F020: Sustainability and Exclusion: Differential Impacts of Resource Governance in Southeast Asia

Organizer(s)

• 

  Juliet Lu

  Cornell University, United States
• 

  Matthew Libassi

  University of California, Berkeley, United States

Chair(s)

• 

  Matthew Libassi

  University of California, Berkeley, United States

Paper Presenter(s)

• 

  Matthew Libassi

  University of California, Berkeley, United States
• PV

  Peter Vandergeest

  York University, United States

Co-Author(s)

• PV

  Peter Vandergeest

  York University, United States

Paper Presenter(s)

• LK

  Lisa Kelley

  University of Colorado, Denver, United States
• HF

  Hilary Faxon

  University of California, Berkeley, United States

From palm oil to diamonds to seafood, recent decades have seen growing consumer anxiety about the sourcing of globally circulated natural resