.” Environment and Planning. Vol. 47. pp. 138–155. McGregor, A., S. Weaver, E. Challies, P. Howson, R. Astuti, and B. Haalboom, 2014. “Practical Critique: Bridging the Gap between Critical and Practice-Oriented REDD+ Research Communities.” Asia-Pacific Viewpoint. Vol. 55. Issue 3. pp 277–291. Michels, R. 2001. Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracies. (Translated by Eden and Cedar Paul). Batoche Books: Kitchener. Moore, D. 1996. “Marxism, Culture and Political Ecology.” in Peet, R. and M. Watts (Eds.). Liberation Ecologies. Routledge: London. Motel, P.C., R. Pirard, and J.L. Combes. 2009. “A  Methodology to Estimate Impacts of Domestic Policies on Deforestation: Compensated Successful Efforts for “Avoided Deforestation (REDD).” Ecological Economics. Vol. 68. Issue 3. Oates, J. 1999. Myth and Reality in the Rain Forest: How Conservation Strategies are Failing in West Africa. University of California Press: Berkeley. Oxfam. 2017. Towards a More Equal Indonesia (Oxfam Briefing Paper). Oxfam and International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development. Oxfam GB: Oxford. Available at: https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/bp-towards-more-equal-indonesia230217-en_0.pdf

42  REDD+ as neoliberal environmentalism Palmer, C. and S. Engel. (Eds.). 2009. Avoided Deforestation: Prospects for Mitigating Climate Change. Taylor and Francis: New York. Peet, R. and E. Hartwick. 2009. Theories of Development: Contentions, Arguments, Alternatives. The Guildford Press: New York. Peet, R. and M. Watts. (Eds.). 2004. Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements (2nd Edition). Routledge: London. Peet, R., P. Robbins, and M.J. Watts. (Eds.). 2011. Global Political Ecology. Routledge: Abingdon. Peluso, N.L. 1992. Rich Forests, Poor People: Resource Control and Resistance in Java. University of California Press: Berkeley. Peluso, N.L. and M. Watts. (Eds.). 2001. Violent Environments. Cornell University Press: Ithaca. Phelps, J., E.L. Webb, and A. Agrawal. 2010. “Does REDD+ Threaten to Recentralize Forest Governance?” Science. Vol. 328. Issue 5976, pp. 312–313. Piketty, T. 2020. Capital and Ideology. Harvard University Press: Cambridge. Polyani, K. 1957. The Great Transformation. Beacon Press: Boston. Raworth, K. 2017. Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist. Random House: London. Ribot, J.C. and N.L. Peluso. 2003. “A Theory of Access.” Rural Sociology. Vol. 68. Issue 2. Riksrevisjonen. 2018. “Riksrevisjonens undersøkelse av Norges internasjonale klima- og skogsatsing.” Dokument. Vol. 3. Issue 10. Robbins, P. 2000. “The Rotten Institution: Corruption in Natural Resource Management.” Political Geography. Vol. 19. Issue 4. pp. 423–443. Robbins, P. 2004. Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction (1st Edition). Blackwell Publishing: Malden. Robbins, P. 2012. Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction (2nd Edition). Wiley-Blackwell: Malden. Ross, M.L. 2001. Timber Booms and Institutional Breakdowns in Southeast Asia. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Skutsch, M.M., P.E. van Laake, E.M. Zahabu, B.S. Karky, and P. Phartiyal. 2009. “Community monitoring in REDD+.” in Angelsen, A., M. Brockhaus, M. Kanninen, E. Sills, W.D. Sunderlin, and S. Wertz-Kanounnikoff (Eds.). Realising REDD+: National Strategy and Policy Options. Center for International Forestry Research: Bogor. Storm, S. 2009. “Capitalism and Climate Change: Can the Invisible Hand Adjust The Natural Thermostat?” Development and Change, Vol. 40. Issue 6. pp. 1011–1138. Terborgh, J. 1999. Requiem for Nature. Island Press: Washington, DC. van der Gaast, W., R. Sikkema, and M. Vohrer. 2018. “The Contribution of Forest Carbon Credit Projects to Addressing the Climate Change Challenge.” Climate Policy. Vol. 18. Issue 1. pp. 42–48. Wade, R.H. 2004. “Is Globalization Reducing Poverty and Inequality?” World Development. Vol 32. Issue 4. pp. 567–589. Walker, G. 2014. “A  Theoretical Walk through the Political Economy of Urban Water Resource Management.” Geography Compass. Issue 8–5. pp. 336–350. Watts, M.J. 1985. “Social Theory and Environmental Degradation: The Case of SudanoSahelian West Africa.” in Gradus, Y. (Ed.). Desert Development: Man and Technology in Sparselands. Riedel. Dordrecht. Wertz-Kanounnikoff, S. and A. Angelsen. 2009. “Global and National REDD+ Architecture: Linking Institutions and Actions.” in Angelsen, A., M. Brockhaus, M. Kanninen,

REDD+ as neoliberal environmentalism  43 E. Sills, W.D. Sunderlin, and S. Wertz-Kanounnikoff (Eds.). Realising REDD+: National Strategy and Policy Options. Center for International Forestry Research: Bogor. West, P. 2018. “Women’s Scholarship in Political Ecology.” Blog Post. Available at: https:// paige-west.com/2018/06/21/womens-scholarship-in-political-ecology/ Winters, J.A. 2011. Oligarchy. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Wolf, E. 1972. “Ownership and Political Ecology.” Anthropological Quarterly. Vol. 3. Issue 45. pp 201–205. Wolf, M. 2004. Why Globalization Works. Yale University Press: New Haven. Wunder, S., Engel, S., and Pagiola, S. 2008. “Taking Stock: A Comparative Analysis of Payments for Environmental Services Programs in Developed and Developing Countries.” Ecological Economics. Vol. 65. pp. 834–852. Zuidhof, P.W. 2014. “Thinking Like an Economist: The Neoliberal Politics of the Economics Textbook.” Review of Social Economy. Vol. 72. pp. 157–185.

2 A brief political history of Indonesian forest governance

As a core component of contemporary climate change mitigation policy, REDD+ attempts to deal with longstanding and historic challenges of economic development, land conversion, and deforestation. Although it is a relative newcomer in Indonesia, with pilot activities beginning in 2010 under the auspices of the UN-REDD Programme and the National REDD+ Agency, REDD+ is far from the only policy intervention to have ever attempted to regulate Indonesia’s forests. Indeed, human–forest interactions extend back to the archipelago’s earliest societies (Hein 2019, Ricklefs 2008, Osborne 2016). This second chapter provides a brief political history of forest governance in Indonesia, making special reference to Central Sulawesi as the location of the REDD+ pilots I examine later in this book. In order to appreciate whether and how contemporary political contestations have affected REDD+ outcomes, it is first necessary to cast our eyes back over the historic policies, influences, contentions, solutions, and conflicts that provide the backdrop to REDD+ as a forest policy choice in Indonesia. In this chapter, I show that the incentives towards forest conservation REDD+ attempt to provide run contrary to many historical forest policies in Indonesia based on extractive wealth generation. I argue too that forest conservation goals clash with other longstanding national, provincial, and local development visions: visions that are consistently bogged down in unresolved contradictions between formal and actual forest tenure practices. And, not least, I discuss the multitude of schisms along political, religious, and ethno-territorial lines that permeate the Indonesian context and that ultimately help explain REDD+ outcomes. Beginning with forest governance in pre-colonial times, the chapter goes on to describe the political trajectories of the colonial period, through to the early years of Indonesia’s independence and Suharto’s authoritarian New Order regime. It then discusses the period of centrifugal consolidation in the late authoritarian period, including the policies and practices of transmigration, before reflecting on the reformasi era beginning with Suharto’s resignation and up to the 2019 national elections. Information pertinent to Central Sulawesi is included throughout, with a particular focus on the recent history of ethno-territorial conflict in the province, especially the violence in Poso and Palu in the late 1990s to mid-2000s, given what this reveals about the fault-lines crisscrossing REDD+ pilots. DOI: 10.4324/9781003267898-3

A brief political history of Indonesian forest governance  45

Pre-colonial times As noted by Hein (2019), before the European colonization that began in the 16th century ce, no Indonesian nation state existed, and there was therefore no archipelago-wide unitary system of forest governance. At the same time, various rulers and communities across the archipelago had rules in place for the use of forests, land, and forest products. This section discusses these rules against a broad canvas of pre-colonial political history on the Indonesian archipelago, given the importance of the latter for appreciating contemporary intra-Indonesian political dynamics and ethno-territorial relations. The fossils of two bovid bones discovered at Sangiran, central Java, are the oldest indications of human existence in Indonesia found so far. A 2007 study of marks cut into the bones revealed that they were made during butchery some 1.6 to 1.5 million years ago (Choi and Driwantoro 2007). These early human inhabitants of the archipelago, which formed during a thaw after the last ice age, are thought to have travelled by sea, spreading from mainland Asia eastward to New Guinea and Australia (Taylor 2003). The majority of Indonesia’s modern population is Austronesian: a group of people who may have arrived around 2000 bce, probably from Taiwan (Taylor 2003). After 1000 bce, there is evidence that many of these peoples adopted the Dong Son culture, originally centred on the Red River Valley in northern Vietnam, characterized by wet-field rice cultivation, ritualistic buffalo sacrifice, megalithic practices, and ikat weaving methods (Taylor 2003). By the 1st century ce, wet-field rice cultivation enabled the establishment of villages, towns, and small kingdoms, which evolved their own tribal religions (Taylor 2003). Java’s consistently hot and humid climate, along with its abundant volcanic soil, created perfect conditions for wet rice cultivation, which required fairly complex societies to support it (Taylor 2003). Over several centuries before the arrival of European traders and colonizers, there thus emerged on Java successive kingdoms or states that aspired not only to rule that particular island but also to achieve a rare state of control over other islands in the Indonesian archipelago (Osborne 2016). During the 7th to 11th centuries ce, despite the existence of a multitude of petty kingdoms, the political history of the Indonesian islands was dominated by two significant centres of power: the Srivijaya trading empire partly based on Sumatra,1 which controlled maritime trade through Southeast Asia between China and India, and the Sailendra, a Buddhist dynasty based on Java that constructed Borobudur, still the world’s largest Buddhist monument (Osborne 2016, Taylor 2003). By the 15th century ce, these centres of power had been replaced by two further powerful political entities, with one again based on Java, and the other on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula (Taylor 2003). Majapahit, centred on East Java, was arguably the greatest of the pre-Islamic Indonesian states (Taylor 2003). A maritime empire, it reached its zenith during the reign of Hayam Wuruk (1350–1389), an era marked by military conquests throughout Southeast Asia (Taylor 2003). At its peak, Majapahit controlled territories across modern Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, southern Thailand, the

46  A brief political history of Indonesian forest governance Sulu Archipelago, and East Timor, although its rule never extended into Central Sulawesi (Ricklefs 2008). The Malacca Sultanate, on the other hand, was a political entity centred on the modern Malaysian state of the same name. Marking the rise of Muslim states on the Indonesian archipelago, this Malay sultanate, at the height of its power in the 15th century ce, covered territories across much of the Malay Peninsula, the Riau Islands, and a large proportion of the island of Sumatra (Ricklefs 2008). What emerges from this broad canvas of pre-colonial Indonesian political history is the territorial ebb and flow of states centred on wet-rice-cultivating lowlands and ports acting as hubs for maritime trade (Osborne 2016, Ricklefs 2008). Within these states, rulers, be they chieftains, sultans, or kings, kept a close hold on power, with virtually no middle classes emerging to moderate elite decisions (Osborne 2016). The vast majority of people in these states were peasant farmers: men and women who were assured their right to agricultural land by the act of farming, not by Western notions of land ownership (Ricklefs 2008, Osborne 2016). A  particular family might farm a piece of land for generations, but the fields themselves remained the property of the ruler (Osborne 2016). For centuries, peasant life in these states changed very little, being dominated by the Monsoon-driven cycles of crop planting and harvesting, with the risk of famine ever present (Ricklefs 2008, Osborne 2016). However, these states also acted as trading hubs for lucrative forest products originating from interior upland hinterlands (Hein 2019). Commerce in beeswax, resin, gum, rattan and timber was, for example, the basis of the prosperity of the Jambi Sultanate in Sumatra, with these products transported via the Batang Hari River and the Strait of Malacca to outside markets (Hein 2019, Locher-Scholten 2004). Indeed, the trade in forest products was one of the most important links in pre-colonial times between the inhabitants of the larger lowland, maritime, Indonesian states and the people who lived in upland areas, who were not subject to the administrative systems of lowland societies (Ricklefs 2008, Osborne 2016). Throughout Southeast Asia, many upland dwellers lived a nomadic existence as ‘eaters of the forest,’ practicing swidden agricultural techniques to temporarily enhance soil fertility for planting crops, then moving on to new areas (Osborne 2016).2 Yet, given that geographic and environmental challenges tended to prevent the emergence of very large territorial states across the Indonesian archipelago, nomadic peoples were also spread across lowland and maritime areas. This was in contrast with the situation across mainland Southeast Asia, where nomadic peoples were largely confined to interior uplands (Osborne 2016). Another distinction between societies on mainland Southeast Asia and those on the Indonesian archipelago relates to ethnic diversity (Osborne 2016). Whereas on the mainland, a general pattern of dominant ethnic majorities and non-dominant minorities was established, even the larger Indonesian states of Majapahit and Srivijaya had little ethno-linguistic unity beyond their cores (Osborne 2016). Rather, the population consisted of an intricately related series of ethnic groups, with particular territories associated with groups of people who held a clear sense of their own identity (Osborne 2016). These identities, in turn, were linked to

A brief political history of Indonesian forest governance  47 the pattern of life pursued by each group, with a main distinction drawn between those who used a permanent base (farmers, fishers, traders) and those who practiced a nomadic existence, combining hunting with swidden agriculture (Ricklefs 2008, Osborne 2016). Crucially, for the majority of nomadic groups throughout pre-colonial Indonesia, they would have had no sense that they were linked to state systems of more settled peoples (Osborne 2016). In Sulawesi, there is evidence of human habitation dating back 40,000 years, with Pleistocene cave art at seven sites at least as old as comparable European art (Aubert et al. 2014). The influence of Islam can be traced back to the 14th century ce, with the arrival of the first Sayyid in South Sulawesi (Hannapia 2012), and, by the 17th century ce, the largest and most successful state on the island, the Kingdom of Gowa, had become a Sultanate centred on Makassar. With sections along the western coast of Sulawesi having been conquered by Gowa in the 16th century ce under the leadership of King Tunipalangga (Druce 2009), seafaring Muslim traders subsequently influenced and married indigenous coastal dwellers (Aragon 2001). The topography of the island, with its agricultural valleys connecting coastal ports (e.g. Palu, Poso) to forested mountainous uplands, significantly shaped Sulawesi’s linguistic, religious, and cultural practices (Aragon 2001). For example the minor coastal kingdoms (now regencies) of Buol and Luwuk accepted Islamic teachings in the 16th century ce, whereas the small upland communities of interior Central Sulawesi “generally remained apart from state formations and did not convert to Islam or any other world religion prior to Dutch penetration” (Aragon 2001, pp. 45–79). These nomadic highlanders, like many upland dwellers throughout the Indonesian archipelago, were hunters who practiced shifting cultivation of rice, tree crops, and tubers (Aragon 2001). The indigenous religions and identities of Central Sulawesi were, in general, intimately linked to their places of origin, and to the lands cleared by their ancestors, meaning that insider–outsider disputes over land and resources still tend to run deep (Aragon 2001). As Li (2007, p. 354) recounts from a 2003 interview with the head of the adat council in Sedoa: Before the Dutch Missionaries came in 1912, we had the law of the jungle. People were wild, there were no fines then, there was just killing. People lived scattered in the hills and met in a place called the penteng for matters of war. The indigenous ethno-linguistic group originally associated with the REDD+ pilots that are a main focus of Chapter 4 are the Dampelas (Nadjamuddin 2017). The oral history of this group states that Dampelas means ‘fruit of sincerity’ and that they migrated from the mountain of Bulur Sitangke to the nearby Kampung Talaga, or Talaga Lake (the site of present-day Talaga village) at some point in their early history (Nadjamuddin 2017, p. 4). Whereas Dampelas nowadays denotes a specific administrative district of the coastal Donggala Regency, the Dampelas were originally a nomadic people, migrating to avoid disease and conflict, and to hunt and find new land for cultivation (Nadjamuddin 2017). Before being claimed by the Kingdom of Banawa and the Dutch, the Dampelas were influenced by the

48  A brief political history of Indonesian forest governance Sultanate of Ternate, a trading empire that, during the reign of Sultan Baabullah (1570–1583), covered most of eastern Indonesia and a section of southern Philippines (Taylor 2003). Nadjamuddin (2017) notes that the structure of Dampelas society was probably copied from the Sultanate of Ternate. The king (magau) was aided by a jogugu (executor of the king’s orders), a sangaji (who carried out the orders of the king’s advisor), and a sea captain (who regulated the coast and shipping), while the king’s relatives established an advisory board on issues such as war and peace and the marriage of the royal family (Nadjamuddin 2017, Junarti 2004). Dampelas folklore attaches particular cultural significance to the freshwater resource of Talaga Lake, as evidenced by the following adaptation from Nadjamuddin (2017, p. 4) of the folk tale of the Bugis demigod, Sawerigading: Sawerigading was sailing his fleet in the Makassar Strait when he was stranded in Dampelas by a storm. All his soldiers were killed and, in desperation, Sawerigading turned to an old man for help. Already knowing what had happened to the fleet, the old man suggested Sawerigading use his magical powers to revive them. But, once he had completed his spell, he had revived only seven, while the old man had revived the whole army. Sawerigading wept and asked for forgiveness for his arrogance, requesting leave to return home. As a condition for his request, Sawerigading was required to take a dip in the lake for seven days and seven nights, and drink seven gulps of lake water. Once the magical task was complete, he returned with his troops to his homeland.

The colonial period Europeans first arrived in the Indonesian archipelago as seafaring traders seeking spice products such as nutmeg, cloves, and peppers, and European colonization was a gradual process, occurring in phases over some 300–350  years (Osborne 2016, Taylor 2003). The Portuguese were the first to arrive in the early part of the 16th century ce, using their expertise in navigation, shipbuilding, and weaponry to explore new trade routes (Taylor 2003). Malacca was conquered in 1512 and was held as a Portuguese colony until 1641, being used as a base from which further attempts were made to control the inter-island spice trade and to launch Roman Catholic missionary efforts (Taylor 2003). Through a combination of violence and alliances with local rulers, the Portuguese established further trading posts, forts, and missions in the Spice Islands, including Ternate, Ambon, and Solor, in the 1520s (Taylor 2003, Newitt 2005). But by the latter half of the 16th century ce, Portuguese attention was shifting away from the Indonesian archipelago to Japan, Macau, and China, to the Brazil sugar trade, and to the trans-Atlantic slave trade (Newitt 2005). British and Dutch maritime traders soon followed in Portuguese footsteps, however (Taylor 2003). Sir Francis Drake had reached the Moluccas in 1579 on his circumnavigation of the globe, and the British East India Company opened a trading post at Bantam in 1601 to import pepper from Java (Marshall 2001). Yet, the competition with the Dutch East India Company, founded in 1602,

A brief political history of Indonesian forest governance  49 was fierce, and the British eventually shifted their colonial attentions to the Indian subcontinent (Taylor 2003, Marshall 2001). Like the Portuguese, the Dutch were initially interested in gaining a monopoly over the spice trade to Europe, and it was not until the late 19th century ce that large areas of modern Indonesia fell under the Dutch state’s control (Osborne 2016, Taylor 2003). The Dutch aimed at complete commercial control of the spice trade, and a huge process was undertaken to reshape Indonesian economic activity so that it was directly linked to the European market economy (Osborne 2016). Entire islands that had once formed part of patterns of East–West trade were violently removed from participation altogether, their inhabitants killed or exiled, as part of attempts to maintain high prices, leading to local underdevelopment (Osborne 2016, Acemoglu and Robinson 2012, Ghosh 2021). By the end of the 17th century ce, the Dutch had reduced the world supply of spices by around 60%, doubling the price of nutmeg (Acemoglu and Robinson 2012). Having succeeded in controlling the clove and nutmeg trades in eastern Indonesia, and the pepper trade in western regions, the Dutch turned their regulatory attentions to timber extraction in the 17th century ce and, in the 18th century ce, to agricultural crops, particularly coffee on Java (Osborne 2016). The oldest colonial forms of forestland governance arrangements date back to the 17th century ce activities of the Dutch East Indies Company and were mainly designed to enable timber extraction (Hein 2019, Galdura and Sirait 2009). Hein (2019) notes that the first colonial forest tenure regulation was issued for Java in 1808. This stipulated that any forest that was not privately owned was to be considered the domain of the state and was accountable to the Colonial General Governor (Hein 2019). Moreover, although logging permits for local communities could be given, the timber demands of the colonists were to be prioritized over other needs (Hein 2019, Galdura and Sirait 2009). Yet, as Dutch interest in exerting control over the production and marketing of agricultural crops increased, colonial-era forest policies shifted to include the notion that certain forestlands could and should be conserved to maintain the environmental services they provided (Hein 2019). The colonists argued that forests were crucial to watershed regulation since they considered them to act as sponges that eventually provided water resources for agricultural irrigation (Galdura and Sirait 2009, Hein 2019). It was therefore in the colonial interest to reduce deforestation because this would ensure water availability in the agricultural lowlands (Galdura and Sirait 2009, Hein 2019). The logic of watershed protection for agricultural purposes was thus used to “legitimize the first resettlements, to legitimize the exclusion of local communities from forests and to legitimize the prohibition of shifting cultivation” (Hein 2019, p. 40). At the same time, limited timber extraction was to continue under a new forestland regulation, with the first colonial forest law (the Boschordonatie) enacted in 1865 for Java and Madura (Hein 2019, Galdura and Sirait 2009, Metzner 1981). As a complement to the Boschordonatie, the colonial authorities issued a further regulation in 1870 to regulate land ownership: the Agrarische Wet, which introduced the Western concept of land ownership to Indonesia and allowed for the rentingout of land to private agricultural estates (Hein 2019). These two colonial-era

50  A brief political history of Indonesian forest governance ordinances provided the legal basis for governing both forests and agricultural land and cast long shadows across Indonesian forest governance even today (Hein 2019, Indrarto et al. 2012). A major consequence of colonial-era forest governance reforms was that they challenged existing legal and customary forms of regulating forest access and tenure (Hein 2019). These regulatory and legal changes precipitated a loss of control over forest resources and land tenure on the part of many local communities. For example in 1927, the colonial government enacted a new forest law that gave the colonial forest service and its successors the right to designate land as state forest and to control the use of forest products (Hein 2019, Galdura and Sirait 2009). However, it has been observed that these legal and regulatory approaches applied in practice mainly to the core colonial areas of the inner islands and did not extend over Sumatra, Sulawesi, Borneo, and Papua (Hein 2019). Indeed, in these outer islands, customary land tenure arrangements (adat) still largely held sway (Galdura and Sirait 2009, Hein 2019). In Central Sulawesi, colonial authority in general remained limited until the end of the 19th century ce (Osborne 2016). Article 17 of the Treaty of Bongaya, signed by Sultan Hasanuddin of the Gowa Sultanate and Colonel Speelman of the Dutch East Indies Company, on 18th November 1667, states that the Sultan must waive his rights to the coast of Sulawesi, including Dampelas (Nadjamuddin 2017, Patunru 1983). This part of Sulawesi, incorporated into the Afdeling Midden Celebes, remained free of direct Dutch control for most of the 19th century ce, but its political independence was somewhat restricted due to its location, sandwiched as it was between the Kingdom of Banawa in Donggala (controlled by the Dutch since 1904) and the Dutch East Indies proper (Nadjamuddin 2017). In the late 19th century and early 20th century ce, Dampelas became increasingly the subject of colonial interest, however, and the Dutch colonial government eventually took over the forest management rights of indigenous rulers (Nadjamuddin 2017). Prior to this Dutch takeover, a prolonged conflict centred on the right to succeed to the throne of Banawa had occurred, with the descendants of two royal lineages (Ganti and Bale) battling for supremacy (Nadjamuddin 2017). When the Ganti succeeded in enforcing their claim to the Banawa throne, the Bale created an independent federation to continue the fight, and this included the Dampelas as evidenced by the 1830 marriage of Aru Bale Isompa and a daughter of the Dampelas people (Nadjamuddin 2017). As a result, during the reign of Lamarauna (1903–1926), the Kingdom of Banawa requested the assistance of the Dutch East Indies to subdue the Dampelas and their allies (Nadjamuddin 2017). It was during this period that Dampelas was incorporated into the structure of the Kingdom of Banawa, though even then it retained the status of an autonomous region in a wider confederation, with its local authorities having considerable discretion to regulate daily life (Nadjamuddin 2017).

Independence and the Sukarno era Sukarno, the first president of the Republic of Indonesia, claimed that Dutch colonialism had been little more than an interruption of Indonesian history (Kingsbury 2005). Yet, despite the gradual and patchy character of Dutch territorial control

A brief political history of Indonesian forest governance  51 over the archipelago (particularly over the outer islands), no pre-Dutch unitary Indonesian state existed, and the centralized political structure of the colonial administration deeply influenced the new republic (Taylor 2003, Kingsbury 2005). Even the brief wartime occupation of Indonesia by the Japanese (1942–1944) seems to have reinforced the centralist tendencies of the Dutch colonial state— tendencies that found their legal–political expression in the 1945 Indonesian constitution (Taylor 2003, Kingsbury 2005). So, when the ensuing armed and political struggle against the Dutch ended in victory for the nationalists in December 1949, Sukarno’s favoured view was of an expansive greater Indonesia ruled from Jakarta, including not only the whole Dutch East Indies (including Central Sulawesi), but also East Timor, the Malay peninsula, northern Borneo, and even the Philippines (Kingsbury 2005). Despite strong support for independence across the archipelago, Sukarno’s unitary, secular, vision of a greater Indonesian republic was not universally shared (Osborne 2016). Separatist feelings were strong throughout some of the outer islands (in sections of Sumatra and in Kalimantan and Sulawesi) where there was concern over the dominant role played by Javanese politicians (Osborne 2016).3 Some groups wanted to overturn the secular state proclaimed by the 1945 constitution and replace it with an Islamic Republic (Taylor 2003, Osborne 2016, Bush 2008). Concerted political and military action by the authorities in Jakarta in the run-up to the proclamation of the Republic of Indonesia in 1950, however, assured the new state control over all former Dutch possessions, except for the western half of New Guinea, which was (for now) to remain Dutch (Osborne 2016). The adoption of Bahasa Indonesia, a standardized form of the Malay dialects in use across the archipelago since at least the 14th century ce, rather than the Javanese language, as the official lingua franca of the new republic, was coupled with the introduction of a new state ideology (Pancasila) to promote a cohesive sense of national identity (Kingsbury 2005).4 Yet, Indonesian politics continued to be fractious in the early years of the new republic, with no fewer than 5 prime ministers in office between 1950 and 1955 and 28 parties standing in the 1955 elections (Osborne 2016). The results of those elections, in which 22% of the votes went to the Nationalist Party of Indonesia, 21% to the Masjumi (Islamic) party, 18% percent to the Nahdatul Ulama (Islamic) party, and 16% to the communist PKI emphasized the country’s divisions (Osborne 2016). It is against this background that President Sukarno stated his 1956 belief that the Indonesian state should not be a Western-style liberal democracy, but rather a guided democracy (Osborne 2016). A year later, facing a separatist rebellion in Sumatra, and with the backing of the armed forces, Sukarno declared martial law, providing an opportunity to bring into effect a new version of the 1945 constitution that gave greater powers to the president (Osborne 2016). The Sukarno era saw Central Sulawesi’s population wedged between two centres of secessionist movements: the Protestant Permesta in North Sulawesi and the Darul Islam rebellion in South Sulawesi (Aragon 2001, Henley 2007). In the south, the Japanese occupation had given way to mutual distrust between Protestant highlanders and lowland Muslims, and when Sukarno sent a Muslim Bugis businessman named Kahar Muzakkar, who had fought for independence in Java

52  A brief political history of Indonesian forest governance against the Dutch, to persuade the secessionists to join the new republic, he joined the rebels instead (Aragon 2001). Linking up with the Darul Islam movement originally centred on West Java, Muzakkar intended to install an Islamic Republic on Sulawesi (Aragon 2001, Bush 2008). Armed rebels from the south moved north through the mountains of Central Sulawesi attacking animist and Protestant villages, with at least several hundred villagers tortured, killed, or forced to flee (Aragon 2001). The Protestant Permesta rebels, originally from the Minhasa region of North Sulawesi, were largely welcomed as allies by Central Sulawesi’s highlanders, although there are also documented instances of Permesta rebels mistreating locals near Lake Poso (Aragon 2001, Henley 2007). While the Permesta rebellion proved relatively short-lived and was put down by the military in 1957, the Muslim rebellion lasted up until the February 1965 shooting of Muzakkar by republican forces (Aragon 2001, Henley 2007). Based on her fieldwork in Central Sulawesi’s highlands, Aragon (2001, p.  53) argues both rebellions were experienced as threatening to locals, rather than offering “solutions to their security, subsistence patterns, and local autonomy.” The early years of independence saw little change to forest governance. The structure and orientation of the Indonesian forest service (Jawatan Kehutanan), which began its activities in Sumatra in 1947, owed much to its colonial predecessor (Hein 2019, Barr 2006), while most colonial forest regulations remained in place until the 1950s (Hein 2019, Nurjaya 2005). 1957, however, saw the introduction of Government Regulation 64/57, which may have been an attempt (Barr 2006) on the part of Sukarno’s administration to secure the loyalty of provincial governments and therefore assure the young republic’s territorial integrity (Hein 2019). The regulation gave new competencies to provincial-level authorities, allowing them to issue logging concessions of up to 10,000 ha for up to 20 years, providing them with significant revenues (Hein 2019). At the same time, the regulation failed to clearly define the forest estate on the outer islands of the archipelago and customary (adat) and formal law therefore continued to co-exist in these locations (Hein 2019). In 1960, however, an attempt was made to harmonize customary and formal law by replacing the colonial-era Agrarische Wet with a new Basic Agrarian Law (BAL), which is still in force today for non-forest areas (Hein 2019). Designed to include all natural resources (including land, water, air, and forestland), the BAL stresses the social function of land rights, prohibits excessive land ownership, guarantees equal opportunities in obtaining land rights, includes the possibility of land redistribution, and regulates different property types (Presiden Republik Indonesia 1960, Hein 2019). But although the BAL in principle reflects the socialist and rights-oriented leanings of the Sukarno era, it has been criticized in terms of its actual implementation (Hein 2019). The BAL does not, for instance, provide clear guidance on how to resolve conflicts between adat and formal state law (Barr 2006). Moreover, Article 16 stipulates that the certification of adat-based rights may occur only through transforming these rights into private property, whereas it is likely that many indigenous forest communities were not informed of the need to formalize their adat claims and, therefore, in many instances still do not hold

A brief political history of Indonesian forest governance  53 formally registered land titles (Hein 2019, Moniaga 1993). Apart from small-scale land redistribution schemes on Java, the potential of the BAL to underpin land reform appears not to have materialized, and its emphasis on private over community property rights may have served to strengthen state control over all natural resources (Hein 2019, Rachman 2011).

Suharto’s New Order The defeat of Sulawesi’s Permesta rebels at the hands of Indonesia’s military in the late 1950s has been noted as the main point at which the army became involved in the country’s civilian decision-making processes (Kingsbury 2005). The Army Chief of Staff, General Nasution, then the head of an increasingly Javanized officer cadre, proclaimed in 1958 the Middle Way, whereby the military could involve itself in politics as guardian of the republic (Kingsbury 2005). At the same time, the Indonesian Communist Party (the PKI, which had links to the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP) began making huge strides in national politics and increased its influence within the government (Kingsbury 2005). Sukarno, in the early 1960s, added communism to his existing support for nationalism and religion as the foundations of the republic, as reflected in his coining of the term Naskom— nationalisme, agama, komunisme (Kingsbury 2005). Yet, the ailing Sukarno was presiding over a government and economy in crisis. By 1965, inflation had reached 500%, and the price of rice had risen by 900% (Kingsbury 2005), with some sources blaming this on Cold War interference in the country’s internal affairs (Bevins 2020). It was in this context, between 1965 and 1968, that the dramatic, lethal transition from the old order of Sukarno to the New Order (Orde Baru) of Suharto took place (Cribb 1991, Kingsbury 2005). Although there are still significant uncertainties as to the exact details of, and motives behind, the events of this period, an alleged coup organized by junior pro-Sukarno army officers, possibly with the acceptance of senior PKI leaders, occurred on 30th September 1965 and led to the deaths of six generals (Kingsbury 2005, Cribb 1991, Bevins 2020). The alleged coup was immediately put down by the military under General Suharto, who then crushed the wider communist party and its members (Kingsbury 2005, Cribb 1991). Over a period of several months, and with the assistance of civilians mostly from the Nahdlatul Ulama party, between around 300,000 and 1  million PKI members and other civilians were killed (Bevins 2020, Kingsbury 2005, Cribb 1991). The intense violence of this episode in modern Indonesian history is challenging to adequately describe, but a 1968 CIA report5 compared the anti-PKI massacres to the worst mass murders of the century, noting: “The Indonesian coup is certainly one of the most significant events of the 20th Century” (Kingsbury 2005, p. 58).6 The transfer of political power from Sukarno to Suharto has been likened to the capturing of the castle in Javanese tradition, where the charisma and authority of the previous leader are transferred to the new (Kingsbury 2005). Yet, Suharto’s early grip on power was tenuous: although a member of the army’s top echelon, he was still seen as fairly junior, and senior officers believed he should share his

54  A brief political history of Indonesian forest governance power (Taylor 2003, Kingsbury 2005). There was also unease at Suharto’s powergrab within the People’s Consultative Assembly (or MPR, Taylor 2003). Kingsbury (2005) argues a showdown did not occur, despite high political tensions during this period, because the stakes were simply too great: a nationwide civil war may well have been triggered. Instead, a series of purges occurred in the air force, navy, and civil service, all bastions of pro-Sukarno support (Taylor 2003, Kingsbury 2005). The bringing to heel of the Indonesian state bureaucracy was partly achieved via the army’s political wing, Golkar, which quickly came to act like an institutionalized government party, although it was not formally recognized as such until 1999 (Kingsbury 2005). With the MPR also purged of its PKI members, Sukarno was formally stripped of the presidency in March 1967, and, a year later, Suharto was formally endorsed by the MPR as president of the republic (Kingsbury 2005, Taylor 2003). Subsequently, political activity was curtailed and political parties restricted in number (Kingsbury 2005). In 1973, Suharto abolished many smaller parties and created two new ones: the PPP, made up of former Islamic parties, and the PDI, which included two former Christian parties and nationalists (Kingsbury 2005). The 1971–1993 elections are generally considered to have been rigged, with Golkar winning between 63% and 73% of votes (Kingsbury 2005, Taylor 2003). Voting irregularities were widespread, and senior government employees were expected to belong to, and vote for, Golkar, giving it a distinct advantage over the other parties (Kingsbury 2005). Neither the PPP nor the PDI were allowed to directly criticize the government or its policies, no campaigning was allowed in villages, and anyone in violation of election rules could be charged with subversion, which potentially carried the death penalty (Kingsbury 2005). The New Order period saw considerable changes to Indonesian forest and agrarian policies (Hein 2019, Barr 2006). The year 1967 saw the enactment of the Basic Forest Law (BFL) that Barr (2006) argues was the first comprehensive framework for managing the Indonesian forest estate. It re-established the dualistic character of the Dutch colonial system for managing natural resources, with two laws regulating forest management within and outside the forest estate (Hein 2019). Defining state forest (Kawasan Hutan) as either a forested territory or a non-forested territory designated for reforestation, the Directorate General of Forestry in the Ministry of Agriculture (later upgraded to the Ministry of Forestry) was given authority to designate around 70% of Indonesia’s total territory as state forest (Hein 2019, Barr 2006). Introducing four different forest categories, production forest, recreation forest, forest reserves, and nature conservation forest, the BFL provided a legal framework for commercial forest exploitation (Hein 2019). It also formally categorized customary forests to be part of State Forests and noted that the activities of adat communities that violated the law (such as swidden agriculture) were prohibited (Hein 2019, Barr 2006). The state could furthermore decide which communities were eligible to have their adat rights to the forest recognized, and, consequently, many local and indigenous communities lost access to customary forests (Hein 2019). Barr (2006) notes forest management reforms during the New Order period aimed at stabilizing the state politically and financially, with huge revenues from

A brief political history of Indonesian forest governance  55 (often illegal) forest exploitation used to secure clientelist networks that were mutually dependent on one another, and to enhance the state’s trade balance. The Suharto family and their associates benefitted directly from their particularly tight grip on the palm oil industry, from plantation development to marketing and the use of revenues (Aditjondro 2007).7 The 1970s also crucially saw the revocation of the rights of provincial governments to issue timber concessions, which could now only be issued by the central government. In other words, the New Order Jakarta elite came to enjoy monopolistic control of the forest wealth of the outer islands (Hein 2019). In Central Sulawesi, Aragon (2001) describes this period as one in which people “acceded to many new regulations over their individual and collective rights in return for relatively greater stability and prosperity.”

Transmigration, Javanization, and Central Sulawesi’s ethno-territorial conflicts Transmigration refers to the resettlement of people from one part of Indonesia (typically Java and Bali) to another (usually the outer islands, including Sulawesi) and dates back to the colonial period in the form of the Kolonisatie programme (Levang and Sevin 1990, Hein 2019). Suharto’s New Order era, however, saw transmigration peak, with five million people resettled on the outer islands by 1989 (Fearnside 1997). Officially, transmigration aimed to reduce population pressures on agricultural land in Java and Bali (Hein 2019). But although these inner islands were indeed overpopulated, transmigration also served a neo-imperialist agenda, Javanizing the populations of the outer islands to ensure their political control (Kingsbury 2005, Hein 2019). With the forest resources of the outer islands already closely controlled from Jakarta through the BFL, the Village Government Law of 1979 further homogenized local administration throughout the archipelago, with transmigration importing Javanese culture to the outer islands (Hein 2019, Aragon 2001). Up until the late 1970s, local government administration in Indonesia had been diverse, with villages led by local leaders with different sources of legitimacy and responsibilities towards land and forest tenure (Hein 2019, Kato 1989). The new Village Government Law stipulated that administration at the village (Desa) level should now be led by an executive village head (Kepala Desa), with a village council (Lembaga Musyawarah Desa) as the legislative body (Hein 2019). This standardized approach to local government administration undermined customary authorities, and new village boundaries disrupted previous forms of village land organization (Hein 2019, Kato 1989). Local leaders were removed from their sources of authority, that is their abilities to allocate land, fishing, and forest harvesting rights (Kato 1989). In other words, power was removed from customary councils of elders and placed in the hands of a national civil service bureaucracy (Aragon 2001). The New Order regime was not, however, fully able to suppress customary authorities throughout the archipelago, and in many villages adat authorities continued to be influential (Hein 2019, Bebbington et al. 2004).

56  A brief political history of Indonesian forest governance Suharto’s 1973 Presidential Decree No. 2 had designated Central Sulawesi as one of ten new transmigration sites on the outer islands to stimulate national economic development (Aragon 2001). Between 1975 and 1990, Central Sulawesi saw the influx of just over 180,000 transmigrants (Schulze 2017). As in other parts of the archipelago, the new transmigration settlements in Central Sulawesi overlapped with land customarily used by locals, and insider–outsider frictions became a focal point for conflicts (Hein 2019, Aragon 2001). Both voluntary in-migration from South Sulawesi and government-sponsored transmigration from Java and Bali had begun as early as the 1950s but intensified during the New Order era (Aragon 2001). New roads, including the Trans-Sulawesi Highway, and development projects instigated by the Suharto government aimed at opening up and expanding Sulawesi’s economy, with high-value hardwoods targeted for exploitation (Aragon 2001). Illegality and the transgression of land boundaries were both rife, and media reports included examples of ebony smuggling via Palu’s ports and Bugis migrants entering ancestral forests to clear them for cacao production (Aragon 2001). Communal conflicts at both transmigration and voluntary migration sites in Central Sulawesi began to emerge in the form of “market fights, night-time attacks and religious threats” that were suppressed militarily by the Suharto regime (Aragon 2001, p. 57). These local conflicts were, however, to escalate significantly from December 1998 to July 2000, by which time 300–800 people had been killed, more than 3,500 homes destroyed, and more than 70,000 people had fled, leaving the city of Poso a virtual ghost-town (Aragon 2001). Local violence again flared up in Palu in 2005 when an improvised bomb exploded at a butcher’s market on New Year’s Eve, killing 8 people and wounding more than 45 (BBC News 2005). The ethno-territorial, sometimes described as ethno-religious, violence in Central Sulawesi, both before and after the shift in power from Suharto to President Habibie in 1998, was part of a wider pattern of violence across the Indonesian archipelago (Aragon 2001, Kingsbury 2005). Explanations of this widespread violence, which occurred as far apart as West Sumba, Jakarta, West Timor, South Sulawesi, East Java, and Maluku, have tended to emphasize either national elites engineering local trouble to justify the re-imposition of authoritarian measures, or the failure of new democratic-era reforms to address lawlessness (Aragon 2001). According to Aragon (2001, p. 48), however, these explanations fail to address “the accumulated resentments and subtle realignments of ethnic, religious, and economic consciousness that have developed over long periods of time in numerous Indonesian provinces.” In Central Sulawesi, although the violence tended to involve locals and immigrants of different religions, some of the conflicts took place between groups that were both Muslim, indicating that economic contentions over land were at the heart of the problem, rather than religion or ethnicity per se (Aragon 2001, Acciaioli 2001).8

Reformasi to the present Suharto’s May 1998 resignation capped a 2-year period marked by sharp economic decline, pro-democracy student protests, and, as discussed, widespread ethno-territorial conflict and violence (Hein 2019, Hofman and Kaiser 2002). It began a

A brief political history of Indonesian forest governance  57 new period in Indonesian politics, the reformasi, characterized by a series of often chaotic and, superficially, democratically oriented reforms instigated by Suharto’s successors, presidents Habibie (1998–1999), Wahid (1999–2001), Megawati (2001–2004), Yudhoyono (2004–2014), and Widodo/Jokowi (2014 to the present). Unease with Suharto’s leadership had begun to come to a head in the early 1990s. The 1989 end of the Cold War had ended the United States’ almost unconditional support for the New Order regime, and domestic elites began to move vast funds offshore, precipitating the economic collapse that began in 1997 (Ricklefs 2008, Kingsbury 2005). Various factions—including the nationalist-secular fraksi merah-putih, the military, and Megawati’s Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI)— jostled for position as Suharto, his family, and his allies attempted to secure their departure from political life with their assets intact and stored abroad (Kingsbury 2005, Ricklefs 2008).9 May 1998 saw calls for Suharto’s resignation intensify both among rioters targeting ethnic Chinese and other businesses in Jakarta and members of the national elite (Kingsbury 2005, Ricklefs 2008). So, when Suharto announced new elections that he would not contest and declared his close ally Habibie his successor, the news was greeted with widespread enthusiasm (Kingsbury 2005). But although some have viewed Suharto’s fall as a triumph for prodemocracy groups, other accounts suggest that his departure was driven not so much by the rise of Indonesian civil society as by tensions between Suharto and New Order oligarchs, whereby the former was abandoned by the latter (Fukuoka 2013). This reading suggests that, far from setting Indonesia on the path to consolidated democracy, the reformasi merely marked the transition to an illiberal, oligarchical form of democratic governance (Fukuoka 2013). Setiawan and Tomsa (2022, p. 9), for example, note that oligarchs have thrived in the reformasi period because “the new regime has allowed them to use political institutions to defend and further expand their wealth.” Although few expected much from Habibie’s government, or even that his tenure as president would last longer than a few months, it is now recognized that Habibie significantly influenced Indonesia’s political path (Kingsbury 2005, Ricklefs 2008). His administration revoked laws against freedom of expression and of the press and signed two new laws promoting greater regional autonomy: Law No. 22/1999 and Law No. 25/1999 (Kingsbury 2005). It also began to ratify the various United Nations conventions on human rights, going against the grain of the Suharto era in which civil and political rights had been consistently ignored in favour of social and economic rights (Kingsbury 2005). Perhaps most importantly, the Habibie government saw the MPR pass the decrees needed to hold the country’s first democratic general elections since 1955 (Kingsbury 2005, Ricklefs 2008). Given the ethno-territorial violence that had occurred across the country since 1997, there were at the time serious concerns that the elections would be marred by further bloodshed (Kingsbury 2005). In the event, however, the June 1999 elections passed with a low level of violence (except in Aceh, East Timor, and West Papua), with around 130 million votes cast across the archipelago (Kingsbury 2005, Ricklefs 2008). Yet, within months of the 1999 elections, it appeared that a genuine desire for reform had only masked the continuation of the usual power politics among

58  A brief political history of Indonesian forest governance the nation’s elites (Kingsbury 2005). When Abdurrahaman Wahid, the leader of the third-most popular party in the June elections (with just 10% of the vote), was announced as the new president in October  1999, it came as a shock for many Indonesians, and rioting began almost immediately (Ricklefs 2008, Kingsbury 2005). Wahid’s presidency was the result of a political deal, whereby Golkar (the party of government during the Suharto era) supported Wahid rather than Megawati (whose party, the PDI, had received the most votes) in exchange for a number of cabinet posts and the vice-presidency (Kingsbury 2005). Fearing continued political and social instability in the face of pro-Megawati rioters, however, Wahid sought and eventually secured Megawati for the role of vice-president, offering a number of other posts to those who had hoped for this position themselves (Kingsbury 2005). As an Islamic cleric and Javanese mystic, Wahid had strong religious credentials and, in the months following the June 1999 elections, had displayed a high degree of political manoeuvrability (Kingsbury 2005). His presidency was, however, marked by an ineffectual economic policy and by further violence in Indonesia’s outer islands (notably in Maluku, East Timor, and Central Kalimantan) to which he appeared slow to respond (Kingsbury 2005, Ricklefs 2008). This led to a push for his removal and replacement with Megawati, as part of an attempt to reassert central government control over the outer provinces. This push came to a head in July 2001 as troops from the TNI (Indonesia’s military) amassed with tanks at Medan Merdeka, a square in Central Jakarta (Kingsbury 2005). Although the TNI did not perform a military coup in the strict sense of the term, it did instigate a show of force that reflected the political authority of the elected representatives of the MPR against the executive power (Kingsbury 2005, 2003). Thus, on 21 July 2001, 8 of 11 parties represented at the MPR passed a resolution to impeach Wahid, and, a few days later, on July 23rd, Megawati was sworn-in as Indonesia’s fifth president (Kingsbury 2005, Ricklefs 2008). As the leader of the party (PDI) with the greatest number of votes in the 1999 elections, and as the daughter of the country’s founding president, Sukarno, Megawati enjoyed, at least initially, greater political legitimacy than her contemporary rivals (Kingsbury 2005). The violence in the outer islands that had marked President Wahid’s tenure generally lessened during the first part of Megawati’s administration, including in Central Sulawesi, and the TNI’s backing ensured that there was no mainstream opposition to her rule until the 2004 elections (Kingsbury 2005). Perhaps the most important contribution of the Megawati presidency to the series of democratic reforms during the reformasi era was the passing of Law No. 23/2003, which provided for direct elections of the president and vice-president (Kingsbury 2005). Yet, despite overseeing a somewhat improved economy since the 1997–1998 crash, Megawati’s administration was also noted for its widespread corruption and lack of leadership in key policy areas, including her disinclination to limit the rising political authority of the TNI (Kingsbury 2005, Ricklefs 2008). Megawati’s initially popular standing among the electorate rapidly diminished in the months prior to the 2004 elections, and her deployment of repressive measures to counter growing unrest in secessionist-minded West Papua and Aceh fed a

A brief political history of Indonesian forest governance  59 sense of grievance and cynicism among many Indonesians (Kingsbury 2005, Ricklefs 2008). It was in this context that her then Coordinating Politics and Security Minister, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (known by his initials: SBY), who had long harboured leadership ambitions, launched his own run for the presidency at the head of his small Democratic Party (or PD) (Kingsbury 2005). Generally viewed as a political underdog untainted by corruption, Yudhoyono still had an elite military background as a retired general and worked to retain strong links with the TNI (Kingsbury 2005, Ricklefs 2008). Although his new Democratic Party was small, with virtually no institutional capacity beyond the major cities, Yudhoyono was able to rely on a group of retired but influential senior military intelligence officers to convince local business leaders to support him (Kingsbury 2005). Yudhoyono’s campaigning also had financial backing from TNI-linked businessmen, who helped mobilize votes though their own networks at village level (Kingsbury 2005). Partnering with vice-presidential candidate Jusuf Kalla, from Bone Regency in South Sulawesi, Yudhoyono came to enjoy support in Sulawesi, given Kalla’s links with the Darul Islam movement of the 1950s (Kingsbury 2005). Coupled with support across large parts of Java, this was enough to secure him a convincing victory in Indonesia’s first direct presidential elections, held in September 2004, in which he won 60.8% of the votes (Kingsbury 2005, Ricklefs 2008). Yudhoyono, who held the post of president for the maximum two terms from 2004 to 2014, readily adopted the term reformasi and took important steps towards overhauling the judiciary and the legal code: regularizing the framework for business activities and attempting to address corruption (Kingsbury 2005, Ricklefs 2008). Departing from the Megawati era’s close association with the economic policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), he also created new economy-related cabinet posts, including that for a new Minister for the Acceleration of Development in Backwards Regions (Kingsbury 2005). Yet, Yudhoyono’s presidency faced significant challenges in the form of vested interests opposed to political and economic reforms, against the broad backdrop of a still-fragmented society (Kingsbury 2005, Ricklefs 2008). Even with the backing of its government coalition partners, the Democratic Party had far fewer representatives than either Golkar or the PDI in the People’s Representative Council (the DPR), and passing legislation required cross-party collaboration (Kingsbury 2005). The result was that Yudhoyono’s two governments became bogged-down in their reform agendas and, similar to President Wahid’s administration, often ended up choosing policies that offered a political path of least resistance, but that failed to address key societal problems such as corruption or poverty reduction (Ricklefs 2008). So, when the 2014 presidential elections offered up a choice between the well-connected businessman and former TNI lieutenant-general, Prabowo Subianto, and a PDI nominee who was the incumbent governor of Jakarta, Joko Widodo (also known as Jokowi), the latter was elected as the seventh Indonesian president (BBC News 2014).10 Initially, Prabowo disputed the election result claiming massive fraud, and there were fears that the tightly policed process would give way to violence (BBC

60  A brief political history of Indonesian forest governance News 2014). But Prabowo and his supporters eventually backed down and vowed to contest the 2019 presidential elections instead. Indeed, Prabowo formally announced his presidential bid in August 2018 with his running mate Sandiaga Uno and with the support of Gerinda, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), the National Mandate Party (PAN), the Democratic Party (PD), and the Berkarya Party (BBC News Indonesia 2018). The 17 April  2019 general election saw a record 192 million people eligible to vote across the archipelago, and, although Jokowi claimed victory, Prabowo again disputed the result (BBC 2019f). Accusing Jokowi of cheating, Prabowo supporters took to the streets of Jakarta in protests that left nine people dead (BBC 2019f). To resolve the dispute, the Constitutional Court became involved, eventually ruling in Jokowi’s favour in June 2019 (BBC 2019f). At the time of writing, therefore, the top political position in Indonesia is still held by Jokowi, who has been described as the first Indonesian president not to come from an elite political or military background (BBC News 2015). Born in 1961 in Solo, central Java, Jokowi is a former furniture maker and was mayor of Surakarta from 2005 to 2012 before becoming Jakarta’s governor, a role which saw him grow in popularity by relocating slums and boosting small businesses (BBC News 2015). Standing on a platform based on tackling corruption and intolerance, increasing investments in education and technology, and introducing longdelayed infrastructure projects across the archipelago, his approval ratings remain fairly high, although he has faced criticisms for his handling of the economy, for a series of dubious political appointments, and, most recently, for being willing to subjugate individual rights and the fight against corruption to economic considerations (BBC News 2015, Editorial Board EAF 2019). In terms of forest governance, new decentralization and revenue-sharing arrangements in the reformasi era were largely reactive to various separatist impulses, and decentralization tended to increase both corruption and competition between various groups, contributing to violent conflicts around access to and control of natural resources, including in Central Sulawesi (Hein 2019, McCarthy 2007).11 Decentralization in the forest sector was begun through the enactment of Regulation 62/1998 on the Delegation of Partial Authority on the Forest Sector to Regions and Regulation 6/1999 on Regional Governance (Hein 2019, Resosudarmo et  al. 2006). These regulations permitted district governments to issue small-scale logging and forest conservation concessions in areas designated as conversion and production forests (Hein 2019, Resosudarmo et  al. 2006). But 2002 saw the central government withdraw this authority from district governments following lobbying by the Association of Indonesian Forest Concession holders, thus re-establishing full central government control over State Forests (Hein 2019, Resosudarmo et al. 2006). Moreover, Forest Law 31 of 1999 had largely upheld the forest policies of the New Order era by declaring that customary forests are part of State Forests and that forest access is only allowed for formally recognized adat groups (Hein 2019). With reference to the older Governmental Regulation 24/1997, village heads thus continue to play a formal role in registering adat land rights on the basis of oral history (Hein 2019).

A brief political history of Indonesian forest governance  61 Overall, the contemporary legal situation is that land located within State Forests is subject to the Forest Law and is under the authority of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MoEF), while land located outside the state forest is subject to the Basic Agrarian Law (Hein 2019). While both laws distinguish between land and forest rights for individuals, communities, and corporate actors, the Forest Law permits only temporary user rights, while the Basic Agrarian Law permits inheritable individual rights for smallholders, communal land rights for adat communities, and temporary cultivation rights for corporate actors (Hein 2019). In practice, however, the actual forest and land rights situation across Indonesia is far more complex than this. Obtaining village forest concessions, for example, involves administrative tasks that pose significant barriers to local communities who are unable to complete them without outside expertise (Hein 209). Indigenous rights movements, such as AMAN, simply do not recognize the legitimacy of the Forest Law and instead demand full land ownership and the recognition of indigenous territories (Hein 2019). There is also the recent Constitutional Court decision that adat forests are no longer part of the State Forest, as well as President Jokowi’s initiatives to expand the allocation of community and smallholder forest concessions and to implement the Constitutional Court’s decision regarding adat forests (Rachman 2013, Hein 2019). In sum, different types of land and forest rights under different laws and regulations, and involving different authorities, co-exist in Indonesia, and this constellation is in a state of constant flux as various actors renegotiate with one another (Hein 2019, Rachman 2013). In conclusion, there is a long history of the Indonesian archipelago of political elites using forest and land-use policies to reward favoured groups and punish others so that they fall into step with particular policy objectives, such as the generation of wealth via timber extraction or plantation agriculture. A blend of violently extractive and conservation-oriented forest and land-use policies was crucial to the Dutch colonial regime’s political and economic goals and, since independence, has played an important role in the Indonesian state-building project, helping, for example, bind together the archipelago’s disparate provinces through forest revenue-sharing arrangements. At the same time, the spread of centralized administration over Indonesia’s forests has been patchy and inconsistent over time, particularly in the outer islands, and political elites have responded to secessionist movements and other challenges to their power by introducing a raft of ad hoc policies and regulations to stave off immanent threats. Moreover, localized adat identities and tenure rights have continued to hold high relevance for many peripheral Indonesian communities, with tensions over economic rights to forests and land providing the context behind, if not always the spark that ignited, a series of violent ethno-territorial confrontations since the 1950s. This includes the violence around the Central Sulawesi port cities of Poso and Palu in the late 1990s to mid-2000s. Yet, whereas the authoritarian New Order era saw Indonesia’s natural resource wealth largely controlled by Suharto and his associates through clientelist networks of political-economic actors, the post-reformasi period is characterized by greater intra-elite competition over resource wealth. It is into this complex, messy,

62  A brief political history of Indonesian forest governance situation of competitive, nationalist, oligarchy that REDD+ entered the scene. Over the next two chapters, I focus on what subsequently occurred at national, provincial, and pilot level as REDD+ entered the Indonesian context, presenting first data from Jakarta, Bogor, and Oslo in Chapter 3, before moving on to cover Central Sulawesi and the REDD+ pilots at Talaga and Lembah Mukti in Chapter 4.

Notes 1 There is a disagreement over the location of Srivijaya. It probably contained several capitals, with the most important in southern Sumatra from where it could control the ports and waters of the Malacca Straits (Osborne 2016). 2 The terms ‘swidden agriculture’ and ‘shifting cultivation’ refer to a variety of practices in Southeast Asia. Swidden can involve intermittent clearing and burning of small patches of forest for subsistence food production, followed by long fallow periods in which forests regrow (Dressler et  al. 2017). Fire swiddening has historically been a cornerstone of Indonesian agriculture (Deali 2019). 3 Sukarno was born in Surabaya, East Java, and was the son of a Javanese primary school teacher and his Balinese wife. The first Indonesian Vice-President, Mohammed Hatta, was born in West Sumatra to a prominent Islamic family (Kingsbury 2005). 4 The five principles of Pancasila are social justice, a just and civilized humanity, belief in one God, Indonesian unity, and government by deliberation and consent (Kingsbury 2005). 5 Documents recently declassified in the United States show that US authorities actively supported Suharto’s power-grab by providing mobile communications equipment to the Indonesian military (Bevins 2020). Hopkins (2018) explains how, in the years leading up to 1965, US authorities had been increasingly concerned about Sukarno’s drift towards the Communist Party, to the Soviet Union and China, with the US Congress calling for action in 1964. 6 For more detailed accounts of these events, see Cribb (1991) and Bevins (2020). These events are the main focus of the documentary films The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014) which include interviews with individuals who participated in the mass killings. 7 Aditjondro (2007) notes that, during the Suharto era, state palm oil plantations produced crude palm oil, which was sold to the state logistics agency (Bulog) in either its raw or refined form at low prices. Bulog made a significant mark-up and profit on its subsequent sales of cooking oil, the market for which was dominated by two Suhartolinked companies, Salim and Sinar Mas. State officials pocketed the difference, including Bustanil Arifin who headed Bulog for two decades. Suharto also entrusted Arifin to manage his four wealthiest charities, claimed by Arifin to surpass the wealth of the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. 8 The forests between Poso and Palu have in recent years been used as a base by the ISIS-affiliated East Mujahidin Indonesia (MIT). MIT’s now-deceased leader, Santoso, is reported to have exploited local contentions by using communities around Poso to protect his guerrillas, offering them in turn protection from Christian militias. See Zulkarnain and Purnama (2016). 9 The combined wealth of Suharto’s family and business associates (estimated by Transparency International to be around USD 30 billion) comprised a significant proportion of total Indonesian national wealth at the time of his resignation. How to deal with this largely illicit wealth, much of which was derived from forest-related exploitation, without further compromising the economy, was a major challenge for Suharto’s successors (Kingsbury 2005). 10 Prabawo is the former husband of the late President Suharto’s daughter, Titiek Suharto. In 1998, he was dishonourably discharged from the Indonesian military and was for

A brief political history of Indonesian forest governance  63 some time banned from entering the United States due to his alleged involvement in human rights abuses during the 1990s (Topsfield 2017). 11 Baker (2020) notes too that Indonesia’s decentralization reforms accelerated deforestation, given the practice that bupatis tended to appoint a cohort of corrupt local administrators willing to manufacture land and forest licenses and permissions for political campaign donors.

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A brief political history of Indonesian forest governance  65 Metzner, J. 1981. “Palu (Sulawesi): Problematik der Landnutzung in einem klimatischen Trockental am Äquator.” Erdkunde. Vol. 35. Issue 1. pp. 42–54. Moniaga, S. 1993. “Towards Community-Based Forestry and Recognition of Adat Property Rights in the Outer Islands of Indonesia.” in Fox, J. (Ed.). Legal Frameworks for Forest Management in Asia: Case Studies of Community/State Relations (Occasional Paper No. 16). East-West Center: Honolulu. Nadjamuddin, L. 2017. “A  Dispute Over Land Ownership in Dampelas: Hegemony of Dutch East Indies and Banawa.” Paramita: Historical Studies Journal. Vol. 27. pp. 1–9. Newitt, M. 2005. A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion 1400–1668. Routledge: London. Nurjaya, I.N. 2005. “Sejarah Hukum Pengelolaan Hutan di Indonesia.” Jurisprudence. Vol. 2. Issue 1. pp. 35–55. Osborne, M. 2016. Southeast Asia: An Introductory History (12th Edition). Allen and Unwin: Sydney. Patunru, A.R. 1983. Sejerah Gowa. Yayasan Kebudayaan Sulawesi Selatan: Ujung Pendang. Presiden Republik Indonesia. 1960. “Undang-Undang Nomor 5 Tahun 1967 Tentang Peraturan Dasar Pokok-Pokok Agraria.” in No. 5 1960. Presiden Republik Indonesia: Jakarta. Rachman, N.F. 2011. The Resurgence of Land Reform Policy and Agrarian Movements in Indonesia. (PhD Thesis). University of California: Berkeley. Rachman, N.F. 2013. Undoing Categorical Inequality: Masyarakat Adat, Agrarian Conflicts, and Struggle for Inclusive Citizenship in Indonesia. Paper Sajogyo Institute: Indonesia. Resosudarmo, I.A.P., C. Barr, A. Dermawan, and J. McCarthy. 2006. “Fiscal Balancing and the Redistribution of Forest Revenues.” in Barr, C., I.A.P. Resosudarmo, A. Dermawan, J. McCarthy (Eds.). Decentralization of Forest Administration in Indonesia: Implications for Forest Sustainability, Economic Development and Community Livelihoods. Center for International Forestry Research: Bogor. Ricklefs, M.C. 2008. A History of Modern Indonesia Since c. 1200 (4th Edition). Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke. Schulze, K.E. 2017. “The “Ethnic” in Indonesia’s Communal Conflicts: Violence in Ambon, Poso, and Sambas.” Ethnic and Racial Studies. Vol. 40. Issue 12. Setiawan, K.M.P. and D. Tomsa. 2022. Politics in Contemporary Indonesia: Institutional Change, Policy Challenges and Democratic Decline. Routledge: London. Taylor, J.G. 2003. Indonesia. Yale University Press: New Haven and London. Topsfield, J. 2017. Prabowo Subianto Opens Up on Jakarta Elections and the 2019 Presidency. The Sydney Morning Herald: Sydney. Zulkarnain, F. and T.S. Purnama. 2016. “The ISIS Movement and the Threat of Religious Radicalism in Indonesia.” MIMBAR. Vol. 32. Issue 1. pp. 31–39.

3 Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual? REDD+ and related forest policies in Indonesia

REDD+ has not remained static in Indonesia or elsewhere. Indeed, the period between Indonesia’s commitment in 2010 to reduce its carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and the announcement of the first paymentfor-results under the Norway–Indonesia REDD+ partnership in early 2019 saw major policy and practice shifts. Broadly, this period can be divided into two main sections: a first part (from 2010 to mid-2014) under the leadership of President Yudhoyono (or SBY) in which provisions under the 2010 Norway–Indonesia Letter of Intent were largely adhered to, a Forest Moratorium established, and REDD+ demonstration activities undertaken and a second part under President Jokowi (from mid-2014 to the time of writing), during which a newly formed MoEF took control of REDD+ and a series of other forest-related policies emerged, namely commitments linked to Customary Forests, a Social Forestry Programme, and the One Map One Data initiative. This chapter draws on in-person interviews in Jakarta, Bogor, and Oslo, as well as secondary data in the form of a systematic literature review and satellite data of deforestation to examine the national politics of REDD+ in Indonesia. It begins by outlining the origins of REDD+ and the Forest Moratorium under SBY, moving on to the rolling out of demonstration activities in several pilot provinces (including the 2012 FPIC pilots in Talaga and Lembah Mukti, Central Sulawesi, discussed in Chapter 4). It then discusses the short life of the National REDD+ Agency and its disbanding as one of the first forest-related decisions taken by President Jokowi. The chapter then recounts the 2014 formation of the new Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MoEF) and the launch of three new initiatives in the forestland policy space: Customary Forests, a Social Forestry Programme, and the One Map One Data cartographic initiative. Finally, it concludes by reviewing various data on Indonesian deforestation and forest carbon emissions during 2001–2021 and the decision by the Norwegian government in early 2019 to begin payments-for-results for Indonesian reductions in emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. These efforts and events are recounted both in order to explain the immediate backdrop of the REDD+ pilots in Central Sulawesi and to shed light on the national political contestations that have shaped policymakers’ room for manoeuvre with regard to REDD+ in Indonesia. DOI: 10.4324/9781003267898-4

Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual?  67

Origins: establishment of REDD+ and the Forest Moratorium REDD+ is not an Indonesian policy invention, and, as discussed before, the idea that financial inducements could be used to motivate tropical forest conservation grew out of broader interest since the late 1980s in market-based payment for ecosystem services (PES) schemes (Hein 2019). During the UNFCCC COP 16 in Cancun, Mexico, countries were invited to formulate national REDD+ strategies, while donors were invited to support these efforts, whose implementation was to be guided by several socio-ecological safeguards, including the practice of FPIC for REDD+ pilots (UNFCCC 2010). The subsequent UNFCCC COP 19 in Warsaw, Poland, set further rules for establishing forest cover reference levels and for monitoring and verification systems, as well as criteria for the eventual disbursement of result-based payments (UNFCCC 2013a, b, c, d, e). Yet, it is important to recognize that what are called UNFCCC rules are actually legally non-binding guidelines and that, in the absence of a central management body responsible for REDD+ implementation, the highly diverse set of actors involved in REDD+ projects around the world have mostly developed their own rules and financing arrangements (Horstmann and Hein 2017, Hein 2019). In other words, the term REDD+ encompasses a wide variety of different approaches and rules, depending on the context. One such set of rules governing REDD+ are the provisions contained in the Letter of Intent between the governments of Norway and Indonesia on Cooperation on Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, signed in May 2010 (Letter of Intent 2010). The Letter of Intent emerged following the UNFCCC COP 13 on Bali in 2007 when Indonesia was widely viewed as a major contemporary carbon emitter from land use, land use change, and forestry (FAO 2010). Apparently influenced by the Bali discussions, the then Indonesian President SBY made his Pittsburgh pitch to cut carbon emissions by 26% from business-as-usual levels by 2020 or, with international support, 41% by the same year (Reuters 2009). Some analysts have doubted the sincerity of these pronouncements, noting that SBY’s statements on carbon emission cuts were, at least in part, intended to bolster his domestic political situation during what was a difficult period of his presidency (Lang 2011). At the same time, the Norwegian government’s motivations for REDD+ in general, and by extension the Letter of Intent, have also been criticized. Norwegian academics Svarstad and Benjaminsen (2018) argue that Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI)—the umbrella for all Norwegian REDD+ support—is “about protecting the oil business while trying to push greenhouse gas emission reductions over to others.”1 Pointing to how the 67% Norwegian-government-owned oil firm Equinor continues fossil fuel operations while investing in tropical forest protection, Svarstad and Benjaminsen (2018) claim that REDD+ is a form of neocolonialism—an argument I return to later in this book. Whatever the motivations behind the Norway–Indonesia Letter of Intent, the actions agreed between the two governments as a result were (i) to develop a REDD+ National Strategy;

68  Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual? (ii) to establish a dedicated agency to implement the REDD+ strategy, including a system for measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) of emission reductions; and (iii) to develop and implement policy instruments and enforcement capacity, including a 2-year suspension of all new concessions for the conversion of peat-land and natural forest areas to other uses (Letter of Intent 2010, Murdiyarso 2014). It is worth noting that the provisions contained within the Norway–Indonesia Letter of Intent on REDD+ (LoI) assumed their integration with both countries’ commitments under the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol, as well as close coordination with all other REDD+ initiatives, including the UN-REDD Programme that Norway also funds (Letter of Intent 2010). Thus, the overall approach outlined in the LoI assumed coordination and complementarity of actions between various REDD+ actors in Indonesia in line with a single national REDD+ strategy. Indeed, devising a national strategy for REDD+ that addressed all key drivers of forest and peatland emissions was the first provision of the LoI, to be completed during a 1- to 2-year preparatory phase (Letter of Intent 2010). This was to be accompanied by the establishment of a special agency reporting directly to the president to coordinate the efforts pertaining to the development and implementation of REDD+ (Letter of Intent 2010). This latter provision provided the background for the presidential decree establishing the short-lived Indonesian REDD+ Taskforce, later renamed the National REDD+ Agency or BP-REDD+ (Government of Indonesia 2011, The Jakarta Post 2015). Crucially, in addition to setting up a range of further parameters for the governance of REDD+ activities in Indonesia, including observance of the principles of FPIC, the LoI provided an impetus for Presidential Instruction (Inpres) No. 10/2011 on the postponement of issuance of new licenses and improving the governance of primary natural forest and peatland, which effectively imposed a 2-year moratorium on new forest concession licenses in Indonesia (Murdiyarso 2014). Given this moratorium’s repeated renewal since 2011, a review commissioned by the Norwegian government’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI) notes that it has had “important psychological and educational impacts, helping to reduce the loss of natural forest and to deter increased forest exploitation in 2015–2016” (Caldecott et al. 2018, p. 6). I will return to the demonstrable effects of the Forest Moratorium later in this chapter.

Success in managing our forests will determine our future: REDD+ pilots and demonstration activities A sign that the desire for REDD+ came not only from outside Indonesia but also from within the country is the fact that pilots and demonstration activities began several years before the 2010 signature of the Letter of Intent. As noted in the introduction to this book, the visionary political rhetoric deployed by SBY was that Indonesian “success in managing our forests will determine our future and the opportunities that will be available to our children” (Yudhoyono 2011, p. 5). But, SBY’s administration was, in reality, desperate to curtail the negative

Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual?  69 impacts of forest fires deliberately set for clearing peatland for palm oil plantations and was having difficulty doing so (Edwards and Heiduk 2015). Since the mid1990s, polluting haze from these fires had become an annual occurrence impacting not only Indonesia but also parts of Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei, and Singapore (Frankenberg et al. 2005, Edwards and Heiduk 2015). With up to 70 million people suffering from haze-related skin, eye, and respiratory illnesses and huge economic costs associated with increased health problems, lost tourism revenues, and decreased productivity, successive Indonesian governments had sought to tackle the fires, framing them as a direct threat to national security (Amul 2013, Chan 2013 Edwards and Heiduk 2015). In 2006, SBY publicly declared a war on haze and ordered his officials to take actions to prevent the fires (Edwards and Heiduk 2015). Yet, despite the strong rhetoric, effective preventive measures remained elusive due to the persistence of patronage networks linking plantation firms with government officials, with the worst forest fires yet to come (Edwards and Heiduk 2015). Howell and Bastiensen (2015) note that these fires and their associated impacts played a role in motivating SBY’s administration to engage with REDD+ and partly provided justification for the choice of Central Kalimantan as one of Indonesia’s REDD+ pilot provinces, given a fire started in 2007 had burned there for 2 years. In December  2008, the Ministry of Forestry issued Regulation No. P.  68/ Menhut-II/2008, describing the procedure for the application and legitimization of REDD+ demonstration activities in Indonesia (Mardiastuti 2012). The regulation permitted the testing and evaluation of the REDD+ methodology, technology, and institutional framework (Mardiastuti 2012). Precisely how many demonstration activities and pilots were subsequently implemented nationwide is difficult to determine: there was reportedly confusion around what demonstration activities actually meant, some projects initiated only portions of what could be described as REDD+ activities, and the then Ministry of Forestry did not officially register some projects (Mardiastuti 2012). Nevertheless, Mardiastuti’s 2012 review of demonstration activities for the UN-REDD Programme notes a total of 77 REDD+ related projects across the regions of Sumatra, Kalimantan, Java, Nusa Tenggara, Sulawesi, and Papua (Mardiastuti 2012). As seen in Figure 3.1, these projects tended to be located in Kalimantan (mostly Central and West Kalimantan), Sumatra (mostly the eastern coast), and Papua (mostly the eastern and southern parts), with a smaller number of projects in Java, Sulawesi, and Nusa Tenggara (Mardiastuti 2012). The 2010 Letter of Intent, however, required that Indonesia also select entire pilot provinces for REDD+. So, in October 2010, the UN-REDD Indonesia Programme, in partnership with the then Ministry of Forestry, decided to focus on Central Sulawesi to establish the capacity to implement REDD+ at decentralized levels (Howell and Bastiensen 2015). A  second pilot province, Central Kalimantan, was announced by SBY at a cabinet meeting on 23rd December 2010 (Butler 2010). The UN-REDD Programme pilot in Central Sulawesi was inaugurated along with a regional consultation on the REDD+ National Strategy in Palu, the provincial capital, in October 2011 (Forest Peoples Programme 2011). In February 2011, the

70  Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual?

Figure 3.1  Distribution of REDD+ Projects in Indonesia, October 2013 Source: UN-REDD Programme

Governor of Central Sulawesi issued a decree establishing a Provincial Working Group on REDD+, and five areas were nominated as possible programme sites: Dampelas region in Donggala district, Tinombo region in Parigi Moutong district, forests in Lore Lindu National Park in Poso district, and forests in Tojo Una-una and Toli-toli (Forest Peoples Programme 2011). Four sites were selected to pilot the FPIC mechanism: the villages of Lembah Mukti and Talaga, both located in Dampelas Tinombo Forest Management Unit (FMU), and Pakuli and Simoro villages, located in Lore Lindu National Park (Ogle and Yong 2013). As discussed in Chapter  4, the Talaga village FPIC pilot was discontinued while the Lembah Mukti and Pakuli and Simoro village pilots proceeded (Ogle and Yong 2013). Beyond the end of the UN-REDD Indonesia Programme’s operational activities in October  2012, the National REDD+ Agency signed a further memorandum of understanding with the heads of five regions in Central Sulawesi with the intention of continuing activities established by UN-REDD (Howell and Bastiensen 2015). Central Kalimantan was selected out of nine other forested provinces on the recommendation of Dr Kuntoro Mankusubroto, Head of the President’s Delivery Unit for Development Monitoring and Oversight (UKP4), who noted in a contemporary press statement that: The assessment showed that Central Kalimantan is a province with large forest cover and peat land and faces a real threat of deforestation. The level of readiness and commitment of the Governor to implement REDD+ was also considered promising for Central Kalimantan to be (a) successful partner. (Butler 2010)2 Howell and Bastiensen (2015) add that the province was likely chosen due to its history of deforestation and forest degradation, particularly in relation to its peat forests within which pockets of gas tend to form contributing to volatile forest

Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual?  71 fires. In 2010, the Governor, Teras Narang, issued a provincial-level decree creating a Regional Board on Climate Change (Forest People’s Programme 2011). The provincial government also issued several other regulations relevant to REDD+, namely (i) a decree on the Status, Position, and Function of Kedamangan Institutions (Kedamangan are customary inter-village institutions involved in natural resource governance); (ii) a provincial law on the Determination of Kedamangan Territory and Obligations of the Damang Head; (iii) a provincial law on Customary Institutions of Dayak communities; and (iv) a decree on Customary Land and Customary Rights to Land (Forest People’s Programme 2011). A REDD+ demonstration project had begun in Central Kalimantan in 2007 as part of the Indonesia–Australia Forest Partnership (Howell and Bastiensen 2015). Under the heading Kalimantan Forest and Climate Partnership (KFCP), this project aimed to cover 120,000 ha of mainly deforested or degraded areas previously part of former President Suharto’s Mega Rice Project in the Kapuas regency (Howell and Bastiensen 2015, Forest People’s Programme 2011b). An important aspect of this project was to block canals created to drain surrounding soil for the Mega Rice Project—canals that had since become crucial local infrastructure (Howell and Bastiensen 2015). In 2012, an open letter from 14 Kapuas indigenous leaders to the Central Kalimantan Governor criticized KFCP, and a year later the project was discontinued with the World Bank taking over parts of it during a scaling-down period (Howell and Bastiensen 2015). Despite this early setback for REDD+ implementation in Central Kalimantan, Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative project database shows support to REDD+ activities in the province continued into the 2016–2020 period, with four projects listed as being implemented via the Earth Innovation Institute, the Climate Policy Initiative, Rainforest Foundation Norway, and the World Wildlife Fund (NICFI 2018).

Taking over our authority: the National REDD+ Agency and its disbanding Before turning in Chapter 4 for an analysis of the REDD+ FPIC pilots in Talaga and Lembah Mukti, Central Sulawesi, it is important to first consider the broader institutional politics of REDD+ in Indonesia, the other forest policy initiatives that have emerged partly in parallel to it, and to look at forest loss data for the country as a whole since REDD+ pilots began. This information is provided in order to help the reader better appreciate the contemporary context in which the Talaga and Lembah Mukti pilots took place, including the national political contestations that were drawn upon by actors in Central Sulawesi to support various political or advocacy positions, how locals from the pilot areas subsequently attempted to influence national discourse on REDD+ and forest policy more generally, and how all of the aforementioned fit with the actual forest loss and forest carbon emissions data. A key provision of the 2010 Letter of Intent was the establishment of a special agency reporting directly to the president to coordinate the efforts pertaining to the development and implementation of REDD+ (Letter of Intent 2010). Moreover, REDD+ in Indonesia was to give all stakeholders, including Indigenous

72  Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual? Peoples, local communities, and civil society, opportunities for full and effective participation in planning and implementation of the scheme, subject to applicable national legislation and international instruments (Letter of Intent 2010). Thus, in line with the provisions of the Letter of Intent, SBY announced in 2010 that he would establish a multi-stakeholder Indonesian REDD+ Taskforce, later renamed as the National REDD+ Agency (abbreviated BP REDD+), which was staffed by Indonesian experts—many of whom were drafted in from civil society groups previously active in the environmental sphere—reporting directly to him (Caldecott et al. 2018). A major motivation for the inclusion of the provision regarding a special REDD+ agency in the Letter of Intent was the government of Norway’s concerns regarding forest sector corruption and mismanagement (Seymour et al. 2015, In-field interviews 2017). For decades, the Ministry of Forestry had been notorious, both domestically and abroad, for its alleged involvement in forest corruption (Dermawan et  al. 2011, Seymour et al. 2015, Wibowo and Giessen 2015).3 The huge forestlands under its control, its role in presiding over crucial conservation and plantation development activities, its position as a gatekeeper in issuing various government licenses, and its tendency to be led and staffed by graduates of the elite Bogor Agricultural University and the University of Gajah Mada, all contributed to the ministry’s formidable reputation and power (Seymour et  al. 2015, in-field interview 2017). This reputation dated back at least to Suharto’s New Order era when massive and unsustainable forest extraction was used to lift Indonesia’s gross domestic product, create jobs, and develop the outer islands—all at the cost of high deforestation, illegal logging, annual fires, biodiversity loss, and land use conflicts, for which the Ministry of Forestry was typically blamed (Hansen et al. 2009, Casson and Obidzinski 2007, Tacconi et al. 2007, Fay and Michon 2005, Wibowo and Giessen 2015).4 Prior to the 2010 signature of the Letter of Intent, a series of high-profile forest corruption cases, involving prominent provincial bureaucrats and politicians, served to reinforce fears that REDD+ could be derailed by corruption (Dermawan et al. 2011). For example the former governor of East Kalimantan, H. Suwarna Abdul Fatah, was sentenced to 4 years in prison and an IDR 200 million fine for his role in illegally issuing permits for palm oil plantations in Berau, East Kalimantan, in 2003–2008 (Luttrell et  al. 2011, Dermawan et  al. 2011). Suwarna had been accused of enriching the developer of the plantations and of causing economic losses to the Indonesian state worth IDR 346.8 billion (Luttrell et al. 2011, Dermawan et al. 2011). This, and other similar forest corruption cases in Riau and Papua, meant that although SBY had demonstrated strong commitment to REDD+, worries remained that existing failures in forest governance could undermine REDD+ implementation (Dermawan et al. 2011). By establishing an independent, multi-stakeholder body reporting directly to the president on a national strategy to reduce deforestation, the Indonesia–Norway agreement sought to circumvent the potential for poor governance of the scheme (Seymour et al. 2015). At the same time, some analysts argued that this new arrangement for managing REDD+ was “a direct and unprecedented challenge to the hegemony

Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual?  73 of the Ministry of Forestry”, and in hindsight it is unsurprising that the National REDD+ Agency was to prove so short-lived (Seymour et al. 2015). Signs that the National REDD+ Agency was to face significant challenges in fulfilling its mandate were evident right from the beginning. Despite SBY’s 2010 commitment to the Norwegian government to create such a special body, it took more than 3 years to establish it in August 2013, while further delays meant that its head, Heru Prasetyo, would not be appointed until December of the same year (Harfenist 2015, Seymour et al. 2015). A full complement of staff was not in place until a month before the presidential elections of July 2014, and even then, these staff reportedly struggled to surmount political, legal, and bureaucratic hurdles to operationalize REDD+ mechanisms (Seymour et al. 2015). One former member of the agency who was drafted in from civil society told me: I was involved in fieldwork where they were introducing REDD+ to people. It became a bit chaotic and things stopped happening. REDD+ was like a Pandora’s Box and a lot of evil things came out too. If there are people in a location then they need to be talked to. There needs to a settlement of rights. But this was often not done properly, this process of dialogue in gazetting forests. I spoke with one of the contractors doing the work and realized the way he was demarcating land was influenced by a nepotistic relationship he had in the village. (In-field interview 2017) The agency’s work was, according to another former civil society member, subject to delaying tactics on the part of the then Ministry of Forestry (In-field interview 2017). Although established by the president, and operating at cabinet minister level, the agency was viewed by some within the ministry as operating outside the normal bounds of government bureaucracy. The Ministry of Forestry always get territorial if there is another agency that can take their authority, and the REDD+ agency consisted of civil society people. The Ministry of Forestry felt uncomfortable with a lot of the changes proposed by the REDD+ agency: “This is taking over our authority.” (In-field interview 2017) An official within the State Ministry of National Development Planning, Pungky Widiaryanto, noted publicly in January 2015 that the National REDD+ Agency’s “authority was unclear” and that its “appearance as an ad hoc organization provoked conflicts with other ministries” (Widiaryanto 2015b).5 In my interviews, former civil society members of the agency repeatedly stressed that they were attempting to “do something different” in terms of forest governance with REDD+ (In-field interviews 2017). To implement REDD+ effectively, they considered that the formal definition of forests needed further clarification, while land tenure rights for Indigenous Peoples and local communities would have to be formally resolved (In-field interviews 2017). The necessity of broad-based reforms

74  Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual? as a precondition for successful REDD+ implementation was also recognized in the National REDD+ Strategy developed by the agency during this period, which stated that: “to implement REDD+ effectively it is necessary to create conditions conducive to reforming governance and management systems in all landbased sectors” (Indonesian REDD+ Taskforce 2012, p.  6). Interviewees spoke enthusiastically of the agency’s work in this early period, noting that land tenure reform and conflict resolution were discussed, with considerable funding available for activities and new spaces created for civil society dialogue on land tenure, palm oil development, and deforestation (In-field interviews 2017). Yet, they also spoke of emerging tensions among the agency’s government and non-government members, particularly on the issue of FPIC implementation: while civil society members viewed FPIC as a mechanism for potential REDD+ beneficiaries to either refuse or accept projects, government members reportedly saw FPIC simply as a tool for project approval (In-field interview 2017). The challenges the National REDD+ Agency encountered in seeing through a reform-oriented REDD+ agenda were not related to resistance on the part of the national-level forest bureaucracy alone, however. Although REDD+ activities involved local and provincial-level authorities, including via the development of provincial-level REDD+ strategies and pilots, the agency’s work was still viewed with scepticism on the part of some provincial governments (In-field interview 2017). One interviewee noted that: There was variation in enthusiasm and take up of REDD+. In Central Kalimantan they got on board early on because there was a progressive governor who wanted to encourage more sustainability. Also West Sumatra and West Papua are good examples where things started happening quite quickly. This all started in 2011. However, some provinces and regions were involved because they saw money, and they got very impatient when this did not start coming their way. (In-field interview 2017) The lack of enthusiasm for REDD+ on the part of certain governors and provinces was linked by several interviewees to the lack of a politically savvy strategy capable of convincing them that REDD+ would bring tangible benefits (In-field interviews 2017). Given the range of formal arrangements already in place with regard to forest sector revenue-sharing between the national and subnational levels of government, the agency was simply unable to offer the mainly financial assurances sought by many state actors in the provinces (In-field interviews 2017). A combination of resistance from the national forest bureaucracy and from certain subnational governments thus led to the eventual political isolation of the National REDD+ Agency, to the extent that newly elected President Jokowi signed Presidential Decree No. 16 in January 2015, disbanding the agency and reassigning its responsibilities to the newly formed MoEF under Minister Siti Nurbaya (Jong 2015). At the time, William Sabandar, Deputy of Operations for the National REDD+ Agency, stated: “What’s certain is that the presidential decree violates the agreement between the Indonesian government with the Norwegian government which

Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual?  75 is stated in the Letter of Intent in 2010” (Gokken and Putri 2015).6 The then Norwegian Ambassador, Stig Travvik, was more sanguine about the change, however, noting that: “We have heard about the decision but not in detail. The main thing now is how to reach the goal together” (Gokken and Putri 2015). But diplomatic language could not change the fact that Norway’s flagship anti-deforestation project would now be controlled in Indonesia by the ministry it had earlier sought to keep at arm’s length from REDD+ due to concerns about forest corruption and an extractive approach to natural resource management (Seymour et al. 2015). As Abdon Nababan, the Secretary-General of the Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN), put it: “The merger of REDD+ and the ministry is disquieting, especially if the ministry applies the paradigm of the old order” (Harfenist 2015).7 Why did Norwegian authorities not react more decisively (e.g. suspend funding and/or cooperation) at the time in response to this divergence from a key provision of the 2010 Letter of Intent? Interviewees in Jakarta pointed to the multiple foreign policy objectives beyond REDD+ pursued by Norway in Indonesia during this period (In-field interviews 2017). An illustrative example was Norway’s drive to dramatically increase its seafood exports to Indonesia in the 2010s as a result of its being frozen out of the lucrative Chinese market (Monteiro 2016, Huang and Zhen 2016). Since the presentation of the 2010 award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobo, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for inciting the subversion of state power, the Chinese government had cancelled meetings with Norwegian officials and denied visas to visiting dignitaries (Huang and Zhen 2016). Despite Norwegian protests that its government had no influence over the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Norway’s market share of fresh salmon sold to China dropped from 90% before 2010 to 30% by mid-2014 (Huang and Zhen 2016). While it worked to normalize diplomatic and trade relations with China (achieved gradually in 2015–2017), Norway also sought to expand its USD 18  million seafood trade with Indonesia, organizing an annual Norwegian Seafood Extravaganza at its Jakarta embassy attended in 2016 by, among others, the Minister of Environment and Forestry, Siti Nurbaya (Monteiro 2016). The Jokowi government’s presentation of the disbanding of the National REDD+ Agency in early 2015 as a minor administrative change thus did not provoke a substantive Norwegian response, although concerns may have been privately expressed by then-Prime Minister Erna Solberg during her April 2015 state visit to Jakarta and Sumatra. During this visit, Norwegian journalists accompanying Solberg reflected that she had inherited REDD+ from her predecessor, Jens Stoltenberg and his Minister of Environment, Eric Solheim,8 and that her short trip covered a broad agenda, including the promotion of Norwegian business, countering Islamic extremism, and Indonesia’s use of the death penalty (Widerøe et al. 2017).

The old men want to take back control: re-emergence of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry The establishment of the National REDD+ Agency had been seen by many as a hopeful sign of the Indonesian presidency’s commitment to addressing deforestation and related carbon emissions, and, as noted before, its closure immediately

76  Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual? led to concerns (Harfenist 2015). The outgoing chair of the agency, Heru Prasetyo, noted that: “[Domestically], the merger will significantly slow things down. Internationally, questions will be raised as to Indonesia’s commitment to emissions reduction” (Harfenist 2015). Indeed, the Norwegian International Climate and Forest Initiatives’ third independent review of the Norway–Indonesia Partnership (to which I was a contributing author) noted that the agency was working very effectively to develop Indonesia’s capacity to deliver proven GHG emission reductions from the forest and peatland sector in line with the LoI. This came to an abrupt halt in early 2015 with the closure of BP REDD+. (Caldecott et al. 2018, p. 3) The incoming Minister of Environment and Forestry, Siti Nurbaya, recognized in remarks in June 2015 that the transition from the National REDD+ Agency to the ministry’s new Climate Change Oversight Directorate General had not been easy: “I think the transition period of the last six months has been quite heavy” (Saturi 2015).9 In practical terms, the agency’s 2015 closure led to three sudden changes in the administration of REDD+ at national level: (i) it reduced the number of individuals rolling out REDD+ activities, from around 80 to fewer than 10 individuals (Infield interviews 2017); (ii) it narrowed the profile of those working on REDD+ implementation so that civil servants were now solely involved as opposed to a mix of individuals from government, civil society, and the private sector (In-field interviews 2017); and (iii) it demoted REDD+ as a policy area, given that the responsibility for the scheme now resided at the Echelon 3 level of government, in a sub-directorate under the Directorate for Climate Change Mitigation, whereas previously the agency had reported directly to the president of the republic (Infield interviews 2017). President Jokowi’s decision in late 2014 to merge the previously separate ministries of environment and forestry into one super-ministry under the leadership of Siti Nurbaya also took many observers by surprise and gave rise to different interpretations (Murdiyarso 2014, Widiaryanto 2015a, b). These interpretations can broadly be divided into two main narratives, upon which my Jakarta- and Bogor-based interviewees frequently reflected (In-field interviews 2017). The first narrative was that SBY’s administration had made a mistake in establishing a new agency to manage REDD+, that this agency was always intended to be temporary, and that its operation was bound to create conflict with the mainstream state forest bureaucracy who rightly questioned its legitimacy and authority. One interviewee noted: “It was always going to be a transitional agency, but they were trying to override the permanent ministry!” (In-field interviews 2017). In other words, it was inevitable that the newly merged MoEF would take over responsibility for REDD+ and that this was nothing more than a rational bureaucratization of the Indonesian state’s oversight of REDD+ that was intended to make the initiative even more effective.

Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual?  77 The second narrative was that the wresting of control of REDD+ by the state forest bureaucracy was part of a reassertion of its power and authority over environmental and forest policies, linked to oligarchic (and pro-deforestation) political and business interests. As one interviewee in Jakarta ominously suggested: “The old men want to take back control” (In-field interview 2017). In other words, in order to solidify his present political position, Jokowi had had to placate the powerful forest bureaucracy, its related business lobbies, and powerbrokers in his own party, sacrificing REDD+ implementation in the process. This return to business-as-usual narrative was fuelled by the placement within the new MoEF of prominent figures from the old Ministry of Forestry, as well as a realization that the deforestation rate had actually been increasing in the years since the introduction of REDD+ (Saturi 2015, Enrici and Hubacek 2016). It is, however, notable that the first of the aforementioned narratives tended to be discussed by interviewees with ongoing relationships with the MoEF, while the second tended to be referred to by those who may have lost out via closure of the National REDD+ Agency (In-field interviews 2017). Both narratives must therefore be treated with caution. Indeed, we must ask whether it is plausible that the leadership of such a powerful body as the Ministry of Forestry felt threatened by a temporary institution such as the National REDD+ Agency. What did the MoEF gain from the closure of the National REDD+ Agency? And were there notable changes in its implementation following the insertion of REDD+ into the formal forest bureaucracy? First, in terms of whether the leadership of the Ministry of Forestry (MoF) might have felt threatened by the National REDD+ Agency, it is true that the latter gained a notable array of powers at the expense of the former and that the MoF was being pressured to improve forest governance across many dimensions (Wibowo and Giessen 2015). At the same time, the MoF’s budget doubled from 2009 to 2012, from IDR 2.8 billion to IDR 5.7 billion, while its staff grew from 14,234 to 17,521 during the same period (Wibowo and Giessen 2015). These observations have led Wibowo and Giessen (2015) to conclude that although the MoF did indeed temporarily lose certain powers to the National REDD+ Agency, it actually maintained and even increased its powers overall during this period. It is therefore likely that the leadership of the MoF viewed the National REDD+ Agency mainly as a disruptive irritation rather than as an existential threat. Second, what of the gains made by the MoEF following closure of the National REDD+ Agency? Jokowi’s decision to disband the agency meant that its tasks were reassigned to the newly formed MoEF, implying that the MoEF’s powers in 2015 were greater than those of the MoF in 2014 (Wibowo and Giessen 2015). Again, Wibowo and Giessen (2015, p. 139) have concluded that: “there is currently no significant bureaucratic counterforce that could stop forest policies endorsed by the MoEF.” But what of any changes to REDD+ implementation applied since the changeover in responsibility for the scheme from the agency to the ministry? As noted earlier, REDD+ has been deprioritized since 2015, as indicated by the reduction in the number of individuals working on the scheme at national level and their relatively low placement in the hierarchy of the state forest bureaucracy.

78  Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual? As one interviewee in Jakarta put it: “People are not really talking about REDD+ much at the national level, it has been overtaken by other events and issues” (Infield interviews 2017). And it is to these other forest policy-related events and issues at the national level—that emerged in parallel to the REDD+ pilots—that I now turn to in the next section of this chapter.

The REDD+ pinball effect: Customary and Social Forestry, One Map One Data, and the Forest Moratorium Was the National REDD+ Agency a sacrificial lamb in Jokowi’s bid to quell dissent from critics immediately following his 2014 election, or was the insertion of REDD+ into the new MoEF merely a rational bureaucratization of REDD+ as a state-led forest policy? Both narratives might simultaneously hold elements of truth. That REDD+ was deprioritized by Jokowi’s administration in 2015 compared to its high profile under SBY’s administration is, however, incontrovertible (In-field interviews 2017, Wibowo and Giessen 2015). At the same time, although REDD+ activities at the national level slowed from 2015, many Jakarta- and Bogor-based interviewees across several stakeholder categories considered that the initial push for reform initiated by the National REDD+ Agency continued via a raft of other national forest-related initiatives. These initiatives were the Customary Forestry and Social Forestry initiatives, the One Map One Data policy, and the Forest Moratorium (In-field interviews 2017). According to one interviewee: “The questions posed by REDD+ triggered changes in other policy areas like a pinball game. People started to challenge policies” (In-field interview 2017). Given the importance assigned to these initiatives in terms of continuing the reform agenda begun by the National REDD+ Agency, their salience to issues highlighted at the REDD+ pilot sites in Central Sulawesi, and their potentially significant effects on national deforestation levels, this section further discusses each in turn. First, we turn to the Customary Forestry initiative. In early 2017, President Jokowi formally gave the ownership of around 13,000 ha of forestland to nine indigenous communities across Indonesia in recognition of their longstanding stewardship of these forests (Mulyana 2017). This decision is informally known as Jokowi’s Customary Forestry initiative (In field interviews 2017) and has been hailed by some analysts as heralding a major shift in the role of the government. According to this view, the state is becoming a facilitator and regulator in assisting and empowering customary institutions in managing their forests (Mulyana 2017). Others have, however, been critical of Jokowi’s overall progress on his 2014 electoral commitments to improving the recognition of customary forest rights, including AMAN, Indonesia’s largest Indigenous Peoples organization, which refused to endorse Jokowi for re-election in 2019 because of this (Gindroz 2019). As noted in Chapter 2, the complexities of the tenure status of the various categories of forestland across Indonesia have been linked to conflicts and contentions over many decades (Myers et al. 2017). With the advent of REDD+, at least some members of the National REDD+ Agency recognized that this latticework of overlapping

Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual?  79 forest tenure claims and interests would have to be addressed for the scheme to be successful—as one interviewee noted: “The forests were not like blank paper” (In-field interviews 2017). Around the time that the National REDD+ Agency was beginning its work, three landmark rulings from the Constitutional Court challenged some of the provisions contained within the 1999 Forestry Law: (i) decision MK34/PUU-IX/2011 clarified that the rights of all communities must be respected and protected in the implementation of the State’s control over State Forests; (ii) decision MK35/PUU-X/2012 recognized Customary Forests (hutan adat) as a new type of Titled Forests (hutan hak), which implied that Customary Forests were outside State Forests; and decision MK45/PUU-IX/2011 changed the meaning of State Forest Zone (kawasan hutan) to only include areas that had been vetted through a gazettement process (Myers et al. 2017). This meant that a formal process of determining forest boundaries, including consultation of customary and local forest users, would have to be undertaken before forestland could be placed under the control of the MoEF and, indeed, before it, the Ministry of Forestry (Myers et al. 2017). Although not new laws, these three Constitutional Court rulings clarified the existing forest tenure rules and provided the broader context within which the ground-truthing process begun by the National REDD+ Agency occurred (Myers et al. 2017). This ground-truthing process sought to consider, via the principles of FPIC, how potential pilot areas for REDD+ would be affected in terms of land tenure, with existing forest demarcation lines to be modified with local communities (In-field interviews 2017). Major points of contention in this work across Indonesia were, however, the estimated 7.3 million ha of customary territory, most of which overlapped with State Forests, and that by the time REDD+ activities began in 2010, only around 10% of forestland, or 13.8 million ha, had formally been gazetted (Myers et al. 2017). From 2011 to 2014, roughly during the time that the National REDD+ Agency was most active and mostly before the formation of the MoEF, the Ministry of Forestry undertook a major effort to increase the total area of formally demarked forest (Myers et al. 2017). Indeed, by the close of 2014, the MoEF had gazetted 76.5 million ha of State Forest, around 63% of the total State Forest area of 121 million ha (Myers et al. 2017). But, as referred to in the previous section of this chapter, the process of gazetting State Forests undertaken by the Ministry of Forestry and later by the MoEF, and which occurred in parallel to the ground-truthing work of the National REDD+ Agency, is the subject of multiple reports of poor implementation and bureaucratic violence (In-field interviews 2017, Myers et al. 2017). Myers et al. (2017, p. 8), for example, state from an interview with an MoEF official about the gazettement process that community consultations were bypassed altogether, and forests were being gazetted only based on digital maps with local ground-truthing based on the advice of local forest authorities only. Recognizing the sensitivities surrounding this approach, the official referred to this as a “time bomb waiting to go off.”

80  Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual? A former civil society member of the National REDD+ Agency told me too that: There were supposed to be four steps to formally gazetting forests: appointment, designation, demarcation, and gazettement. Only 12% of forests had been gazetted formally, so many forests had to be gazetted. But this was a horrible process. The biggest mistakes in the process were in the dialogue with communities on the part of the government. (In-field interviews 2017) As I will discuss in Chapter 4, mistakes in the forest demarcation process at the Talaga REDD+ pilot site in Central Sulawesi were a trigger for the rejection of that pilot by the local community. Second, I turn to the Social Forestry initiative. In 2014, Jokowi’s administration declared a 2019 goal of giving forest-dependent communities across the Indonesian archipelago access to (as opposed to ownership of) 12.7 million ha of forests through Social Forestry permits (Shahab 2018). Activities intending to achieve this goal have become known informally as the Social Forestry initiative (In-field interviews 2017). The initiative covers five different forest types, namely Community Forests, Community Plantations, Village Forests, Partnership Forests, and Customary Forests (Shahab 2018) and to some extent builds on earlier forest access commitments under SBY’s administration (Myers et al. 2017). It has, however, been criticized both for failing to resolve customary claims to ownership of forestland and for the slow progress of implementation (Myers et  al. 2017). As of 20th July 2018, the MoEF had distributed permits for 1.75 million ha with participation from around 395,000 households, around 15% of the overall target to be completed by 2019 (Shahab 2018). But a recent study of the initiatives’ progress by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) shows that even those households and communities who have received Social Forestry permits are not reaping the expected benefits in economic and livelihood terms (Shahab 2018). According to Myers et al. (2017), the initiative is a flawed attempt by the state forest administration to demonstrate commitment to the empowerment of forest-dependent peoples because it fails to address the fundamental question of land ownership. By transferring only user rights that are conditional on approved plans and monitoring by district and provincial-level forest authorities, communities participating in the Social Forestry scheme legitimize the state’s control over forestland, while potentially making any future claims to Customary Forests (hutan adat) more complicated. Civil society interviewees I spoke with in Central Sulawesi were aware of the distinctions between the Social Forestry and Customary Forestry initiatives and were notably more positive about both Customary Forestry and the TORA agrarian reform initiative, which intends to grant farmers title deeds to around 90,000 km2 of land across Indonesia (In-field interviews 2017). It is worth noting, however, that the TORA initiative has recently been accused by Greenpeace Indonesia of being a vehicle for large-scale plantation development that could speed-up deforestation (Rompas 2018). Referring to Jokowi’s 2018 decision to place a moratorium on new palm oil concessions within

Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual?  81 the forest estate (discussed later in the chapter), Greenpeace argues that this conflicts with the Indonesian government’s stated commitment to planned deforestation and that, via TORA, it continues to allocate new areas of land for plantation development (Greenpeace 2018). Third is the One Map One Data initiative. The idea of having one standardized map for the whole of Indonesia was discussed at a cabinet meeting on 23rd December 2010, when the UKP4 presidential advisory unit showed SBY the differences between maps produced by the then separate ministries of environment and of forestry (Wibowo and Giessen 2015). The Letter of Intent with Norway (2010) called for a map to keep track of the commitment to implement a moratorium on forest- and peat-land conversion, and so discussions were held between UKP4 and officials in the ministries to define authorities for various thematic maps, as well as to plan a technical standard for these maps for joint reference purposes which was then to be listed in the Indonesian National Standard Directory (Wibowo and Giessen 2015). The resulting One Map One Data policy (sometimes referred to as an initiative) is a coordinated and integrated mapping project involving 12 working groups from 18 ministries and agencies, covering themes as diverse as watershed management, space management, land conditions, forest cover, climate change risks, ecoregions, disasters, transportation, national defence and intelligence, cultural heritage, and economics (Wibowo and Giessen 2015). Based on the Agreement Document of the National Coordination Meeting on Geospatial Information 2013, the various ministries and agencies involved set aside around USD 70 million in 2014 alone for the initiative, with the then Ministry of Forestry contributing the largest single budget figure (Wibowo and Giessen 2015). By December 2018, the One Map Policy Geoportal website had been prepared, including 83 thematic maps, and was launched by President Jokowi, who noted at the time that: “There is too much overlap in land use planning” (Mufti 2018).10 The claim regularly made of the One Map One Data initiative is that it will reduce land use conflicts, including in relation to forestland, by providing timely and accessible information on overlapping land uses that can subsequently be used for planning purposes (Wibowo and Giessen 2015). Yet, while the initiative has been welcomed for potentially increasing the availability of data on national land uses, it has also been criticized for not including, at least initially, maps of customary territories, even though such territories are a frequent feature of Indonesian land use conflicts (Jong 2018a). For at least some indigenous rights activists, the fact that maps of customary territories will only be included in the initiative after local governments have formally recognized them is a cause for concern, given that this will require the passage of bylaws in hundreds of local jurisdictions across the archipelago (Jong 2018a). And, finally comes the Forest Moratorium. A key provision of the 2010 Letter of Intent was that the Indonesian government should commit to a 2-year suspension of all new concessions for conversion of peat and natural forest (Letter of Intent 2010). Thus, in 2011, SBY’s administration introduced a moratorium, prohibiting the conversion of primary natural forests and peatlands for palm oil, pulpwood, and logging concessions (Jong 2019a). Although initially intended to run for only 2 years, the

82  Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual? moratorium was extended three times during 2011–2017, and, in June 2019, the Minister of Environment and Forestry, Siti Nurbaya, announced that it would be made permanent, pending presidential approval (Jong 2019a). This announcement was welcomed by at least some environmental activists as possibly assuring the permanent conservation of around 660,000 km2 of primary and peat forests included in the scheme (Jong 2019a). However, the enforcement of the moratorium has been inconsistent since 2011, particularly in its early years. Groom et al. (2022) find that between 2011 and 2018, the moratorium was largely ineffective, managing to prevent just 150,089 ha of deforestation in dryland areas, compared to dryland forest outside the eligible area. The same study notes that avoided deforestation in peatlands during the same period was effectively null. Some analysts note that the moratorium has been undermined by continued clearance of land by companies under existing permits (Jong 2019a). Particularly fierce forest fires in the 2015 season eventually led Jokowi’s administration to introduce an additional 2016 nationwide ban on clearing carbon-rich deep peatlands (Jong 2019a). And, since 2018, the moratorium has been extended for 3 years to cover new palm oil concessions in forest estate lands controlled from Jakarta (Greenpeace 2018). However, critics point to significant loopholes in this new provision, including that it does not cover forests managed by local governments (Greenpeace 2018). In sum, the aforementioned forest-related initiatives were noted during interviews in Jakarta and Bogor as policies and actions on the part of the Indonesian government to have been kick-started by REDD+ (In-field interviews 2017). Some of these initiatives (One Map One Data and the Forest Moratorium) were directly derived from provisions found in the 2010 Letter of Intent with Norway, while others (Customary Forests and Social Forestry) were argued to have emerged in response to the land use conflicts the National REDD+ Agency was unable to resolve during the years of its operation (Infield interviews 2017). As with REDD+ itself, and as discussed earlier, these spin-off initiatives are not without their controversies in terms of their motivations, as well as their overall effectiveness. In order to place both REDD+ and these related initiatives in a broader context, the final section of this chapter considers the latest national forest loss and forest carbon emissions data and the decision by the government of Norway in early 2019 to begin paying for Indonesian REDD+ results.

People need good stories: forest loss data and the first REDD+ payment for results The million-dollar question with regard to the effectiveness of Indonesia’s national forest policies since the introduction of REDD+ in 2010 is, of course, whether its rate of forest loss (and related carbon emissions) increased, was arrested, or declined. If forest loss were to have remained the same or to have increased since the introduction of REDD+, this would lend credence to the narrative that its implementation under the MoEF has been ineffective and that the initiative has been undermined by business-as-usual, pro-deforestation lobbies. If, on the other

Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual?  83 hand, forest losses and related emissions were significantly reduced, this would give support to the narrative that its incorporation into the MoEF’s portfolio was an effective rationalization of a major state-led forest policy. The answer to the question of what happened to Indonesia’s rate of forest loss and related carbon emissions since 2010 is not straightforward. Almost a decade after the signature of the Letter of Intent, the Indonesian Minister of Environment and Forestry, Siti Nurbaya, and the then Norwegian Minister of Environment, Ola Elvestuen, announced in Jakarta in February  2019 that Norway would pay Indonesia the first instalment under the deal (Jong 2019b). The decision to pay was determined by Indonesia’s reported prevention of the emission of millions of tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2 e) through reducing deforestation in 2017 (Jong 2019b). As shown in Figure 3.2, data from the Global Forest Watch project at the University of Maryland and the World Resources Institute indicates that there was indeed a drop in primary forest loss in Indonesia nationally from 2017. It is important to bear in mind, however, that this followed all-time record losses in primary forests in the years immediately following the signature of the Letter of Intent: in 2012, 2014, and again in 2016. Indonesia’s total land-use carbon emissions roughly trebled after 2010 to a peak of three billion tons with the fires in 2015/2016 and net deforestation at over a million ha, then stabilized at about half the peak level while deforestation declined from about 0.6 to 0.5 million ha annually (Caldecott et al. 2018). These figures were taken by the Norwegian government to mean that the conditions for the first payment for results under the 2010 Letter of Intent deal were fulfilled, pending independent verification (Seymour 2019). There are two main reasons, however, to query the calculation of deforestation-related carbon emissions and their relationship with the implementation of REDD+. First, the calculations did not include Indonesia’s massive CO2 emissions from peat-soil decomposition and burning, which are typically related to forestland clearance (Usher 2019). According to Arief Wijaya of World Resources Institute Indonesia, both Norway and Indonesia decided not to include these sources of emissions in the results-based payment protocol for REDD+ (Usher 2019). This means that the resulting figures were likely an underestimation of

Figure 3.2  Primary Forest Loss in Indonesia, 2002–2021 Source: Global Forest Watch

84  Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual? Indonesia’s overall forest-related carbon emissions (Usher 2019). Second, even if one accepts that it makes sense to leave out CO2 emissions from peat-soil decomposition and burning, specifying the unique contribution of REDD+ to the post2017 deforestation level reductions is difficult. Setiawan and Tomsa (2022) note that Indonesia’s recent record on environmental protection should be judged on the basis both of its government’s actions and other developments outside the government’s direct control. Crucially, wet weather due to the La Niña climate pattern and reduced global demand for timber and palm oil must be factored-in to any serious assessment of its environmental policies (Setiawan and Tomsa 2022). Even proponents of REDD+ recognize that several factors are behind the headline data, including weather conditions that reduced the risk of a repeat of 2015’s forest fires and low prices dampening incentives to expand palm oil (Seymour 2019, Caldecott et al. 2018).11 One of my Jakarta interviewees simply stated: People need good stories: best practices or success stories on the ground, they need to see that something can be a success. And there are really no such stories that people can build on and say: “Look, this is REDD+.” (In-field interviews 2017) A comparison of Global Forest Watch’s satellite images of forest cover loss across Indonesia from 2001 to 2021, as shown in Figure 3.3, allows us to appreciate the

Figure 3.3 Forest Cover Loss in Indonesia for 2001–2010 (A) and 2001–2021 (B) Darker shading indicates forest loss Source: Global Forest Watch

Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual?  85 vast cumulative scale of the country’s lost forest cover during a decade of REDD+ implementation, particularly (though not exclusively) on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo. In conclusion, this chapter shows how national, historically embedded, political contestations around economic development, land use change, and deforestation not only modified REDD+ implementation in Indonesia but also undermined the achievement of its objectives. Writing in November 2019, the Editorial Board of the East Asia Forum based at the Australian National University characterized Jokowi’s first presidential term as obsessed with “economic growth and modernization, politically risk averse, and disdainful of the liberal good governance agendas advocated by civil society and foreign investors” (Editorial Board EAF 2019).12 They also referred to prominent Indonesian academic Burhanuddin Muhtadi’s remarks that the “entrenched oligarchic forces that have defined Indonesian politics since the New Order era have certainly exploited Jokowi’s indifference towards democratic reform” (Muhtadi 2019). Taking into account the range of data reviewed for this chapter—including that on the disbanding of the National REDD+ Agency, the emergence of several controversial spin-off forest initiatives, and the vast scale of forest cover lost nationally during the period of REDD+ implementation (albeit with reductions in the annual rate of primary forest loss post-2017)—the most parsimonious answer to the question posed in the chapter’s title is that REDD+ was deprioritized in 2015 because it irritated pro-land conversion interests. Given that, in contemporary Indonesia, oligarchic groups “not only have total control over the political parties but are also part of an elite economic class that controls the material resources steering the course of Indonesian politics”, it is unsurprising that a multi-stakeholder-led forest conservation-enclosure intervention, funded from abroad and with significant involvement from civil society, would eventually fall foul of Indonesia’s extractive political-economy (Muhtadi 2019).13 When viewed in light of the evidence for historical and continued contemporary dominance of oligarchic interests in Indonesia’s forest sector14 (see Setiawan and Tomsa 2022, Muhtadi 2019, Hansen et  al. 2009, Casson and Obidzinski 2007, Tacconi et  al. 2007, Fay and Michon 2005, Wibowo and Giessen 2015, Aspinall and van Klinken 2010), the difficulties the National REDD+ Agency encountered in establishing its demonstration activities and pilots, and the possible undermining of these activities through the Ministry of Forestry’s demarcation work, lend credence to the narrative that REDD+ was deprioritized in order to allow business-as-usual. In order to sweeten the pill of this change towards both concerned domestic and foreign forest policy observers and constituents, several other forest initiatives were instigated in the wake of REDD+. All have, however, been criticized for failing to address the core question of the resolution of forestland tenure or for their significant loopholes allowing continued forest exploitation. Understanding these events in light of Norway’s multiple foreign policy objectives in Indonesia during the 2010s allows us to appreciate why there was no substantive response to the reorganization of REDD+ in 2015. But if these are the answers that emerge from my interviews in Jakarta, Bogor, and Oslo, how

86  Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual? is REDD+ viewed at actual pilot sites? In the next chapter, I turn away from the national level to analyse the encounters of two REDD+ pilots with realities in Central Sulawesi.

Notes 1 See www.dagsavisen.no/debatt/2018/12/30/equinors-klimamaskerade/. 2 See https://news.mongabay.com/2010/12/borneo-province-selected-for-indonesias-firstpilot-under-redd-program/. 3 Institutionalized corruption has been a well-known feature of state governance in Indonesia and applies not only to the forest and land sectors. Suhardiman and Mollinga (2017) provide, for example, an analysis of corruption in Indonesia’s upeti water irrigation system. 4 McCarthy (2002) argues that illegal logging under President Suharto was driven by a ‘devil’s circle’ of private and public actors. 5 See www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/01/31/merging-redd-ministry-should-be-moreeffective.html. 6 See https://jakartaglobe.id/news/jokowi-folds-emissions-agency-bp-redd-forestry-ministry/. 7 See https://thediplomat.com/2015/02/is-indonesian-forestry-reform-in-peril-under-jokowi/. 8 Solheim later became Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) from 2016 to 2018. UNEP is a collaborating partner of the UN-REDD Programme under whose auspices the Central Sulawesi pilots were conducted. 9 See www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/merging-of-indonesia-s-forestry-and-environment-ministries-continues-with-inauguration-event/. 10 See www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/12/11/indonesia-launches-one-map-policy-toresolve-land-conflicts.html. 11 Indonesian deforestation is linked to El Niño climate events, with local deforestation also impacting localized climates. El Niño is the warm phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific. Studying the relationships between deforestation and El Niño events on Borneo from 1980 to 2016, Chapman et al. (2020) find that deforestation resulted in a warmer and drier climate, with these impacts more pronounced under El Niño than neutral (non-El Niño/La Niña) conditions. The last strong El Niño years were 2015–2016, coinciding with severe droughts and fires in Indonesia. 12 See www.eastasiaforum.org/2019/11/18/the-real-jokowi-is-no-corruption-buster/. 13 See www.eastasiaforum.org/2019/11/17/jokowis-choice-between-political-cartels-andthe-public-interest/. 14 Several cases in Papua and Borneo have recently been explored by investigative journalists as part of The Gecko Project, see https://thegeckoproject.org/.

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Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual?  87 Casson, A. and K. Obidzinski. 2007. “From New Order to Regional Autonomy: Shifting Dynamics of Illegal Logging in Kalimantan, Indonesia.” Illegal Logging: Law Enforcement, Livelihoods and the Timber Trade. pp. 43–68. Chan, F. 2013. “A Cloud Over Economic Growth Prospects.” The Straits Times. Available at: https://wildsingaporenews.blogspot.com/2013/06/singapore-blue-skies-for-now-hazeset.html?m=1 Chapman, S., J. Syktus, R. Trancoso, A. Salazar, M. Thatcher, J.E.M. Watson, E. Maijaard, D. Sheil, P. Dargusch, and C.A. McAlpine. 2020. “Compounding Impact of Deforestation on Borneo’s Climate during El Niño Events.” Environmental Research Letters. Vol. 15, p. 084006. Dermawan, A., E. Petkova, A. Sinaga, M. Muhajir, and Y. Indriatmoko. 2011. Preventing the Risks of Corruption in REDD+ in Indonesia (Vol. 80). CIFOR: Bogor. Editorial Board EAF. 2019. The ‘Real Jokowi’ is No Corruption-Buster. East Asia Forum. Australian National University: Canberra. Edwards, S.A. and F. Heiduk. 2015. “Hazy Days: Forest Fires and the Politics of Environmental Security in Indonesia.” Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs. Vol. 34. Issue 3. pp. 65–94. Enrici, A. and K. Hubacek. 2016. “Business as Usual in Indonesia: Governance Factors Effecting the Acceleration of the Deforestation Rate after the Introduction of REDD+.” Energy, Ecology and Environment. Vol. 1. Issue. 4. pp. 183–196. FAO. 2010. National Net Emissions Removals from Net Forest Conversion. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: Rome. Fay, C. and Michon, G. 2005. “Redressing Forestry Hegemony when a Forestry Regulatory Framework is Best Replaced by an Agrarian One.” Forests, Trees, Livelihoods. Vol. 15. Issue 2. pp. 193–209. Forest Peoples Programme. 2011. Central Kalimantan: REDD+ and Kalimantan Forest Caron Partnership (KFCP). (Rights, Forests and Climate Briefing Series) Moreton-in-Marsh. Frankenberg, E., D. McKee, and D. Thomas. 2005. “Health Consequences of Forest Fires in Indonesia.” Demography. Vol. 42. Issue 1. pp. 109–129. Gindroz, A.S. 2019. “Progress “Too Slow, too Small”: Why Indonesia’s Largest Indigenous Group Will Not Endorse Jokowi for Re-Election.” Rights and Resources Initiative. Available at: https://rightsandresources.org/blog/progress-too-slow-too-small Gokken, B. and A.A. Putri. 2015. “Jokowi Folds Emissions Agency BP REDD+ into Forestry Ministry.” Jakarta Globe. Available at: https://jakartaglobe.id/jokowifolds-emissions-agency-bp-redd-forestry-ministry/ Government of Indonesia. 2011.  Article 5: The REDD+ Agency Task Force Membership Structure. Available at: http://sipuu.setkab.go.id/PUUdoc/17271/Keppres0252011.pdf. Greenpeace. 2018. “Time For a Ban on Deforestation for Palm Oil, Not a Moratorium, Says Greenpeace.” Press Release. Groom, B., C. Palmer, and L. Sileci. 2022. “Carbon Emissions Reductions from Indonesia’s Moratorium on Forest Concessions are Cost-Effective Yet Contribute Little to Paris Pledges.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the Unites States of America. Vol. 119. Issue 5. Hansen, M.C., S.V. Stehman, P.V. Potapov, B. Arunarwati, F. Stolle, and K. Pittman. 2009. “Quantifying Changes in the Rates of Forest Clearing in Indonesia from 1990 to 2005 using Remotely Sensed Data Sets.” Environmental Resources Letters. Vol. 5. Issue 3. Harfenist, E. 2015. “Is Indonesian Forestry Reform in Peril Under Jokowi? The Disbanding of a Key Agency Could Threaten Conservation Efforts.” The Diplomat. Hein, J. 2019. Political Ecology of REDD+ in Indonesia: Agrarian Conflicts and Forest Carbon. Routledge: London.

88  Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual? Horstmann, B. and J. Hein. 2017. Aligning Climate Change Mitigation and Sustainable Development Under the UNFCCC: A Critical Assessment of the Clean Development Mechanism, the Green Climate Fund and REDD. Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik: Bonn. Howell, S. and E. Bastiensen. 2015. REDD+ in Indonesia 2010–2015: Report of a Collaborative Anthropological Research Programme. University of Oslo: Oslo. Huang, K. and L. Zhen. 2016. “Let’s Put Nobel Spat Behind Us: A Look Back at China and Norway’s Ties.” South China Morning Post. Available at: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/ diplomacy-defence/article/2055980/lets-put-nobel-spat-behind-us-look-back-china-and Indonesian REDD+ Taskforce. 2012. REDD+ National Strategy. Indonesian REDD+ Taskforce: Jakarta. Jong, H.N. 2015. “BP REDD+ Officially Disbanded.” The Jakarta Post. Available at: https:// www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/01/29/bp-redd-officially-disbanded.html Jong, H.N. 2018a. “Indonesia’s One Map Database Blasted for Excluding Indigenous Lands.” Mongabay. Available at: https://news.mongabay.com/2018/08/indonesiasone-map-database-blasted-for-excluding-indigenous-lands/ Jong, H.N. 2019a. “Indonesian Ban on Clearing New Swaths of Forest to be Made Permanent.” Mongabay. Available at: https://news.mongabay.com/2019/06/indonesianban-on-clearing-new-swaths-of-forest-to-be-made-permanent/ Jong, H.N. 2019b. “Indonesia to Get First Payment from Norway Under $1b REDD+ Scheme.” Mongabay. Available at: https://news.mongabay.com/2019/02/indonesiato-get-first-payment-from-norway-under-1b-redd-scheme/ Lang, C. 2011. “President Yudhoyono Promises to Dedicate the Next Three Years to Protecting Indonesia’s Forests.” The REDD Monitor. Available at: https://redd-monitor. org/2011/09/28/president-yudhoyono-promises-to-dedicate-the-next-three-years-toprotecting-indonesias-forests/ Letter of Intent. 2010. Letter of Intent between the Government of the Kingdom of Norway and the Government of the Republic of Indonesia on Cooperation on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. Government of the Kingdom of Norway and Government of the Republic of Indonesia: Oslo and Jakarta. Luttrell, C., K. Obidzinski, M. Brockhaus, E. Muharrom, E. Petkova, A. Wardell, and J. Halperin, 2011. Lessons for REDD+ from Measures to Control Illegal Logging in Indonesia. CIFOR: Bogor. Mardiastuti, A. 2012. The Role of UN-REDD in the Development of REDD+ in Indonesia: Volume 1 Main Report. FAO. UNDP. UNEP: Rome. McCarthy, J.F. 2002. “Power and Interest on Sumatra’s Rainforest Frontier: Clientelist Coalitions, Illegal Logging and Conservation in the Alas Valley.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 33. Issue 1. pp. 77–106. Monteiro, C. 2016. “Norway Seeks More Salmon Exports to Indonesia.” The Jakarta Post. Available at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/12/05/norway-seeks-moresalmon-exports-ri.html Mufti, R.R. 2018. “Indonesia Launches One Map Policy to Resolve Land Conflicts.” The Jakarta Post. Available at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/12/11/indonesialaunches-one-map-policy-to-resolve-land-conflicts.html Muhtadi, B. 2019. “Jokowi’s Choice between Political Cartels and the Public Interest.” East Asia Forum. Australian National University: Canberra. Mulyana, A. 2017. What’s Next for Customary Forests in Indonesia? Center for International Forestry Research: Bogor. Murdiyarso, D. 2014. “Indonesia’s Merger of Environment and Forest Ministries a Bold and Difficult Move.” The Jakarta Post. Available at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/ news/2014/11/07/insight-merging-environment-and-forestry-ministries-quo-vadis.html

Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual?  89 Myers, R., D. Intarini, M.T. Sirait, and A. Maryudi. 2017. “Claiming the Forest: Inclusions and Exclusions Under Indonesia’s ‘New’ Forest Policies on Customary Forests.” Land Use Policy. Vol. 22. pp. 205–213. Norwegian International Climate and Forest Initiative. 2018. Climate and Forest Support Scheme Grants Database. Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation: Oslo. Available at: www.norad.no/en/front/funding/climate-and-forest-initiative-support-scheme/ grants-2013-2015/projects/#&sort=date Ogle, L. and C. Yong. 2013. What Does It Take to Make Local Consultation a Success? (Input Paper III—Asia Pacific Region). German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, UN-REDD Programme: Geneva. Reuters. 2009. “Indonesia CO2 Pledge to Help Climate Talks.” Reuters. Available at: https:// www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-talks-indonesia-idUSTRE58S1CR20090929 Rompas, A. 2018. Upaya Pemerintah Menurunkan Ketimpangan Penguasaan Hutan Belum Sepenuhnya Memihak Masyarakat. Greenpeace Indonesia: Jakarta. Saturi, S. 2015. “Merging of Indonesia’s Forestry and Environment Ministries Continues with Inauguration Event.” Ecosystem Marketplace. Available at: www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/merging-of-indonesia-s-forestry-and-environment-ministries-continues-with-inauguration-event/ Setiawan, K.M.P. and D. Tomsa. 2022. Politics in Contemporary Indonesia: Institutional Change, Policy Challenges and Democratic Decline. Routledge: London. Seymour, F. 2019. Indonesia Reduced Deforestation. Norway Pays Up. World Resources Institute: Washington, DC. Seymour, F., N. Birdsall, and W. Savedoff. 2015. The Indonesia-Norway REDD+ Agreement: A Glass Half-Full. CGD Climate and Forest Paper Series No. 20. Center for Global Development: Washington, DC. Shahab, N. 2018. Taking Stock of Indonesia’s Social Forestry Programme. Center for International Forestry Research: Bogor. Suhardiman, D. and P.P. Mollinga. 2017. “Institutionalized Corruption in Indonesian Irrigation: An Analysis of the Upeti System.” Development Policy Review. Vol. 35. pp. O140-O159. Svarstad, H. and T. Benjaminsen. 2018. “Equinor’s Klimamaskerade.” Dagsavisen. Oslo. Available at: https://www.dagsavisen.no/debatt/2018/12/30/equinors-klimamaskerade/ Tacconi, L., P.F. Moore, and D. Kaimowitz. 2007. “Fires in Tropical Forests—What is Really the Problem? Lessons from Indonesia.” Global Change. Vol. 12. Issue 1. pp. 55–66. UNFCCC. 2010. Decision 1—COP 16: The Cancun Agreements: Outcome of the Work of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action under the Convention. United Nations: Bonn. UNFCCC. 2013a. Decision 9—COP 19: Work Programme on Results-Based Finance to Progress the Full Implementation of the Activities Referred to in Decision 1/CP.16. United Nations: Bonn. UNFCCC. 2013b. Decision 10—COP 19: Coordination of Support for the Implementation of Activities in Relation to Mitigation Actions in the Forest Sector by Developing Countries, Including Institutional Arrangements. United Nations: Bonn. UNFCCC. 2013c. Decision 11—COP 19: Modalities for National Forest Monitoring Systems. United Nations: Bonn. UNFCCC. 2013d. Decision 13—COP 19: Guidelines and Procedures for the Technical Assessment of Submissions from Parties on Proposed Forest Reference Emission Levels and/or Forest Reference Levels. United Nations: Bonn. Usher, A. 2019. “Norway Rewards Indonesia by Leaving Out Peat burning from Carbon Accounting.” Development Today. Oslo. Available at: https://www.development-today.

90  Bureaucratic institutionalization or business-as-usual? com/archive/2019/march/the_anniversary_forest_grant_norway_rewards_indonesia_ by_leaving_out_peat_burning_from_carbon_tally Wibowo, A. and L. Giessen. 2015. “Absolute and Relative Power Gains among State Agencies in Forest-Related Land Use Politics: The Ministry of Forestry and Its Competitors in the REDD+ Programme and the One Map Policy in Indonesia.” Land Use Policy. Issue. 49. pp. 131–141. Widerøe, R.J., E.O. Arntsen, B. Tommelstad, M.G. Norman, and S. Nilsen. 2017. “VG: Avslører Ambassadør.” Verdens Gang. Available at: https://www.vg.no/spesial/2017/ ambassadoren/ Widiaryanto, P. 2015a. “Indonesia Disbanded its REDD+ Agency: That Might Not be So Bad.” Forest Carbon Portal. Forest Trends: Washington, DC. Widiaryanto, P.  2015b. “Merging Redd+ Into Ministry Should be More Effective.” The Jakarta Post. Available at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/01/31/mergingredd-ministry-should-be-more-effective.html Yudhoyono, S.B. 2011. Speech given at the Forests Indonesia Conference. Shangri-La Hotel: Jakarta. Available at: www.cifor.org/fileadmin/fileupload/media-release/27_Sep_SBY_ Speech.pdf

4 Success and failure in the UN-REDD pilots REDD+ as viewed from Central Sulawesi

Political contestations impacting REDD+ goals exist not only at the national level. If anything, contestations at subnational levels are perhaps even more pronounced. Indeed, such contestations were to some extent foreseen by REDD+ proponents and are a major motivation behind the practice of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC). This chapter zooms in on the contestations surrounding the roll-out of the REDD+ FPIC pilots in Central Sulawesi, one of the main Indonesian pilot provinces. It argues that the outcomes these pilots engendered must be understood with reference to the area’s history, including insecure land tenure arrangements, the cultural and livelihood significance of forest gardens, and repeated state–society interactions on forest boundary issues. As part of REDD+ demonstration activities nationally in Indonesia following the 2010 Letter of Intent and following identification of Central Sulawesi as the pilot province for UN-REDD activities, a draft set of subnational guidelines for gaining local community consent for REDD+ was field-tested in March 2012 in the Central Sulawesi villages of Talaga and Lembah Mukti (UN-REDD Programme 2012). Indonesia had not developed national guidelines for the conduct of the FPIC process to be used in determining whether local communities wished to proceed with REDD+ activities (UN-REDD Programme 2012). But, in conjunction with the UN-REDD Programme, the National Forestry Council (Dewan Kehutanan Nasional), a forest industry body, had prepared a set of national policy recommendations on FPIC, which were submitted to the National REDD+ Agency and the Ministry of Forestry in March 2011 (UN-REDD Programme 2012). These national FPIC recommendations were used to inform the draft subnational FPIC guidelines for Central Sulawesi’s pilots, and it is these subnational guidelines that were field-tested in Talaga and Lembah Mukti in 2012 (UN-REDD Programme 2012). The field-test was led by the Provincial REDD+ Working Group (or Pokja) in conjunction with the local state Forest Management Unit (FMU). It proposed to replant degraded forests with valuable species, namely rubber (karet) or jabon, in exchange for villagers carrying out forest conservation activities (UN-REDD Programme 2012). Ultimately, these FPIC pilots saw different outcomes. Villagers in Lembah Mukti agreed to implement forest rehabilitation activities with a number of changes to the original plans and signed a Letter of Agreement with the FMU DOI: 10.4324/9781003267898-5

92  Success and failure in the UN-REDD pilots (UN-REDD Programme 2012). Villagers in Talaga, however, did not wish to continue consultations on REDD+ activities having reportedly been influenced by a local NGO-led monitoring group, Pokja Pantau, which, according to the UN-REDD Programme, told them that: “REDD+ will take the forest by force and will destroy the socio-cultural values of the community” (UN-REDD Programme 2012, p.  9). Given that around half of Talaga’s villagers grow cocoa, coffee, and chili, they were concerned that REDD+ would prevent them from entering forest areas, and the FPIC process was therefore discontinued (UNREDD Programme 2012). This chapter focuses on explaining why, despite their close geographic proximity, outcomes from these two REDD+ FPIC pilots diverged. It begins by introducing the setting of the pilots in the villages of Talaga and Lembah Mukti, in an agro-ecological and socio-political perspective. It then discusses the UN-REDD Programme FPIC pilots as they were carried out in the two villages, covering the reported problems with the FPIC process as well as the intervention of the local NGO-led monitoring group, Pokja Pantau. Finally, it reflects on the known results of the pilots, including from socio-economic and provincial forest data points of view.

Talaga and Lembah Mukti in agro-ecological and socio-political perspective Contemporary Central Sulawesi is an Indonesian province of just over 68,000 square km with a population of around 2.6 million people (UN-REDD Programme 2012, Moro 2010). It is found on Sulawesi Island, the fourth largest of the Indonesian archipelago, to the east of Borneo (Moro 2010). The northern part of the Sulawesi peninsula, where both Talaga and Lembah Mukti are found, is located roughly between the equator and 1-degree north latitude and around 120-degree east longitude (Himmelmann 2010, Moro 2010). As shown in Figure 4.1, the peninsula is fairly narrow in this part, and a chain of steep mountains runs north to south, which divides the west coast bordered by the Makassar Strait and the east coast bordered by the Tomini Bay (Moro 2010, Himmelmann 2010). As noted by Li (1991, 1997) and Himmelmann (2010), the area can be divided into three distinct agro-ecological zones: (i) a coastal strip, (ii) the middle hills, and (iii) the inner hills. The coastal strip experiences seasonal rainfall, with vegetation consisting of mangroves, grass, bushes, and secondary forest. Crops are mainly coconuts and wet rice, although coastal inhabitants also tend their own gardens in the middle hills. Income sources include wage work (e.g. teaching and hired agricultural labour) and fishing, with the vast majority of the population adhering to Islam. The middle hills experience frequent rainfall and are characterized by both primary and secondary forests. People in the middle hills tend to live at some distance to the coast, either at the foot of hills or on an inland plain in village settlements. They usually cultivate dry rice, corn, and cash crops (e.g. shallots, cashews, cocoa); are at least nominally Islamic; and are generally integrated into the government welfare system, such as it is. Finally, the inner hills experience very frequent rainfalls

Success and failure in the UN-REDD pilots  93

Figure 4.1  Approximate Locations of Talaga and Lembah Mukti, Central Sulawesi Source: UN-REDD Programme

and are characterized by deep primary and secondary forests. People here tend to live in small groups of two to three households close to the forest frontier, planting taro and cassava as staple foods and eating pigs. Inhabitants of the inner hills tend not to adopt coastal ways of life and are usually adherents to either an indigenous religion or Christianity. Himmelmann (2010) notes that the populations of the middle and inner hills tend to be fairly homogenous socially and economically, while the coastal population can be subdivided into various occupational or class categories. Here, the majority call themselves farmers and tend to gain their livelihoods through wage-based work, while fishermen form a distinct group living in hamlets close to the shore and up to 1 km from the main village centre further inland (Himmelmann 2010). Another distinct coastal class is formed by the political and educational elite who usually control local government and educational institutions (Moro 2010, Himmelmann 2010). The usually most prosperous class, however, are the mainly Chinese and Buginese traders who buy local cash crops,

94  Success and failure in the UN-REDD pilots finance rattan expeditions and fishing equipment, run minibuses to Palu, and own general stores (Moro 2010, Himmelmann 2010). There is a general lack of detailed historical records for this area of northwestern Central Sulawesi up until fairly recently (circa 1970), a fact that has been interpreted as evidence of its peripheral character (Himmelmann 2010, Moro 2010). As discussed in Chapter 2, the area in which Talaga and Lembah Mukti can be found has never been a major political centre dominating other areas but has always been at the fringes of various powers that have sought to control parts of Sulawesi, for example the Kingdom of Banawa and the Dutch East Indies (Himmelmann 2010, Nadjamuddin 2017). At the same time, the broad contours of the history of the area are quite well established and are recounted next (Himmelmann 2010, Moro 2010, Henley 1989 and 2005). In the early 18th century ce, the Bugis and Mandar kingdoms of South Sulawesi took control of the coastline of present-day northwestern Central Sulawesi in cooperation with their local Kaili allies whom they had earlier subjugated (Ammarell 2013, Himmelmann 2010). The main goal in establishing this Bugis–Mandar control was to use the areas’ coastal plains for coconut plantations (Ammarell 2013, Himmelmann 2010). In order to cement their control, marriages were arranged between male members of the Bugis, Mandar, and Kaili nobility with female members of the local Tomini-Tolitoli nobility, with the Tomini-Tolitoli nobility tasked with persuading (or forcing) their members to move with them from the mountains to the coastal plains to work on the plantations (Ammarell 2013, Caldwell 1995). Himmelmann (2010) notes that in some cases, these migrations led to splits in the Tomini-Tolitoli population, with some members remaining in the mountains as the ancestors of today’s middle and inner hill people, and others following their nobility down to the coast. This is consistent with the oral history of the Dampelas, the indigenous ethno-linguistic group originally associated with the Talaga village site, which, as noted in Chapter 2, recounts an episode of migration from the mountain of Bulur Sitangke to Talaga Lake, which is located within a short distance of the Makassar Strait (Nadjamuddin 2017). The pact between the two groups of nobilities, the Bugis, Mandar, and Kaili on the one hand and the Tomini-Tolitoli (including the Dampelas) on the other, appears largely to have held until the 1950s, given that present-day inhabitants of the coastal strip mostly claim at least one male Bugis, Mandar, or Kaili relative (Himmelmann 2010).1 The pattern of interactions between South Sulawesi and the more northern coastal area began, however, to change during the reign of Lamarauna (1903–1926) over the Kingdom of Banawa, when poorer inhabitants of South Sulawesi began to migrate to Tomini-Tolitoli areas in substantial numbers (Himmelmann 2010, Nadjamuddin 2017, Parwanto 2002). These migrations were mainly to the west coast of northern Central Sulawesi, where both Talaga and Lembah Mukti are located, and continued into the 2000s albeit on a smaller scale (Himmelmann 2010). The migrants generally settled close to established coastal villages and opened up areas for their own plantations and gardens (Ammarell 2013, Himmelmann 2010). Although they often brought with them little more than what was absolutely necessary to begin farming (seedlings, some tools, small amounts of cash),

Success and failure in the UN-REDD pilots  95 they tended to be economically successful and interacted socially with the existing Tomini-Tolitoli population. This contrasts with the various large modern-era transmigration projects to be found throughout the area, which began as early as the 1950s and continued through the 1990s (Aragon 2001, Himmelmann 2010). These tended to involve migrants of Javanese or Balinese origin, with migrants mostly being resettled on extensive inland plains where there were no permanent Tomini-Tolitoli settlements (Himmelmann 2010). Interactions between transmigrants and Tomini-Tolitoli locals are generally limited, being mostly confined to small-scale trade in agricultural products sold by the transmigrants (Himmelmann 2010). As I elaborate upon later in the chapter, Lembah Mukti is one such modern-era transmigration project, set in a valley a short distance inland from the Makassar Strait with its inhabitants a mix of Javanese, Balinese, and migrants from South Sulawesi (In-field interviews 2017). Despite the violent episodes featuring outsiders and locals since the retreat of Japanese forces at the end of the Second World War, notably during the Darul Islam rebellion of the 1950s and the communal violence in Poso in the 1990s (see Chapter 2), it is generally not the case that those migrating to the Tomini-Tolitoli areas of northwestern Central Sulawesi used violence to do so or attempted to subjugate the local population (Aragon 2001, Himmelmann 2010). At the same time, relations between Tomini-Tolitoli locals and migrants have involved both economic competition and contestation, as well as collaboration, including in terms of accessing or developing infrastructure and other forms of support from the state (In-field interviews 2017). Since the 1970s, government authorities engineered a rapid modernization process in the area, made possible through the economic success of the introduction of new cash crops, particularly cloves (Moro 2010, Himmelmann 2010). An extensive network of primary schools was established, with most villages in the area today having at least one primary school, followed by health centres, paved roads, electricity, and television (Himmelmann 2010). Indeed, the coastal strip zone is today a fully integrated part of modern Indonesia (Himmelmann 2010). In addition, support has been given by government authorities, missionaries, and foreign aid organizations to integrate the populations of the middle and inner hill zones into this modernization process, with considerable support given to the establishment of new transmigration settlements (Himmelmann 2010). It should be noted that after my fieldwork concluded in 2017, however, a series of strong earthquakes (including one at moment magnitude 7.5) occurred in Central Sulawesi on 28 September  2018, with epicentres between Palu and Talaga-Lembah Mukti (BBC 2018, Reliefweb 2019). The resulting tsunami, liquefaction, and landslides caused major damage to existing infrastructure and property, destroying roads, bridges, mosques, shopping malls, and offices, and led to significant loss of life (BBC 2018, Reliefweb 2019). This natural disaster sparked a range of humanitarian and reconstruction interventions by the Indonesian government, civil society, and foreign agencies (Reliefweb 2019). The land tenure situation in northern Central Sulawesi is complex but worth noting before any further exposition of the REDD+ FPIC pilots there (Li 1991, Barkmann et al. 2010). The first thing to note is that security of land tenure is of

96  Success and failure in the UN-REDD pilots critical importance to households, with overlaps existing between ancestral claims to land and more recent, formal, land tenure arrangements (Li 1991). Since the 1990s, local government has been increasing its strength in the area, implying that previously existing and new land tenure regulations are increasingly applied in practice (Li 1991). The basic adat rules for land tenure in the area are that individuals who first clear land and their descendants have perpetual user rights, which can be transferred to others for a fee or loaned for temporary use (Barkmann et al. 2010, Li 1991). In the inner hills, outsiders such as officials or lowland dwellers who wish to acquire hillside land for their private use will tend to follow these rules (Barkmann et al. 2010, Li 1991). According to Li (1991), inhabitants of the inner hills have been relatively secure in their land tenure situation because they are somewhat feared by middle hill and coastal zone inhabitants for their purported use of magic and poisoned blowpipes. Local land disputes occur mainly in relation to the planting of trees on borrowed land without permission, the division of inherited land among kin for tree planting, and the selling of land or trees belonging to a deceased ancestor without the agreement of other descendants (Li 1991). The extent of land tenure security is complicated, however, by the fact that much of the land under adat forms of tenure has been considered government property which people have cleared without permission (Barkmann et al. 2010, Li 1991). The main mechanism for formalizing customary rights to land (hak adat) requires that land show signs of cultivation 30  years prior to 1959, along with evidence of permanent settlement (Li 1991, Barkmann et al. 2010). Although many hill dwellers meet this requirement, many have never sought official confirmation of this and have therefore been considered by government officials to have cleared land illegally, with “no permission, no papers, and no rights” (Li 1991, p. 57). According to Li (1991), officials have been more inclined to recognize de-facto rights if trees have been planted and fences established, since this can then be classified as land in use, even if the legal basis for this is unclear. However, examples of officials being involved in land grabbing also exist, particularly in areas where new roads have made land more accessible (Li 1991). In one case, documented by Li (1991), locals and outsiders staked out large areas of land made accessible by new infrastructure on the fringes of a transmigration site in the 1990s. Although the Indonesian government officially proclaimed the Poso area’s communal conflict to have ended in late 2001, the period of REDD+ implementation coincided with proscribed terrorist activity in Central Sulawesi (Nasrum 2016). Starting around 2010, the East Indonesia Mujahaddin, or MIT, used the forests between Palu and Poso as a base (Nasrum 2016). In fact, MIT are the only Islamic terror group in Indonesia that have been able to claim a fairly consistent territory. Pledging allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, MIT committed a number of attacks, killing two police officers in 2012 and attacking a police kiosk in Poso (BBC News 2016). This led to an extensive anti-terror operation by the authorities in which MIT’s leader, Santoso, was killed in 2016 (BBC News 2016). As recently as 2020, however, a village between Palu and Poso, Lembantongoa, was attacked resulting in the deaths of four villagers, with the remaining members

Success and failure in the UN-REDD pilots  97 of MIT suspected (The Straits Times 2020). Nasrum (2016, p. 1) finds that the presence of jihadist militias from outside Sulawesi (including Uyghur militants travelling on forged passports) “significantly stimulated the creation of radical ideologies in the region.” At the same time, radicalization attempts resulted in actual terrorist acts because they fell on already fragile ground, given the province’s recent history of communal conflict (Nasrum 2016). Thus, the existence of MIT’s terrorist activity during the 2010s is evidence of the continued fragility of communal relations across Central Sulawesi, which, in turn, is linked to multiple factors, including contestations around access to and control of land (Schulze 2017). As for Talaga and Lembah Mukti, it is worth noting that the English word village does not exactly correspond to the Indonesian word desa (Himmelmann 2010, Moro 2010). A desa, the most basic unit of state administration in Indonesia, usually refers to a number of dwelling clusters in addition to substantial amounts of both cultivated and uncultivated land and is thus a more extensive and spread-out unit than a European village (Himmelmann 2010). Talaga and Lembah Mukti are, administratively speaking, both desas in the Donggala district (kabupaten) of the province of Central Sulawesi, whose district seat of government is located in Palu, a city of over 300,000 people, which is also the provincial capital (Himmelmann 2010, Moro 2010). Talaga is located some 150  km north of Palu on the main coastal road, with Lembah Mukti located a further 40 km northeast of Talaga—further inland along a hillside track. But despite the close geographic proximity of these two desas and their superficial similarities from a state administration point of view, there are notable differences between them (In-field interviews 2017). Talaga is considered the original settlement-place of the Dampelas ethno-linguistic group, whose total population numbered around 9,500 as of 1993 (Himmelmann 2010, Moro 2010). It is one of eight villages in the area in which the Dampelas language is still spoken but is viewed as more homogenous than the other seven villages, with the majority of its inhabitants identifying as Dampelas (Himmelmann 2010, In-field interviews 2017). Talaga village is situated on the shores of a small freshwater lake (referred-to in the folklore tale in Chapter 2), with both lake and village partially encircled by a chain of small hills that act as a boundary between the village and the sea to the west and a large inland plain to the north, south, and east (Moro 2010, Himmelmann 2010). Along the main road connecting the village to the plain, Talaga merges with another Dampelas village called Sabang (Moro 2010). Both of these villages saw slight population increases between the 1991 census and the census of 2010, most likely due to in-migration linked to transmigration and intermarriage (Himmelman 2010, Moro 2010).2 The small hills partially surrounding Talaga are fertile, and cultivatable areas are used for dry rice production, which is harvested twice a year for village consumption (Himmelmann 2010, In-field interviews 2017). In addition, cash crops including cocoa, coffee, cloves, coconut, peanuts, durian, and maize are produced at small scale in the forested hills surrounding the village for sale in Palu (In-field interviews 2017, Moro 2010). Some villagers fish in nearby coastal areas and on the lake, mainly for their own consumption but with any surplus sold at Palu’s market

98  Success and failure in the UN-REDD pilots (In-field interviews 2017). Talaga is surrounded by primary forest—a mix of species including meranti, agathis, and ebony. Both the forest and Talaga lake are designated as protected or limited production areas but not as conservation areas, that is limited user rights prevail (In-field interviews 2017). Non-timber forest products collected by the villagers from the forest include rattan and honey (Infield interviews 2017). Although farming and fishing are the predominant occupations with most families engaged in these activities, a few people work in service positions as teachers and nurses or as laborers for plantation owners (Moro 2010, in-field interviews 2017). In contrast to Talaga, Lembah Mukti is a more recent settlement, having been established in the late 1990s as a government-supported transmigration project (In-field interviews 2017). Its inhabitants are mainly Javanese and Balinese in origin, with a few coming from South Sulawesi (In-field interviews 2017). It is situated in an upland, inland valley, accessible via a paved track, some 10 km distant from the sea, with its buildings organized in a grid-like pattern. A network of streams and tributaries connects the village to the Makassar Strait, facilitating a small-scale irrigation system enabling the cultivation of rice in wet paddies (In-field interviews 2017). The hills surrounding the valley feature both primary forest and shrubs, including meranti, agathis, and ebony, but also local low-lying palms of the Pandanus genus (In-field interviews 2017). Villagers engage in some small-scale production of cocoa in addition to rice cultivation and raising Bali cattle at small scale (that are fed on native grasses) but tend not to collect non-timber forest products such as rattan and honey (Damry 2008, infield interviews 2017). This is not because they are legally prevented from doing so, but because they are generally unused to such activities (In-field interviews 2017). A final distinction between Lembah Mukti and Talaga is that the latter claims the land of the former as part of its ancestral domain, but this is not the case vice versa (In-field interviews 2017).

Launching of the UN-REDD FPIC pilots In 2011, the first phase of the UN-REDD Programme’s activities was established in Central Sulawesi (Howell and Bastiensen 2015). Working from an office in the Provincial Forest Department in Palu, four REDD+ working groups (Pokja REDD) were set up to prepare: (i) a regional strategy; (ii) a monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) system; (iii) a set of demonstration activities; and (iv) a method for FPIC (Howell and Bastiensen 2015). Though they included a variety of actors, including academics, NGOs, and members of the public, the working groups were dominated by government officials (Howell and Bastiensen 2015). In parallel to the establishment of these working groups, a group of local NGOs formed a separate Monitoring Working Group (Pokja Pantau) with the stated intention of representing the public in REDD+ preparations and activities (Howell and Bastiensen 2015, in-field interviews 2017).

Success and failure in the UN-REDD pilots  99 In December  2011, the FPIC Working Group produced a draft set of FPIC Guidelines for Central Sulawesi (Hewat 2017). Subsequently, in March 2012, an FPIC field-test was conducted in the two village communities of Talaga and Lembah Mukti in the northwest of the province (Hewat 2017, Howell and Bastiensen 2015, UN-REDD Programme 2012). According to an evaluation commissioned by the Norwegian government, the purpose of this trial was twofold: to test the application of the Provincial FPIC Guidelines and to assist the local Forest Management Unit (FMU) to implement a forest rehabilitation programme (Hewat 2017). The latter programme proposed to replant areas of degraded forest with species of value to the local communities, that is, rubber and fast-growing timber species, in return for the villages making commitments to desist from illegal logging and carrying out other forest conservation activities (Hewat 2017). The FPIC trials in Talaga and Lembah Mukti thus sought not only to consult with the communities and seek their consent for REDD+ activities, it also sought to have them enter into a contract with the FMU to implement certain conservation actions in return for benefits in the form of new forest plantation crops (Hewat 2017). The FPIC trials in the two village communities led to different outcomes (Hewat 2017, UN-REDD Programme 2012, In-field interviews 2017). Villagers in Lembah Mukti agreed to implement forest rehabilitation activities with a number of changes to the original plans and signed a Letter of Agreement with the FMU (UN-REDD Programme 2012). Villagers in Talaga did not wish to continue consultations on REDD+ activities having reportedly been influenced by advocacy efforts of the local NGO-led monitoring group, Pokja Pantau (UN-REDD Programme 2012). Explanations of the different outcomes of these two FPIC trials coalesce into two main narratives found both in reports and evaluations of the trials (i.e. Boer 2019, Hewat 2017, Howell and Bastiensen 2015, UN REDD Programme 2012), and data from my interviews (In-field interviews 2017). The first narrative simply states that the FPIC trials were not conducted properly and that this led to the rejection of REDD+ by the Talaga villagers. The second narrative places emphasis on the interventions of the local NGO-led monitoring group Pokja Pantau, claiming that these interventions influenced the Talaga villagers to reject the REDD+ pilot. I reflect on the available evidence supporting each of these narratives next.

Consultation, consent, and socialization: problems with the FPIC trials Hewat’s evaluation for the Norwegian government (2017), Howell and Bastiensen (2015), and Boer (2019) all report that the FPIC trials in Talaga and Lembah Mukti experienced several difficulties during implementation. This view was confirmed by several of my interviewees and focus group discussion participants in 2017, arising independently in separate conversations. The first problem arose from the novelty of the FPIC process in Central Sulawesi. Those implementing

100  Success and failure in the UN-REDD pilots the process found it difficult to distinguish between, on the one hand, consultation and consent, and, on the other, socializing information about decisions already made (Hewat 2017, Howell and Bastiensen 2015). According to Hewat (2017, p. 211): The idea of FPIC was quite foreign to local government culture, who were accustomed to socializing the results of government decision-making to rural communities, rather than engaging in consultation. The FPIC trial also appears to have suffered from poor preparation, with very limited appropriate communications materials developed or training of community consultation facilitators provided prior to the commencement of the trial. Howell and Bastiensen (2015, p. 13) note, too, that: “Meetings between communities and government or NGOs in the name of REDD+ often seemed like an opportunity for teaching and persuasion, rather than dialogue and an open process of gaining (or not gaining) consent.” One of my in-field interviewees from a local NGO put it more bluntly: “There are two different terminologies: socialization and FPIC. What happened in Talaga was just socialization.” A second, related problem was in the relationships between those conducting the FPIC trials and the village communities themselves. Hewat (2017, p. 211) notes: “preliminary consultations were largely delegated to the provincial and regency level branches of AMAN (the largest Indigenous Peoples’ organization in Indonesia), which relied heavily on kinship relations, which were strong in Lembah Mukti village but less so in Talaga.” A local academic put the relationships between Talaga villagers and those conducting the FPIC process to me in these terms: “If outsiders come it is very difficult, for example Palu people coming to Talaga are considered outsiders. For Talaga, everyone is an outsider” (In-field interview 2017).

Kick the ball and let others play? Pokja Pantau’s interventions The UN-REDD Programme’s report (2012, p. 9) on the Central Sulawesi FPIC trials states that the local NGO-led monitoring group, Pokja Pantau, told the Talaga villagers that: “REDD+ will take the forest by force and will destroy the socio-cultural values of the community.” Hewat (2017, p. 211) also reports that members of this NGO monitoring group conducted their own consultations with Talaga villagers: “raising concerns about potential alienation of community land as a result of REDD+.” That Pokja Pantau intervened in the Talaga FPIC trial is not in doubt. Apart from Hewat (2017) and the UN-REDD Programme’s 2012 report, several of my interviewees and focus group discussants confirmed in separate conversations in 2017 that these interventions took place. However, different interviewees provided varying interpretations of these events and held different views on their legitimacy (In-field interviews 2017). Several interviewees noted that Pokja Pantau’s interventions in Talaga should be seen in light of a poorly implemented forest boundary demarcation process that took place in the village

Success and failure in the UN-REDD pilots  101 about two weeks before the FPIC trial (In-field interviews 2017). This interviewee noted that: Talaga has a long history of tension with the Ministry of Forestry. There was a government programme under the REDD+ umbrella that was supposed to contribute to forest carbon emission reductions. But that project went ahead without local consultation. In Talaga, villagers literally woke up to find markers in the ground in their backyards and fields. The FPIC pilot came at the wrong time. The villagers thought it was an initiative of the Ministry of Forestry and not UN-REDD. During a separate conversation, another interviewee stated that: In Talaga, these people came in and tried to make forest boundaries without consultation with the villagers. This is a kind of land grabbing. They didn’t coordinate internally with the people working on REDD+. They placed forest markers under peoples’ homes. This created confusion. And this was only two weeks before the FPIC pilot was to begin. According to these interviewees, Pokja Pantau’s warnings to the Talaga villagers about the potential threats REDD+ could present to their forest-dependent livelihoods were justified by the actions of those implementing the earlier forest boundary demarcation process. Boer (2019) also reports that both AMAN and other local NGOs had reservations about the intentions of the provincial forestry service, although they continued to engage with the FPIC process, sometimes acting as consultants. But at least one interviewee remained unconvinced of the legitimacy of Pokja Pantau’s interventions, stating that: They are responsible for the failure of the FPIC trial in the one pilot, but they have never gone back to those communities. They just kicked the ball and let other people play.

Living precariously in Donggala’s rich forests More broadly, the precariousness of Donggala villagers’ livelihoods was emphasized by many of my interviewees as a main driver of past small-scale illegal forest clearance. The most fundamental challenges to local economic well-being were noted as land tenure insecurity, uncertain markets for surplus garden/plantation produce, and limited formal employment opportunities (In-field interviews 2017). Several interviewees agreed that Talaga had in the past been an area where illegal logging had occurred, but that this had mostly petered out before the advent of the REDD+ pilot. One villager said: People have less illegal logging. They are not focused on only one particular area for their activities. Now they are no longer cutting down trees, right now

102  Success and failure in the UN-REDD pilots in the garden they just keep their plants because of awareness of emissions reductions. Before REDD+ the community already had this awareness. Participants in the local civil society focus group noted that in Donggala district: Tenure is a long-term problem. There has been a problem of people planting in the forest areas and the FMU accommodate people’s lands into the unit. Members of the women’s focus group particularly reflected on the issues faced by women across Donggala’s villages in their typical roles as firewood and water collectors, as well as keepers of village gardens and small plantations: There are always trends for different crops. This year it is ginger. Everyone is getting a lower price because everyone is producing ginger. The government has no good policy to protect the farmer’s market. We are confused. Today we plant maize, don’t know what to do for tomorrow. There is no plan on which crops to prioritize. Given the lack of state agricultural subsidies in the area beyond small-scale distribution of seeds and tools, many interviewees had hoped that REDD+ would provide improved financial resources, if not in terms of cash pay-outs, then in the form of scholarships or improved public services (In-field interviews 2017). A participant in the women’s focus group noted that REDD+ was, in principle, a good scheme but that she was: “very annoyed about the method to implement the project” (In-field interviews 2017). She suggested using television as a means of communicating with villagers about REDD+ since “everyone watches TV” (In-field interviews 2017). Another interviewee from local civil society claimed that: “in Central Sulawesi all climate funds go to the government action. But it should go to the local community” (In-field interviews 2017). Interviews also revealed widespread frustrations with the lack of formal employment opportunities, particularly on infrastructure projects and larger-scale plantations. One interviewee gave the example of a telecommunications pipeline that had used labour from outside Central Sulawesi, leading to protests from locals (In-field interviews 2017). Others suggested that the structure of the palm oil market in the province was generating only negligible local employment opportunities, with smallholders unable to gain a foothold due to competition from larger plantations: Palm oil is not creating many jobs, not many employment opportunities. In Central Sulawesi, most farmers are harvesting coconut and cacao, not palm oil.

Results of the FPIC pilots A main and stated motivation for choosing Central Sulawesi as a pilot province for UN-REDD activities was its large areas of primary forest as well as its relatively high deforestation rate (UN-REDD Programme 2012). The FPIC trials in

Success and failure in the UN-REDD pilots  103 Talaga and Lembah Mukti sought not only to test the FPIC mechanism but also to engage in forest rehabilitation work, in recognition of the degradation of forest areas linked to human activity (Hewat 2017). So, what were the results of these activities, both in forest loss and/or rehabilitation terms, and in terms of the socioeconomic benefits REDD+ was supposed to bring to local communities? At this juncture, it is important to remind ourselves that, in general, the proximate drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in Central Sulawesi are the opening of land for agriculture, plantations, grazing, mining, and illegal logging, both by members of local communities and by industry (Rijal et al. 2019, Dechert et al. 2004, Joshi 2014). Expansion of cacao production by Sulawesian smallholders has, for example, been linked to forest exploitation in Lore Lindu National Park (Abbate 2007). Industrial mining developments, such as nickel mines in the Morowali Regency, also drive deforestation in Central Sulawesi (Morse 2019, Nickel Mines Ltd 2019). In 2014, the Indonesian government approved the conversion of around 2,000 ha of one project’s concession area from protected to production forest, greatly expanding the area available for future mining (Nickel Mines Ltd 2019). The province has also become a focus over the past decade for large-scale palm oil plantation developers (Jong 2018b). As of 2016, more than 7,000 km2 of Central Sulawesi were granted for palm oil concessions with at least some plantation development driving deforestation (Jong 2018b). Although many forestland conversions in Central Sulawesi may be conducted according to the existing legal framework and in situ land tenure arrangements, they have also been plagued by rumours of conflicts of interest and abuses of power involving local businesspeople and politicians (Jong 2018b). Actual legal prosecutions have also been brought. Amran Batapilu, the former head of Buol district, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison in 2013 for taking a bribe in exchange for land concessions for plantation companies controlled by the entrepreneur and politician Siti Hartati Murdaya (Jong 2018b). Rijal et al. (2019), analysing land cover data obtained from the MoEF for 1990, 2000, and 2010, found that Central Sulawesi registered the greatest absolute level of deforestation of any province on Sulawesi between 1990 and 2010, although this should be viewed in light of the province’s large forest stock compared with other provinces on the island. Donggala district, where Talaga and Lembah Mukti are located, was not the most vulnerable area to deforestation in Central Sulawesi during this time period, however, with Toli-Toli district and Palu both more prone to forest cover loss (Rijal et al. 2019). This can be explained by both areas featuring relatively large population centres with corresponding higher levels of economic activity. Data from Global Forest Watch at the World Resources Institute show that Central Sulawesi lost 745,000 ha of tree cover from 2001 to 2021 (equivalent to a 13% decrease since 2000), resulting in 514 Mt of CO2e emissions (see Figure 4.2). This can be compared with 242,000 and 328,000 ha of tree cover loss, respectively, in the provinces of West and South Sulawesi during the same period. Three broad tree cover loss trends in Central Sulawesi from 2001 to 2021 are discernible when comparing Global Forest Watch data with the province’s official conservation boundary map. Tree losses concentrate particularly: (i) along

104  Success and failure in the UN-REDD pilots

Figure 4.2  Central Sulawesi Primary Forest Cover Loss, 2002–2021 Source: Global Forest Watch

the province’s coasts which are not typically regulated as conservation areas; (ii) along roads, valleys, and rivers, for example the valley road extending south from Palu into the Lore Lindu National Park and, notably, the Bangka River in the east of the province; and (iii) inland from some of the larger population centres, for example Toli-Toli and Poso. In Donggala district, Global Forest Watch data shows that, from 2001 to 2021, a total of 49,100 ha of tree cover was lost, resulting in 34.0 Mt of CO2e emissions. This is slightly higher than tree cover losses in, for example, Toli-Toli district during the same period (44,900 ha, resulting in 32.0 Mt of CO2e emissions). Although we should be cautious in interpreting the data, given changes in Global Forest Watch’s methods from year to year, it appears that annual tree cover loss in Donggala rose from 1,130 ha in 2010 to peak at 4,220 ha in 2015, after which it fell slightly in 2016 (4,210 ha), fell further in 2017 (2,940 ha), and further still in 2018 (2,750 ha). During 2001 to 2010, annual tree cover loss in the district did not exceed 2,700 ha. This means that tree cover loss per year was generally greater while the REDD+ FPIC pilots were being implemented than prior to their implementation. Figure  4.3 shows forest cover loss during the 2001–2021 period (i.e. the period covering the FPIC pilots and since) in the area of Lembah Mukti and Talaga. For contrast, Figure 4.4 shows tree cover gain for the same area between 2000 and 2020. What is particularly noticeable is the large scale of tree cover loss across this area, while tree cover gain is scattered and at a much smaller scale. The immediate socio-economic results of the FPIC pilots in Central Sulawesi are that villagers in Lembah Mukti agreed to implement forest rehabilitation activities with a few, minor changes to the original plans and signed a Letter of Agreement with the FMU (In-field interviews 2017, UN-REDD Programme 2012). Villagers in Talaga did not, however, wish to continue consultations on REDD+ activities, and their wishes were reportedly respected, even if Pokja Pantau was criticized in an official UN report and an external evaluation for its anti-REDD+ advocacy (In-field interviews 2017, UN-REDD Programme 2012). Lembah Mukti’s

Success and failure in the UN-REDD pilots  105

Figure 4.3 Primary Forest Cover Loss in Talaga and Lembah Mukti Area, Central Sulawesi, 2001–2021 Darker shading indicates forest cover loss Source: Global Forest Watch

agreement with the FMU to implement forest rehabilitation activities as a result of the FPIC pilot led to the planting of jabon (Neolamarckia cadamba) and rubber trees (Hevea brasiliensis). But tree planting did not continue after the end of the REDD+ pilot in 2012 (In-field interviews 2017, email correspondence 2019). In fact, the trees that were planted as part of the pilot have since been harvested (Infield interview 2017, interview 2019). Lembah Mukti’s villagers ultimately did not receive REDD+ payments, motivating them to attempt to benefit economically from the sale of tapped rubber (In-field interviews 2017, email correspondence 2019). Because it did not engage with the FPIC pilot in the first instance, Talaga’s villagers did not enter into an agreement with the FMU to undertake forest

106  Success and failure in the UN-REDD pilots

Figure 4.4 Tree Cover Gain in Talaga and Lembah Mukti Area, Central Sulawesi, 2000 and 2020 Darker shading indicates tree cover gain Source: Global Forest Watch

rehabilitation activities, meaning that there was no question of them receiving REDD+ payments (In-field interviews 2017). More broadly, the manner in which the FPIC pilot was conducted in Talaga raised mutual suspicions among various actors. At least some Talaga villagers became suspicious that the REDD+ trial was a cover for provincial officials to grab land upon which their livelihoods depend, while those implementing the trial became suspicious of the role and motivations of Pokja Pantau in stoking tensions with the state forest bureaucracy (In-field interviews 2017). Because, ultimately, Lembah Mukti did not receive results-based payments, community members’ trust in the state forest bureaucracy and in REDD+ was also diminished in the longer

Success and failure in the UN-REDD pilots  107 term as a result of the pilot (In-field interviews 2017). More positively, however, the experience of the Talaga pilot provided added impetus for local civil society activists to engage in national policy debates around REDD+ spinoffs, including the Customary Forest and Social Forestry initiatives (In-field interviews 2017). Multiple contestations in the implementation of Central Sulawesi’s REDD+ pilots therefore undermined intended outcomes, with participatory mechanisms (i.e. FPIC) designed to facilitate local consent themselves becoming mired in these same contestations. Although superficially similar in socio-economic and cultural terms, and close geographically, there were multiple and significant differences between the FPIC pilot sites of Talaga and Lembah Mukti. Taken together, these differences partly explain the divergence of outcomes in their respective REDD+ pilots. To begin with, Talaga is a fairly homogenous village largely consisting of one ethno-linguistic group, the Dampelas, who engage in dry rice cultivation and fishing and who maintain customary user rights to access non-timber forest products from the forested hills near the village, producing cash crops in forest gardens at small scale. Partially bound by a chain of small hills, Talaga is also a relatively isolated community with few interactions with outsiders, although it has experienced some in-migration in recent years. By contrast, Lembah Mukti is a more heterogeneous and recent community, consisting of migrants from Java, Bali, and South Sulawesi. Economic activity in this upland valley community centres mainly on wet rice cultivation and small-scale Bali cattle farming, with irrigation supplied by a network of streams and tributaries, as well as some limited production of cash crops at small scale. Access to the forest is less important to the inhabitants of Lembah Mukti than to Talaga villagers in livelihood terms, helping to explain the positivity of the former and the reluctance of the latter to engage with REDD+. The direct experiences of the two villages with the FPIC trials in March 2012 were also different. The way in which these trials were conducted influenced their respective outcomes, although these outcomes were in turn conditioned by existing features of the pilot sites. The combined relative isolation and homogeneity of Talaga, as well as its high yet fragile dependence on economic activities in nearby forests, predisposed its inhabitants to take Pokja Pantau’s dire warnings about REDD+ land grabs seriously. Meanwhile, the relative openness of the Lembah Mukti villagers to the idea of REDD+ stemmed from their good relations with members of the organization conducting the FPIC trial consultations: AMAN. In evaluating their engagement with REDD+, Lembah Mukti’s inhabitants could also draw on their recent positive experience of state support for their small-scale rice paddy irrigation system. Ultimately, however, the two REDD+ pilots left neither community with lasting socio-economic benefits and sowed greater levels of mistrust with the state forest bureaucracy, with whom Talaga’s villagers already had a poor relationship. Moreover, no decisive impact on reducing deforestation and forest degradation is evident from these trials, given that, in the vicinity of the community where forest rehabilitation activities went ahead, large areas of forest loss are present, compared with only very small and patchy areas of forest gain. Any positive gains in forest

108  Success and failure in the UN-REDD pilots carbon emission reductions via the Lembah Mukti trial are likely to have been cancelled out by tree cover loss occurring nearby. In the next chapter, I zoom out from this case of REDD+ pilot implementation in Central Sulawesi to consider the winners and losers in the Indonesia–Norway REDD+ story more broadly, as viewed through the lens of political ecology.

Notes 1 Linguistically, the Tomini-Tolitoli is a group of 11 languages spoken in northern Central Sulawesi to which the Dampelas language belongs (Moro 2010). 2 In 1991, Talaga’s population was at 2,012, while in 2010, it had slightly increased to 2,635 (Moro 2010).

References Abbate, M. 2007. The “Sweet Desire”: Cacao Cultivation and Its Knowledge Transfer in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia (STORMA Discussion Paper Series No. 17). Georg-August-Universitaet Göttingen: Göttingen. Ammarell, G. 2013. “Bugis Migration and Adaptation to Local Situations.” Ethnography. Vol. 41. Issue 1. pp. 51–67. Aragon, L.V. 2001. “Communal Violence in Poso, Central Sulawesi: Where People Eat Fish and Fish Eat People.” Indonesia. Vol. 72. pp. 45–79. Barkmann, J., G. Burkard, H. Faust, M. Fremerey, S. Koch, and A. Lanini. 2010. “Land Tenure Rights, Village Institutions, and Rainforest Conversion in Central Sulawesi.” in Tscharntke, T., C. Leuschner, E. Veldkamp, H. Faust, E. Guhardja, and A. Bidin (Eds.). Tropical Rainforests and Agroforests under Global Change. Springer: Berlin. BBC News. 2016. Santoso: Indonesia police kill ‘most-wanted’ militant. British Broadcasting Corporation: London. BBC News. 2018. Indonesian Earthquake: Hundreds Dead in Palu Quake and Tsunami. British Broadcasting Corporation: London. Boer, H.J. 2019. “Deliberative Engagement and REDD+ in Indonesia.” Geoforum. Vol 104. pp. 170–180. Caldwell, I. 1995. “Power, State and Society among the Pre-Islamic Bugis.” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde. Vol 151. Issue 3. pp. 394–421. Damry, Marsetyo, S.P. Quigley, and D.P. Poppi. 2008. “Strategies to Enhance Growth of Weaned Bali Calves (Bos sondaicus) of Small-Holders in Donggala District, Central Sulawesi.” Animal Production. Vol. 10. Issue 3. pp. 135–139. Dechert, G., E. Veldkamp, and I. Anas. 2004. “Is Soil Degradation Unrelated to Deforestation? Examining Soil Parameters of Land Use Systems in Upland Central Sulawesi, Indonesia.” Plant and Soil. Vol. 265. pp. 197–209. Henley, D. 1989. The Idea of Celebes in History (Working Paper No. 59). Center of Southeast Asian Studies: Monash University. Henley, D. 2005. Fertility, Food and Fever: Population, Economy and Environment in North and Central Sulawesi, 1600–1930. KITLV Press: Leiden. Hewat, R. 2017. An Evaluation of Empowerment of Forest Dependent Communities through Support to Civil Society Organizations (Preliminary Draft Country Report for Indonesia prepared for Norad). AECOM International Development Europe S.L: Madrid. Himmelmann, N.P. 2010. “Language Endangerment Scenarios: A Case Study from Northern Central Sulawesi.” in Florey, M. (Ed.). Endangered Languages of Austronesia. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Success and failure in the UN-REDD pilots  109 Howell, S. and E. Bastiensen. 2015. REDD+ in Indonesia 2010–2015: Report of a Collaborative Anthropological Research Programme. University of Oslo: Oslo. Jong, H.N. 2018b. “When Palm Oil Meets Politics, Indonesian Farmers Pay the Price.” Mongabay. Available at: https://news.mongabay.com/2018/06/when-palm-oil-meets-politicsindonesian-farmers-pay-the-price/ Joshi, A. 2014. What Lies Within, We May Never Know: Deforestation Threatening Sulawesi’s Unique Wildlife. Mongabay: Menlo. Available at: https://news.mongabay.com/2014/08/ what-lies-within-we-may-never-know-deforestation-threatening-sulawesis-unique-wildlife/ Li, T.M. 1991. Culture, Ecology and Livelihood in the Tinombo Region of Central Sulawesi. Environmental Management Development Project in Indonesia: Jakarta. Li, T.M. 1997. “Producing Agrarian Transformation at the Indonesian Periphery.” in Blanton, R.E., P.N. Peregrine, D. Winslow, and T.D. Hall (Eds.). Economic Analysis Beyond the Local System. University Press of America: Lanham. Moro, F.R. 2010. A Sketch of Dampelas, a Language of Central Sulawesi. Leiden University: Leiden. Morse, I. 2019. “The Natural Resource Oligarchy Funding Indonesia’s Election.” The Diplomat. Available at: https://thediplomat.com/2019/04/the-natural-resource-oligarchyfunding-indonesias-election/ Nadjamuddin, L. 2017. “A  Dispute Over Land Ownership in Dampelas: Hegemony of Dutch East Indies and Banawa.” Paramita: Historical Studies Journal. Vol. 27. pp. 1–9. Nasrum, M. 2016. “From Communal Conflict to Terrorism in Poso, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia: A Shifting Terrain.” Journal of Peacebuilding & Development. Vol. 11. Issue 2. Nickel Mines Ltd. 2019. Hengjaya Mine. Nickel Mines Ltd. Accessed at: www.nickelmines. com.au/hengjayamine Parwanto, B. 2002. Peasant Economy and Institutional Changes in Late Colonial Indonesia. Universitas Gadjah Mada: Yogayakarta. Reliefweb. 2019. Central Sulawesi Earthquake and Tsunami Emergency Response (September 2018March 2019). Available at: https://reliefweb.int/report/indonesia/central-sulawesiearthquake-and-tsunami-emergency-response-september-2018-march Rijal, S., R.A. Barkey, N. Nasri, and M. Nursaputra. 2019. “Profile, Level of Vulnerability and Spatial Pattern of Deforestation in Sulawesi Period of 1990 to 2018.” Forests. Vol. 10. Issue 191. Schulze, K.E. 2017. “The “Ethnic in Indonesia’s Communal Conflicts: Violence in Ambon, Poso, and Sambas.” Ethnic and Racial Studies. Vol. 40. Issue 12. The Straits Times. 2020. “ISIS-linked Militants Behead One, Murder 3 Others in Indonesia.” The Straits Times. Singapore. UN-REDD Programme. 2012. Free, Prior and Informed Consent for REDD+ in the AsiaPacific Region: Lessons Learned. UNDP, FAO, UNEP: Rome.

5 Winners and losers in the Indonesia–Norway REDD+ story

Political contestations at multiple levels have profoundly shaped the room in which Indonesia has operated regarding REDD+ since 2010, with these contestations undermining outcomes in several ways. Since the 1990s, Indonesia’s national executive power had been under international and domestic pressure to act decisively to end its high rates of forest conversion and tackle its forest fires but had been unable to wield the authority necessary to do so. This is evidenced by Indonesia’s continued very high national rates of forest loss up until and including 2016 and the extensive forest fires in 2009, 2014, and again in 2015 (Caldecott et  al. 2018, Edwards and Heiduk 2015). Norway’s offer of financial and programmatic support via REDD+, coupled with the support of the UN-REDD Programme, gave SBY’s administration a means of demonstrating its commitment to tackling deforestation. But, as shown in Chapters 3 and 4, the way in which REDD+ was implemented from 2010 reflected existing fundamental challenges in Indonesia’s forest governance and land tenure arrangements, not least the influence of pro-deforestation lobbies on national forest and landuse policies (Muhtadi 2019, Morse 2019).1 The influence that business and economic elites exert on Indonesia’s political class is perfectly illustrated by research from the NGO Jatam, which found that 86% of donations to Jokowi’s 2019 election campaign were linked to extractive industry companies, while his rival Prabowo’s campaign saw around 70% of its donations from mining and fossil fuel companies (Jatam 2019). As shown in Chapter 2, commercial influence on Indonesia’s land and forest policies is nothing new. Historically, forests and land have provided both important state revenues and a means for elites to politically control the resources and populations of the outer islands of the archipelago, binding them into the postcolonial Indonesian state-building project. So, although, as of 2019, Norway had spent around USD 130 million of its promised USD 1 billion to support the Indonesian government to address deforestation, the financial incentives offered via REDD+ to curtail forest conversion were still weak compared to other potential economic uses of land, such as plantation, infrastructure, or mining developments. This point is easily demonstrated by considering that Indonesia’s total palm oil production was forecast to reach 43 million tons in 2019–2020, with the country earning just over USD 10 billion on palm oil exports in 2019 (USDA 2019). DOI: 10.4324/9781003267898-6

Winners and losers in the Indonesia–Norway REDD+ story  111 Any realistic assessment of REDD+ (or indeed any other environmental policy) in Indonesia must bear in mind the country’s understandable plan to become an upper-middle-income economy in the near future. Ambitious economic growth goals are clearly laid out in its National Long-Term Development Plan (2005–2025) as well as the Jokowi administration’s Nawacita plan. Unfortunately, from a climate change mitigation perspective, these plans emphasize agricultural, mining, and manufacturing development—all industries with high carbon emissions’ potential.2 Seen in this light and given that it engaged with two of Indonesia’s most valuable natural resources (forests and land), it is unsurprising that REDD+ became a policy area in which various contentious issues came to the fore. This chapter uses the lens of political ecology to further analyse these contentions, focusing on the winners and losers in the Indonesia–Norway REDD+ story to date. Returning to the political ecological narratives outlined in Chapter  1, I particularly reflect on whether REDD+ had a destabilizing effect on sustainable forest management, disabled local systems of livelihoods, and accelerated forestland conflicts. I use these reflections to draw out a broader discussion of what my findings tell us from a political ecology perspective. First, however, I turn to an analysis of the main REDD+ winners and losers.

REDD+ winners and losers over time and in comparative perspective The more time I  have spent analysing REDD+ in Indonesia, the more I  have come to identify this neoliberal forest conservation-enclosure intervention with the metaphor of the tightrope walker who must take great care not to fall into the gaping void below. REDD+ has involved some of the most contentious sociopolitical issues in contemporary Indonesia, from corruption impacting the state forest bureaucracy to customary adat forestland rights and access. Despite the positive, win-win visions of REDD+ proponents of an orderly, consultative, and rights-based approach, there were always going to be difficulties in its implementation, resulting not only in winners, but also in losers. In this section, I consider who these winners and losers are. Earlier in this book, I write of the ‘room for manoeuvre’ on REDD+ implementation. I mean several things by this. I refer to the tightrope politicians and other elites have navigated in order to avoid unleashing the kinds of severe unrest and violence earlier experienced in Indonesia (including in Central Sulawesi in the late 1990s and early 2000s), while still attempting to deliver ambitious growthoriented economic development. I  also refer to the space within which various parts of the state forest bureaucracy have sought to navigate REDD+ to consolidate, or at least not lose, power in the face of perceived challenges to their longstanding areas of competence and authority. But, in another sense, the ‘room for manoeuvre’ also refers to the spaces occupied by civil society actors engaged in counter movements against REDD+, or at least against the specific ways in which REDD+ has been implemented in particular places. In other words, the room for manoeuvre for REDD+ is the space shaped by the contours of resistance to,

112  Winners and losers in the Indonesia–Norway REDD+ story and support for, it. Understanding who the winners and losers are in the Indonesia– Norway REDD+ story is therefore important for our overall appreciation of the performance of REDD+. It is also crucial for any evaluation of its continued relevance as a transformative global climate change mitigation policy. First, let us focus on the different presidential administrations of SBY and Jokowi. As noted earlier, SBY’s presidency faced significant challenges in the form of vested interests opposed to political and economic reforms, with societal fragmentation continuing to be a major concern (Kingsbury 2005, Ricklefs 2008). The make-up of this administration meant that any legislation needed cross-party collaboration, resulting in the administration often choosing a path of least political resistance (Kingsbury 2005). But SBY also faced pressures to address deforestation, both from abroad and from domestic critics. Although he had proposed to cut Indonesia’s carbon emissions to up to 41% as compared to business-as-usual levels by 2020 with international support, his administration was criticized over its inability to curtail forest fires deliberately set for clearing peatland for palm oil (Reuters 2009, Edwards and Heiduk 2015). The provisions of the 2010 Letter of Intent with Norway offered SBY’s administration a solution to this morass of challenges. It allowed his administration to point to REDD+ as a concrete set of interventions to tackle rampant deforestation and its associated problems. It included the promise of USD 1  billion to help Indonesia keep forests standing and compensate forest users. And it provided an alibi for bypassing the part of the Indonesian state bureaucracy most likely to resist the types of reforms REDD+ would entail: through the Norwegian stipulation that the intervention should be administered via a new cabinet-level agency rather than via the Ministry of Forestry. In many ways, then, REDD+ can be considered a win, albeit a modest one, for SBY’s generally beleaguered second administration (Ricklefs 2008). By the time of the launch of President Jokowi’s first administration in late 2014, however, the sweet nectar of REDD+ was beginning to turn sour, with resistance to it beginning to emerge from a variety of sources. Although still at the helm of a powerful and well-resourced ministry, the leadership of the Ministry of Forestry were reportedly displeased at being bypassed in such a high-profile forestry initiative; certain provincial administrations perceived that REDD+ was disturbing the delicate, formal balance of relations between them and the central government, particularly with regard to forest revenues; and although, as in Lembah Mukti, some REDD+ pilots were perceived to have been successful, others, including but not limited to the FPIC pilot in Talaga, had become mired in existing contentions over forestland tenure and governance. REDD+ was thus becoming, or indeed had already become, a political hot potato by the time Jokowi took office. Elements of the state forest bureaucracy who saw the National REDD+ Agency as an unwanted irritation were able to brief the new administration against it early in the presidency, with decisive results (Caldecott et al. 2018). This was possible because Jokowi’s first year in office was a particularly difficult one. Warburton (2016, p. 297) notes it was characterized by “a combative and divided parliament, disunity in cabinet, tensions within his own party, and declining approval ratings.” The Jokowi administration therefore began to focus narrowly on infrastructure

Winners and losers in the Indonesia–Norway REDD+ story  113 development and deregulation, with other problems subordinated to these twin goals (Warburton 2016). The conservative and nationalist features of these goals helped satisfy Jokowi’s support base as his presidency evolved. Jokowi’s disbanding of the National REDD+ Agency can thus be seen as part of his 2016 political recovery and, in light of his 2019 re-election for a second term and Norway’s confirmation that it would reward the apparent post-2016 dip in deforestation, his administration emerges as a REDD+ winner. Given the analysis already provided in Chapter  3 of the initial bypassing of the Ministry of Forestry by the National REDD+ Agency, followed by the 2015 disbanding of the latter and the insertion of REDD+ into a sub-directorate of the newly formed MoEF, I will not dwell here on REDD+ winners and losers in the state forest bureaucracy. I will, however, note one aspect not covered in much depth earlier: the role of environment-focused civil society actors at national level during the early stages of REDD+ as opposed to the post-2015 period. Although many domestic civil society groups had been critical to the Bali Action Plan, various civil society organizations were still important actors in REDD+, with 19 organizations receiving funding through a Norwegian grant scheme for the 2016–2020 period (Caldecott et  al. 2018). This funding was additional to that promised for Indonesia’s post-2016 deforestation reduction and mostly involved the participation of Indonesian grantees in work that covered several countries. Examples include Rainforest Foundation Norway’s support to AMAN’s women’s wing to promote gender-sensitivity in the draft of Indigenous Peoples’ Bill and to Warsi, which focuses on mapping local communities and applying for Social Forestry schemes in Sumatra (Caldecott et al. 2018). But the formal membership of civil society in the multi-stakeholder National REDD+ Agency was not replicated in other forms post-2015, implying that the role of civil society in REDD+ policy formulation became less direct, even if some individual civil society members moved to related positions in government agencies (In-field interviews 2017). Civil society groups that were well-funded and integrated into REDD+ processes at national level before 2015 lost support and can be characterized as losers post-2015. This was, for some time, tempered by the fact that many civil society actors continued to benefit from foreign funding to work on issues related to REDD+ and its spin-off initiatives. But, for reasons I return to in the conclusion of this book, even these activities now hang in the balance. Next, let us consider the REDD+ winners and losers at local level via the lens of the Talaga and Lembah Mukti FPIC pilots. These villages saw different outcomes of their FPIC trials, and it is not altogether obvious who won and who lost in their respective REDD+ stories. On the one hand, Talaga villagers rejected the FPIC trial and could be considered winners in the sense that this decision prevailed, with the local FMU and UN-REDD officials withdrawing their proposals for forest conservation activities that could have prevented villagers from accessing non-timber products. But, on the other hand, Talaga villagers can be considered to have lost out too. This is both because they were subjected to a poorly conducted forest boundary demarcation process in the weeks prior to the FPIC

114  Winners and losers in the Indonesia–Norway REDD+ story trial and because, by heeding the warnings of the local monitoring group, Pokja Pantau, they were unable to access potential benefits from engaging with REDD+. Similarly, whether villagers in Lembah Mukti were winners or losers is not straightforward to determine. On the one hand, Lembah Mukti villagers experienced a less problematic consultation process than Talaga, with the result being that they agreed to sign-up to the potential benefits of REDD+. But although, as a result of the FPIC trial, Lembah Mukti village and the local FMU signed a 12-point Letter of Agreement to define their continued cooperation and were able to undertake some forest rehabilitation activities, ultimately, they did not see performance-based payments through REDD+, motivating them to tap their rubber trees at the earliest opportunity to salvage some economic benefits (In-field interviews 2017, UN-REDD Programme 2012). The question of what concrete socio-economic benefits have been derived from REDD+ activities is relevant not only for the Lembah Mukti pilot, but for all REDD+ projects across the Indonesian archipelago, particularly given that the first payment for REDD+ in Indonesia was announced by Norway only in early 2019 (Seymour 2019). Finally, what about the most important external stakeholder in Indonesia’s REDD+ story: Norway? As with the SBY and Jokowi administrations, Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI) can also be viewed as navigating a policy tightrope. Frustration on the part of Norwegian officials with the slow pace of REDD+ implementation in Indonesia had been expressed at regular intervals since 2010. As the main bilateral funder and instigator of REDD+ activities globally, that the intervention was perceived as being implemented effectively was a matter of prestige for the Norwegian government, particularly for the Ministry of Climate and Environment. So, when NICFI and REDD+ were both sharply criticized in a 2018 report by Norway’s Office of the Auditor General for stalled progress, delayed results, and the initiatives’ ‘uncertain feasibility and effect,’ the response from Ola Elvestuen, the then Minister for Climate and Environment, was to welcome the audit findings, while disagreeing with some of its main conclusions (Riksrevisjonen 2018). The NICFI narrative was that Norway had managed to maintain a focus on anti-deforestation work amidst its other foreign policy interests in Indonesia. In early 2019, more solid ground beyond the REDD+ tightrope NICFI had been navigating seemed to appear. The forest loss data was showing a downward trend for the first time in years, and it was possible to claim that REDD+ activities and the provisions of the 2010 Letter of Intent were having tangible, measurable effects (Seymour 2019). Is Norway, then, an overall REDD+ winner? Perhaps it is. But, as noted in Chapter 3, the reasons behind, as well as the actual extent of, the drop in Indonesia’s rate of forest loss from 2016 are both still contested (Setiawan and Tomsa 2022), with background conditions beyond the direct control of authorities likely playing a decisive role. It is also widely acknowledged that any REDD+ results to date could be reversed in future, particularly under more conservative Indonesian political leadership. The question, then, remains as to whether Norwegian taxpayers will ultimately prove to be REDD+ losers, given that the results they have paid for may only be transient.

Winners and losers in the Indonesia–Norway REDD+ story  115 Although understanding the main winners and losers in the Indonesia–Norway REDD+ story to date is important in assessing the intervention’s overall performance, this type of analysis does not offer a framework for explaining why REDD+ led to different outcomes in Indonesia—some positive, others more pernicious. With this objective in mind, the final section of this chapter returns to three of the core political ecology narratives outlined in Chapter 1 on: (i) degradation and marginalization, (ii) the conservation and control, and (iii) environmental conflicts and exclusion. I particularly refer to experiences from the Talaga and Lembah Mukti FPIC trials to analyse the salience of these three narratives before turning to a set of broader reflections.

The destabilizing effect of state-led forest enclosure efforts on sustainable community forest management To recap, the degradation and marginalization narrative in political ecology suggests that sustainable community management becomes unstable as a result of efforts by state authorities or outside firms to enclose customary collective property or impose new or foreign institutions. As the state seeks to increase the integration of local resources into regional and global markets, local production systems transition to overexploitation of natural resources. Or, in other terms, modernist development interventions that seek to improve the production systems of local people contradictorily lead to decreased sustainability of local practices and negatively affect the equity of resource distribution (Robbins 2004, 2012). The degradation and marginalization thesis was at the core of Pokja Pantau’s concerns regarding the REDD+ pilot in Talaga: what would happen to the precarious customary rights and the community’s interactions with the forest in the future if it signed off on the REDD+ pilot? The argument wielded by Pokja Pantau was indeed that the fragile rights upon which Talaga’s management of local natural resources was based could be further destabilized as a result of signing up to REDD+. Better, then, to resist this attempt by the state (in the form of the local FMU) and foreign institutions (in the form of the UN-REDD Programme) to integrate Talaga’s forest resources into a national and, indeed, global REDD+ neoliberal conservation framework. Given that the FPIC pilot was rejected by Talaga, we can only speculate as to whether its continued involvement in REDD+ would have led to decreased sustainability of its local practices or would have negatively affected the equity of resource distribution at the village site. What we do know, however, is that the fear of negative impacts (forestland grabbing) was palpable enough for community members to lead them to reject the pilot before it could get off the ground. Lembah Mukti, on the other hand, proceeded with the FPIC pilot reportedly because of existing kinship relations between those implementing the pilot and some villagers. But the forest rehabilitation activities carried out there did not take root after the trial ended. Overall, we know that annual forest cover loss in Donggala district in the decade prior to the FPIC trials was, on average, lower than in the period after the trials. We know too that there were large areas of forest cover loss during 2010–2021 in the vicinity of Lembah Mukti. This tells us that the REDD+

116  Winners and losers in the Indonesia–Norway REDD+ story pilots, as an example of state-led neoliberal forest conservation-enclosure, did not lead to noticeable improvements in sustainable community forest management in Donggala district.

The disabling of local systems of livelihoods by officials and global interests Again, to recap, the conservation and control narrative in political ecology suggests that control of resources and landscapes has been wrested from producers or producer groups (by class, gender, or ethnicity) through the implementation of efforts to preserve ‘sustainability’, ‘community’, or ‘nature’. Officials and global interests have disabled local systems of livelihoods, production, and socio-political organization, and, in their struggle to control resources, have characterized historically productive or benign local production practices as unsustainable (Robbins 2004, 2012). This narrative is relevant both to the Talaga and Lembah Mukti FPIC trials in the sense that they cast the small-scale economic activities of both villages as environmentally detrimental. The Global Forest Watch data show, however, that these practices were relatively benign and were at a very small scale. The proposals made via the FPIC trial were to engage the communities in ‘forest conservation activities,’ implying that they needed external inducements to participate in such work. But the local FMU and UN-REDD Programme officials were not the only actors invoking the concepts of ‘sustainability’ and ‘nature’ in relation to Central Sulawesi’s FPIC trials. The local NGO-monitoring group, Pokja Pantau, can also be viewed as arguing that Talaga village represented an ideal form of sustainable community-based natural resource management, where nature was preserved through the limited, careful interactions of the villagers with their surrounding environment (in-field interview 2017). Whether or not this is an accurate representation is an empirical question that must be considered against the Global Forest Watch data for Central Sulawesi. This data indeed shows that forest cover loss around Talaga village, including for any period between 2001 and 2021, pales in comparison with the scale of lost forest cover in other parts of the province, for example in the hills surrounding the Bangka River. This tells us that Central Sulawesi’s REDD+ pilots focused on changing relatively benign systems of local livelihoods but looked away from other areas where larger-scale tree cover loss was in evidence.

The acceleration of conflict through resource enclosure or appropriation Finally, the environmental conflicts and exclusion narrative in political ecology suggests that increasing scarcities produced through resource enclosure or appropriation by state authorities, private firms, or social elites accelerate conflict between groups (by gender, class, or ethnicity). And that, similarly, environmental problems become politicized when local groups secure control of collective resources at the expense of others by leveraging management interventions by

Winners and losers in the Indonesia–Norway REDD+ story  117 development authorities, state agents, or private firms (Robbins 2004, 2012). Given that the Talaga FPIC trial was discontinued and the results of the Lembah Mukti Letter of Agreement with the local FMU meagre, it appears difficult at first glance to conclude whether the environmental conflicts and exclusion thesis is relevant to Central Sulawesi’s REDD+ pilots. At the same time, a conflict did occur during the Talaga FPIC trial, albeit a non-violent one. Pokja Pantau used the opportunity that arose from its monitoring role in Talaga as a platform from which to argue for greater recognition of local community rights to use the forest. This aim conflicted with the stated goals of the local FMU and UN-REDD Programme, which were to engage the community in certain forest conservation activities. Pokja Pantau’s interventions during the FPIC trial have been criticized by some observers who perceived that they raised issues in a conflict-oriented manner without proposing solutions (In-field interviews 2017). Yet, this criticism can also be turned around. Would this conflict-oriented approach have been taken if the FPIC trial had not originally proposed resource enclosure, or if the poorly conducted forest demarcation exercise prior to the Talaga trial had been implemented with greater sensitivity? We cannot answer these counterfactual questions because it is impossible to gather evidence for events that have not occurred. But it is noteworthy that both the Norwegian government-sponsored evaluation of the FPIC trials (Hewat 2017), as well as the UN-REDD Programme’s report on the same (2012), place blame for the Talaga trial outcome squarely on the shoulders of Pokja Pantau, with neither mentioning the earlier and poorly conducted forest demarcation exercise at all. Neither do these reports mention that the way in which the FPIC trial in Talaga was conducted enhanced existing mistrust between villagers and provincial forest officials. These are important omissions for documents purporting to assess the performance of the FPIC trials, particularly given the context of a recent nationwide increase in agrarian conflicts in Indonesia. Indonesia’s Agrarian Reform Consortium reported an increase of almost 50% in 2017 in the number of agrarian conflicts across the country as compared to 2016 (The Jakarta Post 2017). This implies that there were around two agrarian conflicts each day in Indonesia during 2017, with most cases relating to the expansion of the plantation sector (The Jakarta Post 2017). Here, we return to the fundamental difficulty in Indonesia, noted earlier, that claims to forestland, arising from indigeneity, ethno-territorial, and land reform arguments, often collide with each other with often no obvious resolutions (Hall et al. 2011).

Power, regulation, and conflict: what do the findings tell us in a broader perspective? The evidence from Indonesia presented here reflects several typical preoccupations of recent political ecology analysis as a form of critical social theory (Watts 2015). Later in the chapter, I link my findings to these broader theoretical preoccupations (on power and the political, on regulation and the market, and on

118  Winners and losers in the Indonesia–Norway REDD+ story conflict and violence) before turning to a discussion of what my evidence reveals from a political ecology perspective and what it might add to political ecology research. First, I focus on power and the political. When rooted in an analysis of the political history of forest governance in Indonesia generally and in Central Sulawesi specifically, REDD+ can be categorized as a recent neoliberal incarnation of stateled forest conservation-enclosure interventions that have over time attempted to ‘render technical’ landscapes, conservation strategies, and livelihoods in ways that intend to produce particular, regulated outcomes (Watts 2015, Li 2007). But the case study examined here lays bare the intensely political contestations that have surrounded REDD+ implementation at the national, provincial, and local levels in Indonesia. Far from proceeding along a linear and upward developmental trajectory, REDD+ has proceeded haltingly amid politically contested terrain, historically situated policy contradictions, and different understandings of the character and legitimacy not only of state authority, but also of property relations and land tenure situations. In keeping with the Gramscian notion of power as extending beyond the realm of the state alone, the case study reflects how various actors’ abilities and access have shaped their benefits with regard to REDD+ at different scales (Hall et al. 2011, Walker 2014, Ribot and Peluso 2003). Power was wielded by a range of actors in the Central Sulawesi FPIC trials, and, far from being subject to a unidirectional reconfiguration of socio-economic and ecological relations from above, actors typically cast as powerless exercised considerable agency in pursuing their own objectives (Watts 2015, Kosek 2006). Yet, the evidence also points to how neoliberal development interventions lead to the marginalization of certain types of livelihoods that do not fit-in with hegemonic visions of controlled landscape economies and the positions individuals and communities should occupy within them. The entitlements accruing to Lembah Mukti because of their ‘open’ and ‘constructive’ engagement, both with the provincial forest bureaucracy and with NGOs (even if this involved nepotistic relations), stand in stark contrast to the denigration of Pokja Pantau in evaluations for daring to counter the official view of REDD+, even if their critiques were well-grounded in legal and socio-economic realities at pilot sites and, indeed, in the formal terms of the FPIC process itself. Hegemonic power in the form of the multilateral aid system’s monitoring and reporting apparatus thus ‘returned to the scene of the crime,’ placing blame on certain actors while commending others for playing along with the unwritten rules of the FPIC trials, that is that consent was indeed expected. Second is on regulation and the market. The case study also sheds light on the intersections between market dynamics, regulatory mechanisms, social inequalities, and the broader ecological and economic conditions in which peasant communities make their livelihood choices (Watts 2015, Polyani 1957). Sulawesian smallholder strategies and patterns of resource management are set within and reflective of broader provincial, national, regional, and global markets—for example the growing market for cacao—while the FPIC pilots themselves were part of a nascent (and perhaps even fictitious) proto market for forest carbon (Watts 2015).

Winners and losers in the Indonesia–Norway REDD+ story  119 More broadly, land use and regulatory choices in Central Sulawesi can be viewed as being reflective of the ‘mindless extension of capital’ over the systems of access and control over natural resources, where the state is a crucial gatekeeper in the circuit of capital accumulation (Harvey 2014, p. 262). This regulatory role further stratifies social relations and strengthens existing inequalities by allocating land to productive actors (i.e. those that can accumulate the most capital) while placing the heaviest conservation burdens on small-scale actors whose livelihoods may be contested on political, as much as on legal, grounds. Thus, the FPIC trials proceeded in peripheral communities engaging in small-scale economic activities nonetheless cast as environmentally destructive but were not conducted in mining or plantation areas involving substantially greater forest loss. This is because neoliberal modes of production and the logic of capital accumulation price forest carbon at levels potentially attractive only to small-scale peripheral actors, while underpinning a business-as-usual approach to large-scale value creation from natural resource extraction. Indeed, although under the Letter of Intent, Indonesia should have earned USD 5 per ton of CO2 e it reduced through preventing deforestation, it eventually received an effective carbon price of less than USD 1 per ton (Groom et al. 2022). But even the meagre benefits REDD+ intends do not necessarily accrue to small-scale stakeholders, lending an even greater precariousness to their livelihoods. REDD+ as practiced in Central Sulawesi thus involved a process of peripheralization, whereby existing structural inequalities and environmental injustices were reinforced and strengthened. Third is on conflict and violence. The case study presented here gravitates around environmentally focused conflicts, but these conflicts are not simply seen as inevitable outgrowths of environmental or ecological conditions (Le Billon 2015). Rather, conflict arises from the dialectic interplay of political factors and individual agency, socio-economic conditions, and cultural-environmental parameters. The fact that villagers’ livelihoods in Talaga largely depend on produce cultivated in nearby forest areas was not a singular cause of their conflict with the provincial forest bureaucracy. Rather, conflict arose in the confluence of historically insecure land tenure arrangements, repeated state–society interactions on forest boundary issues, and a strong civil society intervention warning against REDD+, all rooted in a broader understanding of the Dampelas’ wider socio-cultural situation in northwestern Central Sulawesi. By recognizing these interactions as conflicts, albeit not physically violent ones, the analysis recalls traditions in political ecology that seek to “express a sensitivity that better captures the unfair or tense character of social relations and associated processes of legitimation and resistance” (Le Billon 2015, p. 599). Neither is conflict at the research sites viewed as being entirely negative from an environmental justice point of view, just as the actions of Pokja Pantau are not cast solely as those of troublemakers, as some reports would have us believe (Le Billon 2015, Zalik 2011). Rather, conflict is represented as a form of socio-environmental struggle against more structural and bureaucratic forms of violence, that is the top-down regulation of natural resource exploitation in ways that reinforce peripheralization and reproduce socio-economic stratification and environmental injustice (Milne

120  Winners and losers in the Indonesia–Norway REDD+ story and Mahanty 2019, Le Billon 2015, Robbins 2004, 2012).3 There is also an understanding here that specific environmental conflicts tend to be rooted in broader contexts of political, economic, and cultural difference and a view that conflict resolution can potentially be pursued through the reduction of inequalities (Le Billon 2015). More broadly, the case study shows that the early multistakeholder incarnation of REDD+ implemented in Indonesia challenged the hegemony of the state forest bureaucracy and its political-economic allies, along with an historically dominant resource-extraction mindset with regard to forestland management. The history of territorial expansion over the archipelago’s outer islands and their forests, the policies and practices of transmigration, the forest revenue-sharing arrangements between central and provincial governments, and a long-term reluctance to recognize customary adat forest tenure, can all be viewed as expressions of cultural hegemony, whereby a diverse society is dominated by an elite that defends current socio-economic and political arrangements, including societal relations with nature (Gramsci 2011). This elite consensus with regard to the trajectory of development and the extractive character of wealth generation from natural resources was, however, contested from both without and within in the years running up to REDD+ implementation in Indonesia. The major impetus for change from outside the country was that if it were to pursue an extractive-based economic development model involving ever-increasing forest loss, reaching carbon emission reduction goals would be harder globally, with some countries (e.g. Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo) possibly following similar trajectories and others (e.g. Norway and the United Kingdom) under pressure to decarbonize their economies sooner than anticipated. Moreover, from within Indonesia, there were two main constituencies for change. First, SBY seems to have believed that addressing deforestation would win support from abroad, which could be used to gain allies and placate critics at home. Second, there was a broad array of domestic non-state actors who aimed to reconfigure Indonesia’s socio-economic and political arrangements by, for example, resolving long-standing contradictions over forest tenure. Addressing forest loss in general and engaging in REDD+ in particular thus seemed to offer a win-win solution that could garner sufficient support among domestic Indonesian constituencies. This is not what eventually occurred, however. As REDD+ implementation continued, it was revealed that there would also be losers, including powerful, entrenched political, and economic elites. For although resistance to REDD+ at the local level in villages such as Talaga meant that the actual extent of REDD+ implementation across Indonesia remained limited, with often little of note practically occurring at pilot sites, the more significant barrier to the intervention’s success was elite resistance from the state forest bureaucracy and its allies. With the advent of Jokowi’s presidency, commentators have lamented its failure to uphold Indonesia’s hard won and still fragile human rights and democratic freedoms (Pangestika 2019). It has also become clear that it was never able to challenge the groups that preside over the country’s natural resources (Pangestika

Winners and losers in the Indonesia–Norway REDD+ story  121 2019). Indeed, Jokowi has been characterized by Muhtadi (2015, p.  349) as a “president caught between oligarchic politics and reform.” Initially seen as a product of the reformasi era of democratization and supported by many activists, Jokowi initially took a progressive track in his first term, widening the gap between his policies and those of more conservative opposition parties. This reportedly left him vulnerable, however, to the demands of powerbrokers within his own party, with Megawati Sukarnoputri, Surya Paloh, and Jusuf Kalla holding huge influence over his administration (Muhtadi 2015).4 Responding to and partly counteracting this dependency is said to be the main reason for Jokowi’s political reorientation during his first term (Muhtadi 2015). Despite a series of largely cosmetic policies aimed at placating Indigenous Peoples and adat rights holders, Indonesian elites directing politics and economic development have used their wealth and power to circumvent policies that would address pressing social and environmental justice concerns. Having risen considerably since the fall of the New Order era, for example, Indonesian wealth inequality as measured by the Gini index has continued at high levels throughout the Jokowi period (World Bank 2020). Although inequality is at the time of writing somewhat lower than the peak of 2013, it was recently cited as a barrier to containing the country’s COVID-19 outbreak, given many low-income households lack access to clean drinking water (Nasir 2020). The prospects for addressing such issues appear slim in the near term. Following the 2019 presidential and legislative elections, only three political parties are outside the ruling coalition, while Jokowi’s main rival for the presidency, Prabowo Subianto, was appointed Minister of Defence (Tehusijarana 2019, Shotaro 2019). There is therefore little opposition to continued inequality in Indonesia among the main political parties. Instead, elites directing the productive forces of Indonesian society have publicly reinforced as common sense a view that prosperity and jobs must be prioritized, for the time being, over human rights and environmental justice. This is a sleight of hand (or to borrow Burawoy’s term: a mystification) that attempts to distract both foreign and domestic observers from a form of predatory capitalism rooted in natural resource extraction and rampant socio-economic inequality, while simultaneously disconnecting economic growth from ecological and social justice concerns (Lears 1985, Burawoy 2012). Cultural hegemony characterizes the current political settlement in Indonesia, with the accommodation of various elite interests (including over forest revenues and resources) a central and defining feature. This understanding resonates with earlier accounts of the centripetal nature of the Indonesian political party system, with analysis of the growing cartelization of Indonesian politics since the start of the reformasi era and with the view that Suharto’s brutal political monopoly has been replaced by an oligopoly within which contemporary elites compete for access to state rents (Dick and Mulholland 2016, Mietzner 2008, Slater 2004). But rather than viewing this as an entirely new state-of-affairs, the historically situated analysis of Indonesian forest governance provided in Chapter  2 shows how the current elite settlement takes its cues from the long echo chamber of the archipelago’s turbulent past. While Suharto’s model of predatory capitalism

122  Winners and losers in the Indonesia–Norway REDD+ story was founded on fairly stable state “networks of political authority and economic interest,” the uneven distribution of its rewards has created “pressures and opportunities for elites and their opponents, who variously seek to contain or progress conflict over the distribution of power and resources” (Rodan and Baker 2020, p. 90). Cultural hegemony in contemporary Indonesia, far from being overwhelmingly successful, is an unstable affair, with a fragmented elite forced to wield a broad array of repressive and ideological apparatuses to maintain control (Burawoy 2012). This is most clearly evidenced by the sheer size of the protests across Indonesian cities witnessed in 2019. What is perhaps surprising is that the Norwegian government has continued to hold up REDD+ in Indonesia as an example for other countries of what the intervention can achieve.5 Why has it done so? I  contend the answer is twofold. First, the risks to REDD+ implementation in Indonesia under changing political circumstances were underestimated and misjudged by its proponents, who appear to have held rather thin and ahistorical understandings of Indonesian political economy and elite settlements. The mixture of repressive and ideological apparatuses at the disposal of Indonesian elites meant that they were able to wield arguments, policies, and practices that overwhelmed the seemingly straightforward, transactional agreements contained in the Norway–Indonesia Letter of Intent (Gramsci 2011, Burawoy 2012, Lears 1985). Second, the risks of continuing with a less-than-effective REDD+ in Indonesia were still more acceptable to the Norwegian government than the alternative of pulling out and admitting failure. After all, if it were not for the flagship Norwegian International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI), politically tricky domestic demands on Norwegian politicians and officials to accelerate decarbonization of their own economy would likely grow stronger, while there were solid diplomatic and economic reasons to deepen, rather than weaken, Norwegian ties in Indonesia. What, then, does this case study add to the field of political ecology? One area where my study may update the research agenda is in its unpacking of political contestations—in the form of oligarchic interests and nepotistic relations—as a means of furthering understanding of the processes of peripheralization, socioeconomic stratification, and environmental degradation. Political ecologists have touched on such issues in environmental management before, notably Robbins’ (2000) article in Political Geography which posits corruption as a form of ‘rotten’ natural resource management institution, underpinning everyday society– environment interactions in rural India. I have also previously edited a volume with Philippe Le Billon (Williams and Le Billon 2017) on how analytical concepts and tools under the rubric of political ecology can be used to examine problematic natural resource extraction practices at both national and subnational levels usually approached from within the resource curse and rentier state paradigms. But others have lamented a general lack of integration of the ‘politics of the belly’ in political ecology analysis (Moritz 2006, pp.  101–126) and called for an explicit linking of political ecology with the study of corruption (Benjaminsen et al. 2009). In our email correspondence in 2017, for example, Paul Robbins opined that we

Winners and losers in the Indonesia–Norway REDD+ story  123 still lack a single-author monograph outlining a strong theorization of the political ecology of natural resource corruption. This book does not fill that void. It does do two things, however. First, by bringing together into one multilevel study the ways in which peripheralization, socioeconomic inequalities, and environmental injustices are reproduced by a neoliberal forest-enclosure conservation intervention, it demonstrates how political ecology can be enlisted to conduct critical policy analysis. If it is the task of political ecologists to outline society’s ‘sloped surfaces and tilting fulcrums of uneven power,’ including the manner in which value flows from particular landscapes, through local institutions and actors, towards distant sites of accumulation in capital cities and more prosperous nations, then it befits this role to show how environmental policies, including those part of global climate change mitigation, are affected by oligarchy, kleptocracy, bribery, nepotism, power-abuse, and elite capture (Robbins 2012, p. 88). And second, in light of recent academic treatments of political forms of corruption that explain corrupt outcomes as the result of a blend of societal collective action and principal agent problems (Amundsen 2019), it emphasizes why a dialectic understanding of the interplay between socio-economic and environmental conditions is vital if future research is to help demystify contemporary forms of cultural hegemony (Burawoy 2012). As I left Palu’s Mutiara airport for Jakarta in late October 2017, I met one of my interviewees from an NGO, and we chatted. It turned out that we were both heading to the same national land tenure policy conference in Jakarta organized by the office of the president. It struck me then how integrated the experiences of the Talaga and Lembah Mukti FPIC trials were with the broader political debates and contentions around forestland tenure and governance continuing across the country. Although the Central Sulawesi FPIC trials involved specific ecologies, places, personalities, and issues, they were also embedded in, and reflective of, Indonesia’s historic forest governance challenges. When taken together with recent national forest policy developments, the Central Sulawesi FPIC pilots tell a multifaceted story of the winners and losers in Indonesia’s REDD+ experience to date. The three political ecology narratives discussed before help us illuminate and further dissect these stories, shedding light on political ecology’s common preoccupations with power and political agency, with regulatory and market dynamics, as well as environmental conflicts and forms of violence. Confronted with the structural violence of elite interests driving large-scale wealth creation via natural resource extraction, as well as more localized forms of nepotistic relations and elite capture, the non-violent conflicts pursued by a range of actors in relation to REDD+ are indicative of their creativity and resilience in manoeuvring Indonesia’s contested forest policy landscape. Talaga’s villagers were not entirely powerless bystanders forced to accept REDD+ regardless of how it would affect them. They were able to reject it and send local FMU and UNREDD officials away, at least for the time being. Their fates were not completely pre-determined by decisions taken by politicians and officials in Jakarta or Palu, with attempts at socializing them into a ‘common sense’ view of neoliberal environmental conservation ultimately falling flat. These individuals and communities

124  Winners and losers in the Indonesia–Norway REDD+ story used their agency to shape their room for manoeuvre and reject REDD+ locally. Faced with potential exclusion from access to parts of their land, they used the weapons of the weak available to them to engage in a classic counter movement (Scott 1985, Polyani 1957). But however impressive this counter movement appeared to me at the local level, ultimately, a large-scale extractive approach to natural resource management still prevails in Indonesia, and the REDD+ pilots in Central Sulawesi were of little consequence to the goals of Indonesia’s political-economic elites. The latter have tenaciously maintained their grip on the archipelago’s forest revenues and resources, while appearing to do just enough to satisfy their commitments under the 2010 Letter of Intent with Norway. Still, this elite grip appears slippery, given the post-Suharto emergence of a type of cultural hegemony based on intraelite competition.

Notes 1 So great has this influence been that forestry is a priority sector in Indonesia’s current National Anti-Corruption Strategy (STRANAS), with a multitude of prosecutions, involving provincial governors, mayors, and other officials, successfully brought by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) over the past 15  years. The KPK have become victims of their own success, however. A recent amendment to the KPK Law places added controls on the KPK which, critics argue, curtail its investigative and enforcement powers (Khafi 2019). 2 Abbreviated RPJMN, the National Long-Term Development Plan covers the period 2005–2025 and aims to achieve the development goals mandated in the 1945 constitution (Indonesia Investments 2019). Nawacita is the Jokowi administration’s own strategic plan (Adinugroho et al. 2018). 3 Analysing a REDD+ FPIC process in Cambodia, Milne and Mahanty (2019) conclude that it represented a form of ‘bureaucratic violence’ because it involved “the implementation of mundane technical rules that hide local contestation, sideline criticism and deny justice.” ’ 4 Former President Megawati’s patronage has reportedly been crucial to Jokowi’s career, although relations between the two were strained around 2015 by her insistence on the appointment of Budi Gunawan for the post of Indonesian Chief of Police, despite him being investigated by the Indonesian Corruption Eradication Commission, the KPK (Brummit 2015). Surya Paloh is a politician and media baron who owns the Media Group and a series of newspapers. Jusuf Kalla, of Makassar, South Sulawesi, was vice president during Jokowi’s first presidential term and is a businessman with interests in hotels, infrastructure, shipping, real estate, transportation, palm oil, and telecommunications (Suparto 2015). 5 Then Norwegian Minister of Climate and Environment Ola Elvestuen stated in 2019 that: “Indonesia has embarked on bold regulatory reforms, and it is showing results” (Jong 2019).

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126  Winners and losers in the Indonesia–Norway REDD+ story Morse, I. 2019. “The Natural Resource Oligarchy Funding Indonesia’s Election.” The Diplomat. Muhtadi, B. 2015. Jokowi’s First Year: A Weak President Caught between Oligarchic Politics and Reform. Australian National University: Canberra. Muhtadi, B. 2019. “Jokowi’s Choice between Political Cartels and the Public Interest.” East Asia Forum. Australian National University: Canberra. Nasir, S. 2020. “Indones’s Poor Can’t Even Afford to Wash Hands.” The Jakarta Post. Available at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2020/04/11/indonesias-poor-canteven-afford-to-wash-hands.html Pangestika, D. 2019. “Jokowi under Fire for Failing to Address Human Rights in Inauguration Speech.” The Jakarta Post. Available at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/ news/2019/10/22/jokowi-under-fire-for-failing-to-address-human-rights-in-inauguration-speech.html Polyani, K. 1957. The Great Transformation. Beacon Press: Boston. Reuters. 2009. “Indonesia CO2 Pledge to Help Climate Talks.” Reuters. Available at: https:// www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-talks-indonesia-idUSTRE58S1CR20090929 Ribot, J.C. and N.L. Peluso. 2003. “A Theory of Access.” Rural Sociology. Vol. 68, Issue 2. Ricklefs, M.C. 2008. A History of Modern Indonesia Since c. 1200 (4th Edition). Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke. Riksrevisjonen. 2018. “Riksrevisjonens undersøkelse av Norges internasjonale klima- og skogsatsing.” Dokument. Vol. 3. Issue 10. Robbins, P. 2000. “The Rotten Institution: Corruption in Natural Resource Management.” Political Geography. Vol. 19. Issue 4. pp. 423–443. Robbins, P. 2004. Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction (1st Edition). Blackwell Publishing: Malden. Robbins, P. 2012. Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction (2nd Edition). Wiley-Blackwell: Malden. Rodan, G. and J. Baker. 2020. “Explaining Political Regimes in Southeast Asia: A Modes of Participation Framework.” in Carroll. T, S. Hameiri, and L. Jones (Eds.). The Political Economy of Southeast Asia: Politics and Uneven Development Under Hyperglobalisation. Palgrave McMillan: London. Scott, J.C. 1985. The Weapons of the Weak: Everyday forms of Peasant Resistance. Yale University Press: New Haven. Setiawan, K.M.P. and D. Tomsa. 2022. Politics in Contemporary Indonesia: Institutional Change, Policy Challenges and Democratic Decline. Routledge: London. Seymour, F. 2019. Indonesia Reduced Deforestation. Norway Pays Up. World Resources Institute: Washington, DC. Shotaro, T. 2019. “Jokowi Forms Broad Indonesia Coalition, Bringing in Rival Prabowo.” Nikkei Asian Review. Available at: https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Jokowi-forms-broad-Indonesiacoalition-bringing-in-rival-Prabowo Slater, D. 2004. “Indonesia’s Accountability Trap: Party Cartels and Presidential Power after Democratic Transition.” Indonesia. Issue 78. pp. 61–92. Suparto, I. 2015. “5 Things to know about Indonesian Vice-President Jusuf Kalla.” The Straits Times. Available at: https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/5-thingsto-know-about-indonesian-vice-president-jusuf-kalla Tehusijarana, K.M. 2019. “In 2019, Jokowi Keeps Friends Close, Enemies Closer.” The Jakarta Post. The Jakarta Post. 2017. “Cases of Agrarian Conflict Increase in 2017: Consortium.” The Jakarta Post. Available at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2017/12/28/cases-ofagrarian-conflict-increase-in-2017-consortium.html

Winners and losers in the Indonesia–Norway REDD+ story  127 UN-REDD Programme. 2012. Free, Prior and Informed Consent for REDD+ in the AsiaPacific Region: Lessons Learned. UNDP, FAO, UNEP: Rome. USDA. 2019. Indonesia Oilseeds and Products Annual 2019. USDA Foreign Agricultural Service. GAIN Report No. ID1903. Walker, G. 2014. “A  Theoretical Walk through the Political Economy of Urban Water Resource Management.” Geography Compass. Issue 8–5. pp. 336–350. Warburton, E. 2016. “Jokowi and the New Developmentalism.” Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies. Vol. 52. Issue 13. Watts, M.J. 2015. “Now and Then: The Origins of Political Ecology and the Rebirth of Adaptation as a Form of thought.” in Perreault, T., G. Bridge, and J. McCarthy (Eds.). The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology. Routledge: Abingdon. Williams, D.A. and P. Le Billon (Eds.). 2017. Corruption, Natural Resources and Development: From Resource Curse to Political Ecology. Edward Elgar Publishing: Cheltenham. World Bank. 2020. Gini Index. World Bank Estimate for Indonesia. The World Bank: Washington, DC. Zalik, A. 2011. “Protest-As-Violence in Oil Fields: The Contested Representation of Protests in Two Extractive Sites.” in Feldman, S., C. Geisler, and G.A. Menon (Eds.). Accumulating Insecurity: Violence and Dispossession in the Making of Everyday Life. University of Georgia Press: Athens.

Conclusion Beyond REDD+, towards regenerative nature–society relations

In September 2021, 2 years after Norway agreed to pay Indonesia USD 56 million for preventing the emission of 11.23 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) through reducing its rate of deforestation in 2017, Indonesia unilaterally scrapped its longstanding agreement with Norway on REDD+ (Jong 2021). Then, in early October  2022, the two countries announced a controversial new bilateral forest and climate deal (Williams et  al. 2022). Why did this back-and-forth among the long-standing partners occur? Superficially, the termination of the original Letter of Intent arose from different interpretations of the bilateral agreement. On the Indonesian side, the payment was seen as a contribution for climate change mitigation results already achieved by the state (Interview 2022). But on the Norwegian side, REDD+ payment-for-results still had to adhere to public grant standards of probity and transparency (Interview 2022). The Norwegians wanted to supervise spending of the REDD+ payment via Indonesia’s newly constituted Environment Fund (BPDLH), including via its own reviews, field visits, and an evaluation (Interview 2022). But the Indonesian negotiators considered this a diplomatic affront, akin to being treated like an NGO-grantee rather than a sovereign state that had demonstrated important achievements in reducing its deforestation rate (Interview 2022). Better, then, for Indonesia to pull out of the deal and renegotiate a new arrangement when it came to civil society and Indigenous Peoples’ involvement, as well as support to independent scientific research on its environmental policies (Williams et al. 2022). In light of the controversies that surround it, it is hard not to see Indonesia’s renegotiation of its forest and climate deal with Norway as another expression of the pursuit of business-as-usual on the part of its elites. Not only did Indonesia temporarily withdraw from its first major state-to-state agreement to implement forest conservation activities via REDD+, it also sought to close down dozens if not hundreds of environmental projects by civil society groups that had clustered around the main Norway–Indonesia agreement (Interview 2022). The new agreement also failed to mention support for civil society and Indigenous groups, both crucial sets of actors in the original Letter of Intent (Williams et al. 2022). Indeed, in early 2022, the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had told the Norwegian DOI: 10.4324/9781003267898-7

Conclusion  129 embassy in Jakarta that any funding to implementing partners for projects related to the Letter of Intent, as well as any ongoing projects, should be terminated (Interview 2022). So, while Indonesia committed in November 2021 at the UNFCCC COP 26 in Glasgow to reach carbon neutrality in the forest sector by 2030, it also left the door open for future deforestation (Suoneto and Paramitha 2021). Its Minister of Environment and Forestry, Siti Nurbaya Bakar, tweeted in Glasgow that “the massive development under President Jokowi must not stop in the name of carbon emissions or in the name of deforestation” (Bakar 2021). This statement was not only a rhetorical device but was also backed by legislative changes. Notably, the Omnibus Law that sparked protests across Indonesian cities in 2019 (noted in the introduction to this book) has been criticized on environmental grounds (Jong 2020). This is because it restricts the public’s ability to consult on or challenge projects that may cause environmental and social harms (Jong 2020). In short, Indonesia’s elites have carefully shaped their room for manoeuvre on forest policy by prioritizing economic growth in the near term, deflecting criticisms through pointing to recent, modest achievements on reducing forest loss. To be clear, Indonesia’s ambitions of becoming a higher-middle-income economy, and of realizing the vision of its 1945 constitution, are entirely understandable and indeed laudable. The fundamental problem against the backdrop of climate science, however, remains the extractive-oriented, carbon-intensive, and inequality-laden path it plans to get there. But although this is in part a result of Indonesian elite choices over many decades since independence, including illicit extraction of the country’s forest wealth, we must recognize that it is also a product of the way Indonesia was violently inserted into the global capitalist economy during colonialism. At this juncture, it is important to remind ourselves of the far larger picture. Overall, the world is still losing more forests than it replaces (FAO 2022). Although not the only option available to policymakers, reducing deforestation and preserving forest carbon are still crucially important from a global climate change mitigation point of view. Most deforestation still occurs in the tropics, including in Indonesia, Brazil, and the Congo Basin, though this is partly driven by hyper-capitalist consumption of goods elsewhere (FAO 2022). Yet, Norway’s important bilateral agreements for arresting tropical deforestation through REDD+ have in recent years faced major turbulence, not only in Indonesia but also in Brazil where the initiative was suspended during the Bolsonaro era (Fouche 2022). Given the range of evidence presented not only in this book on the politics of deforestation and REDD+ implementation in Indonesia, but also in other recent studies of REDD+ (e.g., Maxton-Lee 2020, Milne et al. 2019), it is past time to re-evaluate this neoliberal environmental approach to deforestation and global climate change mitigation. The remainder of this conclusion is devoted to summarizing lessons, derived from my case evidence, for doing just that. It also discusses the potential of various other options both within and beyond Indonesia for addressing the global climate crisis and moving towards more regenerative nature–-society relations.

130  Conclusion

Sizable and powerful opposition to REDD+ in Indonesia has hampered its success Although REDD+ in Indonesia has had its supporters, there is still sizable and powerful opposition to it, which adds to the problem of the uncertain permanence of carbon sequestration in trees. The strongest support for REDD+ in Indonesia arose during SBY’s administration, not only from the presidency itself, but also from the multi-stakeholder National REDD+ Agency and a number of national, mainly environment-focused, NGOs. SBY’s administration saw REDD+ as a means to bolster his political situation with international support during a difficult period of his presidency. Several provinces, including Central Sulawesi and Central Kalimantan, also initially responded enthusiastically to REDD+, given the prospect of increased financing (In-field interviews 2017). All of this was supported from without by the Norwegian government via NICFI and by the UN-REDD Programme. But the central state forest bureaucracy, embodied by the Ministry of Forestry, later becoming the MoEF, was not a main supporter of REDD+. It was, after all, initially bypassed. At the same time, the Ministry of Forestry was still involved with REDD+ during its early years, primarily via the forest gazettement process rolled out in parallel to REDD+ readiness activities (In-field interviews 2017). But when the MoEF took over responsibility for REDD+, and the National REDD+ Agency was disbanded in 2015, the ministry did not treat REDD+ as a flagship intervention (Caldecott et al. 2018, In-field interviews 2017). The MoEF formally kept REDD+-type initiatives as part of its broader portfolio, but it actively attempted to undermine the more progressive rights-based practices envisaged by the UN-REDD Programme and in the 2010 Letter of Intent. This is evidenced by several reports of malpractice in the related forest gazettement and REDD+ FPIC processes. President Jokowi’s first administration purposely distanced itself from REDD+ in 2015 after being briefed against it. This should be seen in light of Jokowi’s need to placate critics during a turbulent initial year as president. Most Indonesian actors and institutions that have provided support for REDD+ are Javabased, though REDD+ cannot just be considered a Javanese imposition on the outer islands of the archipelago. At the same time, the marked de-prioritization of REDD+ since 2015 can be seen as part of the reassertion of tight control on the archipelago’s forest wealth by the country’s political-economic elites.

Political contestations at multiple levels affected Indonesia’s REDD+ outcomes Contrary to the analyses of optimistic REDD+ proponents approaching the initiative from a forest science or environmental economics perspective, politics matters for arresting deforestation. Political contestations surrounding REDD+ in Indonesia were evident right from the beginning at the national, provincial, and local levels. The incarnations of REDD+ attempted in Indonesia can be likened

Conclusion  131 to a Pandora’s Box, since they held both the promise of positive change as well as the risk of deteriorations in rights and land tenure situations for already-vulnerable actors. It is these promises and risks that lie at the heart of the many political contestations surrounding REDD+ implementation in Indonesia. Given Indonesia’s highly unequal society, not all resistance to REDD+ led to the same impacts. Indeed, Indonesia’s politicians, senior bureaucrats, and lobbyists have been the primary forces in shaping REDD+. Responding to both domestic and foreign pressures to act decisively on the very high rates of deforestation in Indonesia since the late 1990s, SBY’s administration played a crucial role in setting up the 2010 Letter of Intent with Norway and its key provision of establishing the National REDD+ Agency (Letter of Intent 2010, Reuters 2009, Lang 2011). This short-lived agency initially struggled to get its work off the ground, meeting resistance and diversionary tactics from the then Ministry of Forestry which was largely bypassed due to concerns about corruption (Caldecott et al. 2018, Wibowo and Giessen 2015). By 2015, the National REDD+ Agency had made some strides in implementation, engaging in a range of pilots to test various elements (including the FPIC pilots in Central Sulawesi). Before it could get any further, however, the agency was disbanded to help ensure the survival of President Jokowi’s new administration, which encountered intra-elite political battles during its first year (Caldecott et al. 2018, Warburton 2016). Responsibility for REDD+ was then placed in a sub-directorate of the newly formed MoEF, with far fewer individuals working on REDD+ than previously, all of them civil servants (In-field interviews 2017). REDD+ was thus deprioritized and superseded by a range of superficial spin-off forest initiatives, including Social and Customary Forestry and the One Map, One Data Policy. The dip in Indonesian forest losses from 2017 was attributed by the Norwegian and Indonesian governments to the success of REDD+ activities (despite other factors beyond authorities’ direct control being at play), and a first payment from Norway under the provisions of the Letter of Intent was to be made (Caldecott et al. 2018, Seymour 2019). Yet, differing interpretations of the conditions in which this payment could be made eventually led Indonesia to renegotiate the deal in 2022. REDD+ outcomes in Indonesia were also shaped at specific pilot sites through localized contestations and resistance. Such resistance was not uniform across the REDD+ pilots in Central Sulawesi, and several preconditions influenced outcomes. The way pilots were conducted, pre-existing relations between the community and those conducting them, the extent to which the community depended on forest access, their existing and historically situated perceptions of outsiders, and the existence of trigger events, such as NGO advocacy, all played a decisive role. Other studies of REDD+ elsewhere in Indonesia show that the rejection of the Talaga pilot is not a unique case. Howell and Bastiensen (2015, p. 18) report, for example, that “fear of losing land or access to areas important for existing livelihoods dominated discussions” on the Kalimantan Forest and Climate Partnership (KFCP) was launched in 2007 as a flagship project of the Indonesia–Australia Forest Partnership. As noted earlier, this project was discontinued in 2013 following an open letter sent to Central Kalimantan’s governor from 14 Kapuas

132  Conclusion indigenous leaders who criticized KFCP for not respecting the principles of free, prior and informed consent, while “ignoring the trespasses of neighbouring palm oil plantations encroaching on their land” (Howell and Bastiensen 2015, p. 18). It is perhaps possible that stories of poorly implemented REDD+ pilots have shaped the room for manoeuvre for this neoliberal forest conservation-enclosure intervention at the local level in a manner that is disproportionate to the actual number of pilot rejections or poorly implemented projects. At the same time, analysis has found that only two Indonesian REDD+ projects (the Katingan Peatland Restoration and Conservation Project and the Rimba Raya Biodiversity Reserve Project, both in Central Kalimantan) have been formally verified as having successfully achieved both a technical carbon emissions reduction standard and a social-environmental standard established to assess whether communities and their environment are benefitting (Lang 2019). A synthesis of ethnographic research on REDD+ further afield in mainland Southeast Asia has found too mounting evidence that “REDD+ faces significant challenges in addressing the political and economic drivers of forest loss and degradation” (Milne et al. 2019, p.  93). Political contestations surrounding REDD+ indeed appear crucial for explaining its impacts.

REDD+ in Indonesia led to some pernicious outcomes for people and communities Despite efforts to make it more participatory, transparent, and less top-down, REDD+ as implemented in Indonesia appears to have been unable to change political culture enough to avoid at least some pernicious outcomes for people and communities. For example Lembah Mukti’s acceptance of the REDD+ pilot should have resulted in community benefits under the terms of their agreement with the local FMU and the UN-REDD Programme. But actual benefits were meagre, and the few modest forest rehabilitation efforts that did take place were not to outlast the FPIC trial (In-field interviews 2017). Indeed, it has been found elsewhere in Indonesia that REDD+ activities have petered-out once pilots end, leaving an uncertain legacy (Enrici and Hubacek 2018). In her study of the Ulu Masen REDD+ Project in Aceh, for example, Adibah Setyowati shows that participatory mapping produced contradictory effects by impinging on the claims of communities seeking territorial resolution while also subtly legitimizing the state’s forest claims (Setyowati 2019). REDD+ in Indonesia is certainly the subject of multiple reports of local conflicts and mistrust surrounding pilots, as described before. The focus of much of the National REDD+ Agency’s work during 2010–2015 was on ground-truthing various elements of the intervention at pilot sites across Indonesia. But civil society activists are quick to point out that these trials typically did not engage with larger-scale actors responsible for deforestation, such as mining conglomerates or palm oil plantations, and focused overwhelmingly on relatively small-scale forest users, mainly local communities accessing forests to support their livelihoods (Howell and Bastiensen 2015). Indeed, fears that REDD+ would restrict the

Conclusion  133 community’s already precarious access to forest products needed to support their livelihoods were what ultimately led villagers in Talaga to reject the pilot there in 2012. But Talaga’s experience with REDD+ was also used by local advocates to revitalize dormant debates and policy ideas around formalizing adat forms of forestland tenure and access, as embodied in the Customary and Social Forestry initiatives. In other words, the counter movements that emerged against REDD+ attempted to turn the potential costs of the intervention on forest-dependent communities into latent benefits: benefits these groups hoped could be realized via the various REDD+ spin-off initiatives. These benefits, however, still remain to be seen by many communities, and the Customary and Social Forestry initiatives continue to be criticized for failing to settle questions of fundamental rights to land and natural resources.

REDD+ dampened deforestation in Indonesia, but not as much as hoped From 2017, there was a drop in primary forest loss in Indonesia at national level (Global Forest Watch 2020). But, again as noted earlier, this drop followed years of all-time record losses in primary forests in the years following the 2010 signature of the Letter of Intent—in 2012, 2014, and 2016. Indonesia’s land-use carbon emissions roughly trebled after 2010 to a peak of 3 billion tons with the fires in 2015–2016 and net deforestation at over a million ha, then stabilized at about half the peak level while deforestation declined from about 0.6 to 0.5 million ha annually (Caldecott et  al. 2018). Crucially, the Norway–Indonesia calculations on REDD+ payments under the Letter of Intent did not include Indonesia’s massive CO2 emissions from peat-soil decomposition and burning, which are typically related to forestland clearance (Usher 2019). If these peatland emissions had been included, the positive Indonesian emission reduction story would be more modest. In addition, the 2017 dip in the rate of Indonesia’s forest losses cannot be attributed solely to actions on the part of the authorities but is also linked to weather conditions and commodity prices that dampened incentives for forest conversion across the archipelago (Setiawan and Tomsa 2022). Indeed, even REDD+ proponents recognize that multiple factors lie behind the 2017 dip (Seymour 2019, Caldecott et al. 2018). We can conclude, therefore, that REDD+ dampened primary forest loss in Indonesia from 2017, though not as much as initially hoped. Given what we know (summarized in Chapter  2) of the successive waves of violent colonialism and neocolonialism, which have helped shape Indonesia’s contemporary political economy, fundamentally orienting it towards natural resource extraction and competitive exporting, it is unsurprising that REDD+ should have encountered so many challenges in this context. And yet, if REDD+ is to succeed at all, it is precisely under such, or similar, conditions that it must find its way forwards. Considering this, it is not unreasonable to consider whether REDD+ has any prospects at all in Indonesia or elsewhere. In other words, should it merely be reformed or entirely replaced? If so, by what? The remainder of this conclusion

134  Conclusion is devoted to addressing these questions, divided, for the sake of simplicity, into four sections covering: (i) REDD+ and its spin-off initiatives in Indonesia; (ii) REDD+ beyond Indonesia; (iii) climate disaster prevention policies in Indonesia beyond REDD+; and (iv) climate disaster prevention policies beyond Indonesia and apart from REDD+.

REDD+ and its spin-off initiatives in Indonesia Indonesia’s Forest Moratorium, begun in 2011 as a result of the 2010 Letter of Intent, theoretically bans new concessions that would lead to the conversion of peat and natural forests. The 2019 announcement that the moratorium would be made permanent, pending presidential approval, possibly assures the conservation of about 660,000  km2 of primary and peat forests included in the scheme (Jong 2019a). Given that expansion of palm oil, timber concessions, and mining operations in areas of natural forest are the main proximate drivers of deforestation in Indonesia (Palmer and Obidzinski 2009), and despite reports of continued breaches, the Forest Moratorium is an important policy measure that has led to some avoided deforestation: so far contributing around 4% of the carbon emissions reduction target Indonesia has pledged to meet by 2030 (Groom et al. 2022). In order to continue to push Indonesia’s still too high levels of forest loss towards a downward trajectory and prevent the repetition of 2015’s devastating forest fires, the moratorium should stay in place and be more strictly enforced. It is unclear how committed the re-elected Jokowi administration is to maintain and enforcing the moratorium, however. During campaigning for the 2019 elections, both Jokowi and his rival (now Minister of Defence) Prabowo Subianto threatened to remove the moratorium in support of the domestic palm oil industry (Laurence and van Oosterzee 2019). This was intended as a possible Indonesian countermeasure against the European Union’s announced phasing-out of biofuels produced from palm oil by 2030 (Laurence and van Oosterzee 2019). Although the immediate danger that the moratorium might be annulled has passed for now, the strength of the Indonesian agricultural and plantation lobbies means that both the permanence and consistent enforcement of this policy measure should not be taken for granted (Laurence and van Oosterzee 2019).1 Deforestation in Indonesia has historically been made possible not only by government-backed changes in forest area functions, which the Forest Moratorium should help to address for as long as it endures and is properly enforced. It is also a result of illegal activities driven by a combination of high market demand and poor forest management (Indrarto et al. 2012). This is why REDD+ was never meant only to enclose forests but envisaged a raft of enabling policies in the areas of governance, land tenure, agriculture, energy, and community forest management (Angelsen et al. 2009). Indeed, the necessity of broad-based reforms as a precondition for successful REDD+ implementation was recognized in Indonesia’s National REDD+ Strategy of 2012 (Indonesian REDD+ Taskforce 2012). A major problem was, and still is, that Indonesia’s forest and land tenure regime consists of various overlapping layers of rights, obligations, and practices that

Conclusion  135 have built-up over time, mostly as ad hoc responses to stave off imminent political threats to elites. The clearest case in point is the estimated 7.3 million ha of customary territory that overlapped with State Forests, coupled with the huge areas of forestland that had never been formally gazetted as of 2010 (Myers et al. 2017). Forestland rights needed to be urgently clarified, and indeed attempts were made to do so via the National REDD+ Agency’s ground-truthing process linked to pilots as well as, perhaps, the Ministry of Forestry’s gazettement process. As discussed earlier, however, examples of poor implementation of, and bureaucratic violence in, these processes abound and were used by various actors to justify resistance to REDD+. The REDD+ spin-off initiatives of more recent years were intended to be viewed as attempts to ease the broader, deeper forestland governance and tenure challenges that REDD+ was unable to resolve. But it is difficult not to see these spin-off initiatives as simply another superficial round of ad hoc elite responses that mask deeper problems and contentions. The Social Forestry initiative, for example, has been criticized for failing to resolve customary claims to the ownership of forestland and for the slow progress of its implementation (Myers et  al. 2017). The bigger picture is of course Indonesia’s stated ambition to join the ranks of upper middle-income countries and the policy agenda outlined in its National Long-Term Development Plan (2005–2025), which emphasizes hyper-capitalist development in the agricultural, mining, and manufacturing sectors, all likely to line the pockets of elites and contribute to further forest cover loss. The political and economic clout of these sector lobbies means that any presidential administration must tread carefully on any forest and land tenure policy or reform that could impinge on their wealth creation plans. In this light, it was rather naïve of REDD+ proponents to expect transformative forestland and institutional reforms in return for the promise of USD 1 billion, when in one year alone Indonesia can earn upwards of USD 10 billion just from selling its palm oil (USDA 2019).

REDD+ beyond Indonesia As noted in Chapter  2, there has recently emerged a more critical scholarship on REDD+ implementation, not only in relation to Indonesia but also to other countries. Such scholarship has questioned the social, political, and environmental impacts of REDD+ and has led to policy discussions as to whether it is time to abandon it altogether (Evans 2017). From the evidence I  have collated, we can observe that REDD+ has been deliberately deprioritized since 2015 in Indonesia, with the bilateral Letter of Intent with Norway later renegotiated by the Indonesian authorities. The demonstrable contributions of local REDD+ pilots to reducing deforestation and improving the socio-economic conditions and rights situations of local communities appear to have been negligible in Indonesia, with some pernicious effects in evidence. Although REDD+ writ large has perhaps led to some interesting counter movements and reformist dynamics, the ultimate results of its various spin-off initiatives remain deeply uncertain and are contingent on broader political-economic developments. What must, above all,

136  Conclusion be abandoned is the view, still prevalent among some REDD+ proponents, that REDD+ was ever capable of changing the basic incentives and strategies of Indonesia’s political-economic elites. It cannot—the stakes involved for those playing this game are far too high. Nevertheless, to the extent that REDD+ or similar neoliberal forest conservation-enclosure interventions continue, there is a strong need for more systematic and multidisciplinary evidence on the social, political, and environmental impacts of REDD+ activities around the world. This includes comparisons of the different forms of REDD+ design and implementation and how they perform under varying contextual circumstances. It is particularly important to further systematically consider how FPIC outcomes are influenced by pre-existing relationships between communities and implementers and what can be done to make these processes more transparent and accountable to stakeholders. A  major effort to understand the impact of REDD+ undertaken in recent years by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), the Global Comparative Study (GCS) for Achieving REDD+ Results, is producing a range of research with such goals in mind.2 Funded by bilateral and multilateral donors, including Norway, these studies are producing new evidence on and insights into REDD+ performance in priority geographies for the intervention around the world. It is promising that several studies produced via the GCS project consider questions of political context, power dynamics, and land rights struggles salient to REDD+ (e.g. Vallet et al. 2019). At the same time, a search of the GCS publications database in 2019 revealed only one study with an explicit political ecology approach to studying REDD+ in Papua New Guinea (Babon 2014). Given the benefits of political ecology in terms of its ability to “critically scrutinize . . . complexities as partly immanent to REDD+ policies and practices, and as partly constituted through ongoing struggles, histories and geographies of specific places” (Asiyanbi 2016), it is crucial that multidisciplinary research on REDD+ performance includes more political ecologists, in addition to the existing forest scientists and environmental economists. Future research should particularly focus on how REDD+ implementation is performed under nationalist oligarchic conditions, on how nepotistic interests shape land and forest use, on how FPIC is subverted to become a tool of bureaucratic violence, and whether more recent forms of REDD+ (e.g. jurisdictional REDD+) can help avoid earlier problems.

Climate disaster prevention policies in Indonesia apart from REDD+ As the largest economy in Southeast Asia, Indonesia remains one of the world’s largest carbon emitters, with much of this pollution coming from forest and peatland clearance (Reuters 2022). In October 2022, it pledged to further reduce its emissions by 31.89% from a business-as-usual scenario by 2030 on its own, or by 43.2% with international support (Reuters 2022). REDD+ has been viewed as a major part of Indonesia’s carbon reduction commitments (Dunne 2019). But carbon emissions from forest loss still constitute a large proportion of Indonesia’s

Conclusion  137 overall emissions, with peat-based forest fires contributing to emission spikes (Dunne 2019). Data from Indonesia’s MoEF shows that another large portion of Indonesia’s carbon emissions is linked to its energy sector (Dunne 2019). Indonesia is the world’s fifth largest producer of coal, and, although around 80% of this is exported to China, India, Japan and South Korea, a large proportion of its domestic energy is derived from coal (Dunne 2019).3 As we have seen, extractive industries are major contributors to Indonesian political party election coffers, a main mechanism by which they seek to secure a favourable policy and business environment (Jatam 2019). Notwithstanding the hold of extractive industries on Indonesia’s political elites, there is considerable scope for further development of renewable energy sources in the country. Indonesia is already the second largest producer of geothermal energy after the United States, and it has been estimated that 29,000 MW of untapped geothermal power potential, or around 40% of the world’s geothermal reserves, are to be found in the archipelago (ADB 2018). Indonesia also opened its first wind farm in 2018: the Sidrap Windfarm on Sulawesi Island, the largest in Southeast Asia generating 75 MW (OPIC 2018). An analysis by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IREA) shows, too, that Indonesia generates only around 16 MW of its domestic energy from solar power, with potential for greater solar power generation, particularly to meet the needs of remote households (Dunne 2019). Do these low-carbon energy sectors provide grounds for some optimism that Indonesia’s pledged carbon emission reductions by 2030 need not be reliant on a deprioritized REDD+ and the maintenance and proper enforcement of the Forest Moratorium alone? Perhaps they do. It could be, for example, that domestic investors and businesses will diversify their portfolios to include not only mining and palm oil, but also low-carbon renewable energy projects. While probably still involving some deforestation, such investment decisions could in theory and over time reduce Indonesia’s net carbon emissions. A 2019 study on energy transitions in Southeast Asia warns, however, that Indonesia is behind not only Singapore and Malaysia in terms of its readiness for the transition to cleaner energy, but that it is also behind Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines (WEF 2019). The same study suggests that although many firms identify climate change risks from environmental negligence as one of the top five threats to their investments, further development of the clean energy sector has been hampered by the country’s regressive renewable energy sourcing policy (under the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources Regulation No. 50 of 2017), which capped the purchase price of green energy (WEF 2019). Although new regulations are in force to promote renewable energy in 2022, we can expect Indonesia’s transition to cleaner energy to be sluggish, given its enormous incomes from coal. With this in mind, a potential focus of further democratic reform presents itself: reducing the influence of interests linked to palm oil and extractive industries on Indonesia’s political-economic elites and, therefore, on its national forest, land use, and energy policies. An obvious target is the electoral campaign financing system. Political parties in Indonesia currently charge prospective candidates for political office exorbitant fees in exchange for their support to get on the ballot (The Gecko

138  Conclusion Project 2018). One estimate is that the price of a seat in parliament can be as high as IDR 1 billion (around USD 72,000) for resource-rich constituencies, while a gubernatorial candidate reportedly paid IDR 40 billion (around USD 2.9 million) for one party’s support (Aspinall and Berenschot 2020). Although candidates can in theory stand as independents, to do so they must first obtain signatures from between 6.5 and 10  percent of registered voters in a given constituency (The Gecko Project 2018, Aspinall and Berenschot 2020). This makes it challenging in practice to stand as an independent, since in larger provinces signatures and identity cards are needed from up to 800,000 people (Aspinall and Berenschot 2020). As is detailed via investigative reporting by the Gecko Project (2018), this prohibitively expensive system incentivizes candidates for political office to agree to quid pro quo arrangements with businesses where they can exchange financial support for pro-business decisions once they are elected. This phenomenon is well known to the Indonesian Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), who found that two thirds of candidates in the 2015 regional elections reported that campaign donors demanded something in return—from government contracts to policy influence and licenses for mines and plantations (Utama 2018). Despite the series of superficially democratic reforms enacted in Indonesia since the fall of the New Order, economic and business interests thus continue to play an outsized role in politics, limiting the theoretical benefits of universal suffrage in moderating elite decisions (Piketty 2020). Although it would be foolish to suggest that such a system—operated as it is by all major Indonesian political parties and benefitting serious economic interests—can simply be made to disappear, there are partial success stories from Europe (e.g. 1950s’ Germany) and current reform proposals (i.e. democratic equality vouchers) that offer insights for how such a difficult task might be approached (Piketty 2020).4

Climate disaster prevention policies beyond Indonesia and apart from REDD+ Norwegian political ecologists Svarstad and Benjaminsen have previously argued that Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI) is a new form of colonialism that allows Norway to continue its dependence on oil while pushing the costs of carbon emission reductions onto others (Svarstad and Benjaminsen 2018). I view REDD+ as a neoliberal environmental approach to the global climate crisis that involves a process of peripheralization. Norway is, after all, one of the four major OECD oil producers, along with the United States, Canada, and Brazil (IEA 2018). Using oil wealth generated in one country to pay for carbon emission reductions from deforestation in another (particularly when the latter country continues to experience major socio-economic challenges) is short-sighted and may be an attempt at distraction. In addition to being a type of neoliberal environmental intervention, REDD+ can be cast as a form of neocolonialism in that it is an example of the use of economic and political pressure by a rich country to control or influence another poorer country (as measured by per capita GDP). I worry that REDD+ is used as a form of ‘greenwashing’ to artificially prolong the

Conclusion  139 life of the country’s oil and gas industry, while its tourist board promotes Norway as an eco-destination.5 This perspective helps us understand why, in the face of growing empirical evidence that REDD+ is encountering significant challenges in addressing the political and economic drivers of forest loss and degradation, demand for its continuation exists. REDD+ is, in short, politically convenient at a time when Norwegian political and economic elites are coming under public pressure for not winding down their country’s oil and gas production sooner and are debating expanding offshore oil and gas exploration into sub-Arctic areas to benefit economically from the retreat of sea ice (Holter 2019, Cosson-Eide et al. 2020). The persistence of REDD+ policy in the face of growing evidence of poor outcomes has indeed become a research focus for political ecologists in its own right (Asiyanbi and Lund 2020). A major consequence of the peripheralization of climate change policy, as accomplished via REDD+, however, is that it increases the severity of political contestations, at multiple levels, that must be overcome to deliver wished-for mitigation results. Changing foreign countries’ exploitation of nature and people through neoliberal environmental interventions is hard. Indeed, it might be easier to implement effective climate disaster policies in already rich, mature democracies where sizable populations support at least some domestic climate policies.6 Hickels (2020) suggests that the pursuit of post-growth and degrowth economic models in the West (whose countries have, for decades, lived beyond their ecological means) should be the main focus for averting climate disaster and ensuring human well-being. There are perhaps some small signs that shifts in this direction are beginning to occur, although debates rage as to which future economic models are actually feasible (Hickels and Kallis 2020).7 Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the Government Pension Fund Global—the world’s largest sovereign fund, derived from oil and gas revenues—announced in 2019, for example, that it would end investments in pure oil and gas exploration and production companies (Carbon Brief 2019).8 Norway has also put into legislation its long-term goal of becoming a low carbon society by 2050, aiming for an 80–95% reduction in its carbon emissions compared to 1990 levels (Climate Action Tracker 2019). Indeed, according to some analysts, Norway is doing better on its climate disaster preventions policies overall than 14 other countries, including Indonesia, Japan, and the United States (Climate Action Tracker 2019). It is performing worse than seven countries, however, including Bhutan, Costa Rica, and Ethiopia (Climate Action Tracker 2019) and, at the most recent UN Climate Change Conference in Egypt, was accused of a failure of leadership by Norwegian environmental groups for not raising its domestic carbon emission reduction ambitions (Naturvernfobundet 2022). In this hyper-capitalist era, insatiable demand for, and profiteering from, fossil fuels is an uncomfortable reality, eclipsing the decarbonization efforts undertaken to date by mature democracies, like Norway, who claim they are committed to averting climate disaster (CICERO 2018). That the world continues to rely to a shocking degree on fossil fuels for its energy has been underlined by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine (Milman 2022). Realization of the geostrategic vulnerabilities

140  Conclusion of continued reliance on carbon energy, added to inflation, civil disobedience by climate movements, and increasingly frequent extreme weather events might be leading to more decisive environment protection efforts in some Western economies: efforts to be closely watched, and possibly emulated, by countries elsewhere.9 Indeed, the re-election in Brazil of former president Luiz Lula da Silva has been accompanied by renewed hope among environmentalists there and abroad for the future of the Amazon rainforest (Rannard 2022). Yet, prospective wealth from forestland conversion understandably continues to mesmerize elites in economies facing widespread poverty, with the Democratic Republic of Congo recently opting to auction its vast oil and gas reserves in the Congo Basin (Gavin 2022). In approaching such socio-economic development conundrums, we must remember that REDD+, or similar neoliberal forest conservation-enclosure interventions, quite apart from being highly challenging to implement with much effect in the political-economic conditions found in implementing countries, are not the only game in town when it comes to climate disaster prevention. Of particular interest in this respect are the series of ideas and solutions proposed by economists such as Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1971), Kate Raworth (2017), and Thomas Piketty (2020), who all question the 20th-century ce economic orthodoxies underpinning neoliberalism: particularly the relationships between GDP-defined growth, biophysical properties, and ecological limits.10 The ideas contained in this alternative economic scholarship suggest that the forms of REDD+ applied to date, which have used values generated from carbon pollution in one location to pay for carbon sinks in another, were horrifyingly short-sighted—akin to rearranging deckchairs on a stricken Titanic. The idea of REDD+ has certainly been misinterpreted by policy elites in the decade since 2010, with its implementation very different from its early conceptualization by, for instance, Freeman Dyson (1976). In the past decade, rather than being coupled with deep industrial decarbonization across major economies, REDD+ has been paid for by an economic model that continues to prioritize carbon-intensive GDP growth as the measure of individual and corporate human well-being. Although, as noted in the introduction to this book, effective anti-deforestation policies in the tropics are sorely needed, their existence should not be used as an excuse to disenfranchise forest communities, or to avoid large-scale industrial decarbonization in already rich countries. Indeed, enlightened contemporary economists such as Raworth and Piketty argue (in line with anthropologists such as Jason Hickels) that their profession should be working with other social and natural scientists to seek solutions to the conundrum of how all societies can live sustainably and justly within their biophysical and ecological boundaries. In other words, and as suggested by Gergescu-Roegen (1971): the future of human security requires that we do not dispense with dialectic concepts and reasoning. In this light, Gramsci’s dialectic emphasis on the co-production of superstructure and structure, nature and society, theory and practice, appears as relevant today as it was in 1920s’ Europe (Chagani 2014). For although the cultural hegemony of hyper-capitalism as it is pursued around the

Conclusion  141 world today ultimately relies on current material conditions, the realization that these conditions are in the process of being severely degraded, or even destroyed, may yet hold the seed from which are forged more regenerative nature–society relations.

Notes 1 A particular concern for environmentalists is Jokowi’s USD 33  billion plan to build a new Indonesian capital (Nusantara) in forest-rich East Kalimantan, announced in 2019 shortly after his re-election. Although relocating the capital from Jakarta has long been debated due to its continued sinking into the Java Sea, Jokowi’s 2019 announcement led to expectations of more deforestation as the new city’s infrastructure is built (Poon 2019). The Bolsonaro period in Brazil shows just how quickly anti-deforestation policies can be reversed under changed political leadership, see Phillips (2020). 2 See www.cifor.org/gcs. 3 Indonesian authorities announced in 2015 an intention to build 100 new coal-fired power plants to meet domestic energy demands. Shifting these investments to renewable energy sources is viewed as crucial to enable Indonesia to meet its commitments under the 2016 Paris Agreement. See Hilaire (2015). 4 After the Second World War, Germany pioneered a system for public financing of political parties and foundations, although since this system failed to prohibit contributions from ‘moral persons,’ all large German firms still subsidize the major parties. The notion with ‘democratic equality vouchers’ is that each citizen is provided with an annual voucher (worth, for example, EUR 5) they can then assign to the political party of their choice (Piketty 2020). 5 See www.visitnorway.com/plan-your-trip/green-travel/. 6 Scholars of oligarchy have pointed out, however, that the distinction between mature democracies and oligarchies is often far from clear-cut, with weakened political institutions and cultures in many modern democracies signifying a slide towards oligarchy. See, for instance Tabachnick and Koivukovski (2011). de Mesquita and Smith (2011) argue that the goal of politicians in all regime types is to maintain power and control over resources. 7 Responding to proponents of green growth models, Hickels and Kallis (2020) find no evidence that absolute decoupling from resource use can be achieved on a global scale against a background of continued economic growth. 8 France, following widespread protests since 2018 on the part of the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) movement, established a citizen’s climate assembly to generate policy recommendations for government. The assembly has recommended that France introduce into law the crime of ecocide, which if adopted would create a legal duty of care for the environment (Frost 2020). 9 Citing evidence from Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, India, Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Nepal, Arauco et al. (2014) find that social movements demanding changes to the rules of the game are a key ingredient in attempts to redress the pernicious side effects of growthobsessed economic development. In the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act of August 2022 has been described as the single largest investment in climate action in US history, although it continues support for several harmful extraction practices (Colón et al. 2022). 10 These proposed solutions are not merely theoretical. Municipal officials in Amsterdam have already collaborated with Kate Raworth’s Oxford University Environmental Change Institute to design policies for how to rebuild the city’s economy beyond COVID-19. See Boffey (2020).

142  Conclusion

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144  Conclusion Jong, H.N. 2021. “Indonesia Terminates Agreement with Norway on $1b REDD+ Scheme.” Mongabay. Available at: https://news.mongabay.com/2021/09/indonesiaterminates-agreement-with-norway-on-1b-redd-scheme/ Lang, C. 2011. “President Yudhoyono Promises to Dedicate the Next Three Years to Protecting Indonesia’s Forests.” The REDD Monitor. Available at: https://redd-monitor. org/2011/09/28/president-yudhoyono-promises-to-dedicate-the-next-three-years-toprotecting-indonesias-forests/ Lang, C. 2019. “How Many “Successful” REDD Projects Are There?” The REDD Monitor. Laurence, B. and P.  van Oosterzee. 2019. “How Indonesia’s Election Puts Global Biodiversity at Stake with an Impending War on Palm Oil.” The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/how-indonesias-election-puts-global-biodiversity-at-stakewith-an-impending-war-on-palm-oil-115468 Letter of Intent. 2010. Letter of Intent between the Government of the Kingdom of Norway and the Government of the Republic of Indonesia on Cooperation on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. Government of Kingdom of Norway and Government of Republic of Indonesia: Oslo and Jakarta. Maxton-Lee, B. 2020. Forest Conservation and Sustainability in Indonesia: A Political Economy Study of International Governance Failure. Routledge: London and New York. Milman, O. 2022. “ ‘This is a Fossil Fuel War’: Ukraine’s Top Climate Scientist Speaks Out.” The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/ mar/09/ukraine-climate-scientist-russia-invasion-fossil-fuels Milne, S., S. Mahanty, P. To, W. Dressler, P. Kanowski, and M. Thavat. 2019. “Learning From ‘Actually Existing’ REDD+: A Synthesis of Ethnographic Findings.” Conservation and Society. Vol. 17. Issue 1. pp. 84–95. Myers, R., D. Intarini, M.T. Sirait, and A. Maryudi. 2017. “Claiming the Forest: Inclusions and Exclusions Under Indonesia’s ‘New’ Forest Policies on Customary Forests.” Land Use Policy. Vol. 22. pp. 205–213. Naturvernfobundet. 2022. Olje og Gass. Available at: https://naturvernforbundet.no/ laer-mer/olje-og-gass/ OPIC. 2018. Indonesia’s President Inaugurates OPIC Supported 75 MW Wind Farm. Overseas Private Investment Corporation: Washington, DC. Palmer, C. and K. Obidzinski. 2009. “Choosing Avoided Deforestation Baselines in the Context of Government Failure: The Case of Indonesia’s Plantations Policy.” in Palmer, C. and S. Engel (Eds.). Avoided Deforestation: Prospects for Mitigating Climate Change. Taylor and Francis: New York. Phillips, D. 2020. “Studies Add to Alarm Over Deforestation in Brazil under Bolsonaro.” The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/28/ studies-add-to-alarm-over-deforestation-in-brazil-under-bolsonaro-covid-19 Piketty, T. 2020. Capital and Ideology. Harvard University Press: Cambridge. Poon, L. 2019. “Why Indonesia’s Capital Move Has Environmentalists Worried.” Citylab. Rannard, G. 2022. “COP27: Brazil is Back on the World Stage Lula Tells Climate Summit.” BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63625698 Raworth, K. 2017. Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist. Random House: London. Reuters. 2009. “Indonesia CO2 Pledge to Help Climate Talks.” Reuters. Available at: https:// www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-talks-indonesia-idUSTRE58S1CR20090929 Reuters. 2022. “Indonesia Pledges More Ambitious Carbon Emissions Cut.” Reuters. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/indonesia-pledges-more-ambitious-carbon-emission-cut-2022-10-25/#:~:text=JAKARTA%2C%20Oct%2025%20 (Reuters),a%20minister%20said%20on%20Tuesday

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Index

Aceh: Ulu Masen REDD+ Project 132 adat (land tenure arrangements) 50, 52, 60–61, 96, 121, 133; see also land tenure Age of Sustainable Development, The (Sachs) 9 Agrarian Reform Consortium 117 AMAN 61, 75, 78, 100, 101, 113 Amazon Basin forests: indigenous people and interactions with forest 4 Amran Batapilu 103 Anthropocene 6 Australia Forest Partnership with Indonesia 71, 131 Austronesian people 45 Bali Action Plan 113 Banawa Kingdom 47, 50, 94 Ban Ki Moon 10 Big Conservation 35 biopower 32 Bolsonaro 129, 141; see also Brazil Borobudur, Buddhist monument 45 BP-REDD+ see National REDD+ Agency Brazil: deforestation 5, 129, 141; financial inducements 12–13; hope for Amazon rainforest 140 British East India Company 48–49 Brundtland Commission 9 Bugis kingdom 94 Burawoy, Michael 33 capital accumulation 31, 119 capitalism: and neoliberalism 26–27, 119; see also hyper-capitalism carbon accountability 26 carbon credit trading market 10, 14–15; forest carbon as resource commodity 24, 25 carbon emissions: from deforestation 8–9, 82–84, 103–104; from Indonesia

136–137; from industrial development 111, 120 carbon sequestration in trees 14, 23–24, 130 Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) 80, 136 Central Kalimantan: as pilot province 69, 70–71, 74; successful projects 132 Central Sulawesi: agro-ecological zones 92–94; contestations and ethno-territorial violence 44, 56, 57, 61, 131; deforestation in 103–105; history of 94–98; in New Order period 55; Permesta rebellion in Sukarno era 51–52; in pre-colonial times 47; reason chosen as FPIC pilot 102–103; transmigration 56; UN-REDD Programme pilot in Talaga 69–70, 71, 80; see also UN-REDD pilots in Central Sulawesi China: consumption and deforestation 6; trade relations with Norway 75 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 53 Christianity in Indonesia 54, 93 civil society: in analysis of REDD+ winners and losers 113; and National REDD+ Agency 72, 73, 74; and REDD+ spinoffs 80, 107; in renegotiation between Norway and Indonesia 128 Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) 10 climate change mitigation: connection to anti-deforestation efforts 8–10, 129; by Norway 139; REDD+ and carbon credit trading 14–15 Climate Policy Initiative 71 coal 137 Cold War 53, 57 colonial era 6, 16–17, 48–50 colonialism, new form of 138 commodity, forest carbon as 24, 25

Index  147 Community Forests 80 Community Plantations 80 conflict, environmental, and exclusion 31, 116–117 conflict and violence 119–120; see also Indonesian mass killings Congo Basin 140 Congo Basin Forest Fund 12 conservation: Big vs. Little 35; forest activities in FPIC trials in Central Sulawesi 99 conservation and control narrative 31, 116 consumption: and deforestation 6–8 corruption: environment-related, in Indonesia 1–3; by Ministry of Forestry 72, 75, 131; and political ecology 122–123 Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) 1–3, 124n1, 138 COVID-19 121 cultural hegemony 31–33, 120–122 Customary Forestry initiative 78–80, 82, 107, 133 Customary Forests 79, 80 Dampelas 47–48, 50, 94, 97 Darul Islam rebellion 51–52, 59, 95 data on deforestation: in Central Sulawesi 103–105; forest loss 18n1, 82–85, 103–105, 114–116; historical 4–5 Dawson, Neil 28 deforestation: in Central Sulawesi 103–105, 107–108; defined 4; in Indonesia 5, 17, 133; see also global deforestation degradation and marginalization narrative 31, 115 democracy, Indonesian 51, 57 Democratic Party (PD) 59 democratic reforms 137–138, 141n4 democratic regression 57, 141n6 Democratic Republic of Congo 140 demonstration activities 68–71, 98 desa 97 Donggala Regency/district 47, 97, 101–102, 103–104, 115–116 Dong Son culture 45 Drake, Sir Francis 48 Dutch colonial regime 16, 47, 48–50, 61 Dutch East India Company 48–50 Dyson, Freeman 140 Earth Innovation Institute 71 earthquakes 95 East Asia Forum: on Jokowi’s presidential term 85

East Indonesia Mujahaddin (MIT) 96–97 economic acceleration: and resource consumption 6 ecosystem services 24 electoral campaign financing systems 137–138 elites, political-economic 16, 35, 61, 85, 110, 120–124, 128–130, 135–140 El Niño climate events 85n11 Elvestuen, Ola 83, 114 environmental conflict and exclusion 31, 116–117 environment crises: and political ecology 30 ethnic diversity 46 Europe: forest cover in Holocene epoch 4 exclusion from land: and political ecology 33, 35–36 extractive industries: donations to election campaigns 110, 137–138; not affected by REDD+ 119, 132; and renewable energy 137; timber 49, 61; see also resource extraction and wealth generation extractive socio-economic model 12, 14 fire swiddening 17, 62n2 Fletcher, R. 36 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 5 forest carbon as resource commodity 24, 25 forest deforestation: in Central Sulawesi 103–105, 107–108; defined 4; see also global deforestation forest degradation: in Central Sulawesi 103–105; defined 4 forest demarcation process 79–80, 85, 100–101, 113, 117 forest fires 69, 70–71, 82, 83–84, 110, 112, 133 forest governance and management in Indonesian history: in colonial era 49–50; Indonesian forest service 52; in New Order period 54–55; political ecology and conservation 35; in reformasi era 60–61 forest governance with REDD+ see REDD+ and related forest policies at national level in Indonesia forest loss data 4–5, 18n1, 82–85, 103–105, 114–116 Forest Management Unit (FMU) 91, 99, 104–105 Forest Moratorium 68, 78, 81–82, 134 forests: defined 4 forest transitions 7–8

148 Index Foucault, Michel 30–33, 36 Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC): in analysis of REDD+ winners and losers 113–114, 117; defined 12; and REDD+ 67, 68, 74, 79; UN-REDD pilots in Central Sulawesi see UN-REDD pilots in Central Sulawesi G20 meeting 1 gazettement process 79–80, 135 Gecko Project 137–138 Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas 140 geothermal energy 137 Global Comparative Study (GCS) for Achieving REDD+ Results 136 global deforestation, introduction to 1–22; anti-deforestation efforts and climate change mitigation 8–10; deforestation drivers and consumption 6–8; motivations and approach 13–17; from promises to corruption 1–3; REDD+ introduced 10–13; scale and severity of global deforestation 4–6 Global Forest Watch (Univ. of Maryland) 5, 83–84, 103–106, 116 Golkar (army political wing) 54, 58, 59 Google Earth imagery 7 Gowa, Kingdom/Sultanate 47, 50 Gramsci, Antonio 30–33, 36, 118 Greenpeace 1, 80–81 greenwashing 138–139 ground-truthing process 79, 132 Habibie 56, 57 Hartati Murdaya, Siti 103 Hatta, Mohammed 62n3 Heru Prasetyo 73, 76 Hickels, Jason 140 historical data of deforestation 4–5 Holocene epoch 4 human rights 57, 120–121 Humboldt, Alexander von 30 hyper-capitalism: consumption and deforestation 6–8, 129; development in agricultural, mining, and manufacturing sectors 135; and fossil fuels 139; and wealth inequalities 27 Indigenous Peoples: concern over maps 81; indigenous rights movements 61, 81; land tenure rights 37, 52–53, 73–74, 78; pernicious outcomes 132–133 Indigenous Peoples’ Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN) 61, 75, 78, 100, 101, 113

Indigenous Peoples’ Bill 113 Indonesia: Agrarian Reform Consortium 117; biological diversity and tree species 16; contestations 13–16, 37, 130–132, 139; Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) 1–3, 124n1, 138; deforestation 5, 17, 133; Environment Fund (BPDLH) 128; financial inducements 12–13; Forest Moratorium 68, 78, 81–82, 134; Letter of Intent see Norway-Indonesia Letter of Intent (2010); lingua franca 51; Ministry of Foreign Affairs 128–129; National Anti-Corruption Strategy (STRANAS) 124n1; National Long-Term Development Plan 111; renegotiation with Norway 128–129; State Forests 60–61; TNI (military) 58–59; wealth inequalities in 27, 121; see also Central Kalimantan; Central Sulawesi; Ministry of Environment and Forestry; Ministry of Forestry Indonesia and REDD+: frame-of-reference for studying 28–30; and political ecology’s relevance to study 34–38; see also REDD+ and related forest policies at national level in Indonesia; REDD+ winners and losers analysis Indonesia-Australia Forest Partnership 71, 131 Indonesian civil society see civil society Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) 53 Indonesian constitution 51 Indonesian democracy 51, 57; see also democratic reforms Indonesian history 44–65; colonial period 6, 16–17, 48–50; ethno-territorial violence 56, 57, 58, 61; independence and Sukarno era 50–53; pre-colonial times 45–48; Reformasi to the present 56–62; Suharto’s New Order 53–55; transmigration and Javanization 55–56 Indonesian independence 50–53 Indonesian mass killings 49, 52, 53, 56 Indonesian National Standard Directory 81 Indonesian politics: early years of new republic 51–53; environment-related corruption 1–3; Golkar (political wing of army) 54, 58, 59; local government administration 55; Suharto’s New Order 53–55 Indonesian REDD+ Taskforce see National REDD+ Agency inequalities, in wealth 27, 121

Index  149 International Renewable Energy Agency (IREA) 137 International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) 9 Islam in Indonesia 46, 47, 51–52, 56, 92, 96–97 Jambi Sultanate 46 Japanese occupation 51, 95 Jatam NGO 110 Java: culture migration throughout Indonesia 55, 95; history 45, 51 jihadist militias 97 Jokowi/Joko Widodo: in analysis of REDD+ winners and losers 110, 112–113, 120–121; biography 57, 59–60, 61; disbanding of National REDD+ Agency 74, 75, 76–77, 113, 130, 131; and Forest Moratorium 134; national forestry initiatives 66, 78, 80, 81, 82, 85; Nawacita plan 111, 124n2 Kaili kingdom 94 Kalimantan: pilot and demonstration activities 69; see also Central Kalimantan Kalimantan Forest and Climate Partnership (KFCP) 71, 131 Kalla, Jusuf 59, 121, 124n4 Karsenty, Alain 27 Katingan Peatland Restoration and Conservation Project 132 Kedamangan Institutions 71 KPK (Corruption Eradication Commission) 1–3, 124n1, 138 Kropotkin, Pyotr Alexeevich 30 Kuntoro Mankusubroto 70 Kyoto Protocol (1997) 10, 27 Lamarauna 94 land grabbing 96, 106 land reform 37 land tenure: in Central Sulawesi 95–96; in Indonesian history 50, 52, 55, 60–61; and political contestations 131; political ecology and 35, 37, 123; and REDD+ policies at national level 73–74, 79, 85; see also adat laws and regulations in Indonesia: Agrarische Wet (1870) 49; Basic Agrarian Law (BAL, 1960) 37, 52–53, 61; Basic Forest Law (BFL, 1967) 54, 55; Boschordonatie (1865) 49; Constitutional Court rulings, on forests 79; Forest Law 31 (1999) 60, 61, 79; Government Regulation 24/1997,

on adat land rights 60; Government Regulation 64/57, on logging concessions 52; Indigenous Peoples’ Bill 113; Law No. 23/2003, on presidential elections 58; Laws No. 22/1999 and 25/1999, on regional autonomy 57; Omnibus Law 129; Presidential Decree No. 2 (1973), on transmigration 56; Presidential Decree No. 16 (2015), disbanding National REDD+ Agency 74; Presidential Instruction No. 10/2011, on forest moratorium 68; Regulation 6/1999, on regional governance 60; Regulation 50/2017, on purchase price of green energy 137; Regulation 62/1998, on regional authority in forests 60; Regulation 68/2008, on demonstration activities 69; Village Government Law (1979) 55 Le Billon, Philippe 122 Lembah Mukti: in analysis of REDD+ winners and losers 114–118; community location and occupations 98, 107; Letter of Agreement with FMU 91, 99, 104–106, 114; UN-REDD pilot 70, 71; see also UN-REDD pilots in Central Sulawesi Letter of Intent see Norway-Indonesia Letter of Intent (2010) Limits to Growth (Club of Rome) 9 Little Conservation 35 Liu Xiaobo 75 Lore Lindu National Park 103, 104 loss: data on forest loss 4–5, 18n1, 82–85, 103–105, 114–116; defined 18n1 Lula da Silva, Luis 140 Majapahit 45, 46 Malacca Sultanate 46, 48 Mandar kingdom 94 mapping projects 81, 113 marginalization narrative 31, 115 Markets for Ecosystem Services (MES) 24 Mega Rice Project 71 Megawati, Sukarnoputri 57, 58, 121, 124n4 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 10 mining: nickel 103; see also extractive industries Ministry of Environment and Forestry: data on land cover 103; national level policies 74, 75–78, 79, 80; opposition to REDD+ 130 Ministry of Forestry: in analysis of REDD+ winners and losers 112–113; national level policies 54, 69, 72–73, 77, 79, 81, 85; opposition to REDD+ 130, 131

150 Index MIT (East Indonesia Mujahaddin) 96–97 monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) 11, 25, 26, 28, 67, 68, 98 Moore, Donald 32 Morowali Regency 103 MPR (People’s Consultative Assembly) 54, 57, 58 Muhtadi, Burhanuddin 85 Muzakkar, Kahar 51–52 NASA: Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) 5 National Anti-Corruption Strategy (STRANAS) 124n1 National Forestry Council (Dewan Kehutanan Nasional) 91 National Long-Term Development Plan, Indonesia 111, 135 National REDD+ Agency 68, 70, 71–75, 77, 78, 85, 113, 130, 131 National REDD+ Strategy 69–70, 134–135 Nawacita plan 111, 124n2 neoliberal environmentalism: of REDD+ see REDD+ as neoliberal environmentalism neoliberalism: critiques of 25–27 net change in forest cover: defined 4 New Order period 53–55; collapse of 37; corruption by Ministry of Forestry 72; student protests 2 NGOs: Jatam 110; Pokja Pantau 92, 98–99, 100–101, 104, 106, 114–118; and REDD+ projects 10, 13 nickel mines 103 Norway: in analysis of REDD+ winners and losers 114, 122; extractive socio-economic model 12, 14; funding of civil society organizations 113; Government Pension Fund Global 139; Ministry of Climate and Environment 114; payment for results 82–85, 114, 128, 131; peripheralization of climate change policy 138–139; renegotiation with Indonesia 128–129; support of REDD+ 12, 75; trade relations with China and Indonesia 75 Norway-Indonesia Letter of Intent (2010): in analysis of REDD+ winners and losers 112, 114, 122; and REDD+ 66, 67–68, 69, 71–72, 75, 81, 82, 131; termination of 128 Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI) 67, 68, 71, 76, 114, 138 Nusantara 141n1

oligarchy 35–36, 57, 85, 141n6 One Map One Data initiative 78, 81, 82 Ongolo, Symphorien 27 Pakuli village pilot 70 palm oil industry: corruption in 72; development of plantations and deforestation 80–81; earnings 135; elites’ control of 55, 62n7; large-scale plantations 102, 103; and peatland fires 69, 82, 84; production tonnage 110 Palu, Central Sulawesi 97, 98 Paris Climate Agreement (2016) 10 Partnership Forests 80 Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) 11, 24, 67; REDD+ as type of 24, 26, 34 PDI (Indonesian Democratic Party) 54, 57, 59 peasant farmers 46 peatlands 68, 69, 70, 81–82, 83–84, 133 People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) 54, 57, 58 per capita forest loss 5 peripheralization of climate policy 26, 34, 38n3, 119, 138–139 Permesta rebellion 51–52, 53 Piketty, Thomas 140 pilots and demonstration activities 68–71 Pokja Pantau 92, 98–99, 100–101, 104, 106, 114–118 political contestations 13–16, 37, 130–132, 139 political ecology: in analysis of REDD+ winners and losers 111, 115–118, 122–123; call to include in future research 136; introduction, origins, and narratives 30–34, 115; relevance to studying REDD+ in Indonesia 34–38 population pressure 7 Portuguese colonial regime 16, 48 power, in political ecology 33, 118 Prabowo Subianto 59–60, 62n10, 110, 121, 134 pre-colonial era 45–48 presidential decrees see laws and regulations Provincial REDD+ Working Group 91 Rainforest Foundation Norway 71, 113 Raworth, Kate 140 Realising REDD+: National Strategy and Policy Options 24 REDD+: activity phases of 11; beginnings of 10; contestations in Indonesia 13–16,

Index  151 37, 130–132, 139; financial inducements 11; introduction 10–13 REDD+ and related forest policies at national level in Indonesia 66–90; Customary Forestry initiative 78–80, 82; establishment of REDD+ 67–68; forest loss data and payment for results 82–86; Forest Moratorium 68, 78, 81–82; Ministry of Environment and Forestry 74, 75–78; National REDD+ Agency 68, 70, 71–75, 77, 78, 85; Norway-Indonesia Letter of Intent (2010) 66, 67–68; One Map One Data initiative 78, 81, 82; REDD+ pilots and demonstration activities 68–71; Social Forestry initiative 78, 80–81, 82 REDD+ as neoliberal environmentalism 23–43; disciplinary and theoretical roots of 23–25; frame-of-reference for studying REDD+ in Indonesia 28–30; implications of theoretical roots of 25–27; political ecology 30–34; political ecology’s relevance in Indonesia 34–38; recent approaches to studying 27–28; in winners and losers metaphor 111 REDD+ in Indonesia, conclusions 128–145; deforestation 133–134; opposition to 130; pernicious outcomes 132–133; political contestations 130–132, 139; spin-off initiatives 134–135; see also regenerative nature–society relations REDD+ National Strategy 69–70, 134–135 REDD+ winners and losers analysis 110–127; civil society groups 113; in comparative perspective 111–115; conflict and violence 119–120; environmental conflicts and exclusion 116–117; Jokowi’s presidency 112–113, 120–121; local level villagers 113–114; local systems of livelihoods 116; Norway 114, 122; political ecology and corruption 122–123; power and political 117–118; regulation and the market 118–119; resource extraction and wealth generation 120–122, 123–124; SBY’s presidency 112, 120; sustainable community forest management 115–116 Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation see REDD+ reformasi era 56–62, 121 regenerative nature–society relations: climate disaster prevention policies beyond Indonesia 138–141; climate disaster

prevention policies in Indonesia 136–138; REDD+ beyond Indonesia 135–136 regulation and the market 119 regulations see laws and regulations renewable energy 137 resource commodity, forest carbon as 24, 25 resource extraction and wealth generation: in analysis of REDD+ winners and losers 110, 120–122, 123–124; cautions for future 135, 140; in colonial era 16–17; in New Order 72 rice: Mega Rice Project 71; wet-field cultivation 45, 46 Rimba Raya Biodiversity Reserve Project 132 Rio Earth Summit (1992) 9 Robbins, Paul 122–123 Russia: Revolution (1917) 31; Ukraine invasion (2022) 139 Sabandar, William 74 Sachs, Jeffrey 9–10 Sailendra, Buddhist dynasty 45 Santoso 96 satellite data 7 Sawerigading 47 SBY see Yudhoyono, Susilo Bambang (SBY) Second World War, post era: hypercapitalism 6, 27; Indonesian economic development 17 Setyowati, Adibah 132 Sidrap Windfarm 137 Simoro village pilot 70 Siti Nurbaya Bakar 74, 75, 76, 82, 83, 129 Social Forestry initiative 78, 80–81, 82, 107, 133, 135 Solberg, Erna 75 Solheim, Eric 75 sovereign wealth fund, Norway 139 spice trade 16, 48–49 spin-off initiatives and the pinball effect 78–82, 131, 134–135 Srivijaya trading empire 45, 46 State Forests 79 State Forest Zone 79 Stern, Nicholas 14 Stoltenberg, Jens 75 Suharto: Mega Rice Project 71; New Order 2, 37, 53–55, 56–57; predatory capitalism model 121; wealth of 17, 62n9 Sukarno 50–53 Sulawesi: ancient human habitation 47; history of 50; secessionist movements 51–52

152 Index Sumatra: maritime trade in pre-colonial times 45–46 Surya Paloh 121, 124n4 sustainable community forest management 115–116 sustainable development: beginnings of 9 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 9–10 Suwarna Abdul Fatah 72 swidden agriculture 17, 46, 47, 62n2 Talaga: in analysis of REDD+ winners and losers 113–117; community location and occupations 97–98, 107; influence by NGO 92, 99, 100–101, 104–106; UN-REDD pilot 69–70, 71, 80; see also UN-REDD pilots in Central Sulawesi Talaga Lake 47, 48 temperate regions and deforestation 5–6 tenure see land tenure Ternate Sultanate 48 timber extraction 49, 61 Titled Forests 79 TNI (Indonesia’s military) 58–59 Tomini-Tolitoli, in Central Sulawesi 94–95 TORA agrarian reform initiative 80–81 transmigration in Indonesia 55–56, 95, 98 Travvik, Stig 75 Treaty of Bongaya 50 tree cover: defined 18n1; loss and gain in Central Sulawesi 103–108 tropical deforestation: causes of 7 tropical forests 5–6 tsunami 95 Tunipalangga (King) 47 Ulu Masen REDD+ Project, Aceh 132 UN Conference on the Human Environment (1972, Stockholm) 9 UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP) 10, 12, 67, 129 United Nations: Climate Change Conference, Egypt 139; Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 5; human rights conventions 57 United Nations Climate Accords 10 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) 5, 9 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 10, 11 United States: Inflation Reduction Act (2022) 141; NASA, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) 5

Uno, Sandiaga 60 UN-REDD pilots in Central Sulawesi 91–109; agro-ecological zones 92–94; first phase of UN-REDD FPIC pilots 98–99; Pokja Pantau‘s interventions 100–101; precarious livelihoods of Donggala residents 101–102; problems with FPIC trials 99–100; results of FPIC pilots 102–108; socio-political perspective 94–98 UN-REDD Programme 12–13, 69–71, 113, 117, 130 UN World Sustainable Development Summit (2002, Johannesburg) 9 Village Forests 80 Wahid, Abdurrahaman 57, 58 Wallace, Alfred Russell 30 Warsaw Framework for REDD+ 10 Warsi 113 watershed protection for agricultural purposes 49 wealth generation via resource extraction see resource extraction and wealth generation wealth inequalities 27, 121 wet-field rice cultivation 45, 46 Widiaryanto, Pungky 73 Wijaya, Arief 83 wind farms 137 Wolf, Eric 30 women’s focus group, on issues faced 102 women’s wing of AMAN 113 World Bank: climate change and deforestation 10; Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) 12–13; Forest Investment Programme (FIP) 12 World Conservation Strategy: Living Resource Conservation for Sustainable Development 9 World Resources Institute 83, 103 World War II, post era: hyper-capitalism 6, 27; Indonesian economic development 17 World Wildlife Fund (WWF) 9, 71 Wuruk, Hayam 45 yellow vests movement, France 141n8 Yudhoyono, Susilo Bambang (SBY): in analysis of REDD+ winners and losers 112, 120; and Letter of Intent with Norway 66, 67, 68–69, 72, 81; presidency 1, 57, 59; support for REDD+ 130, 131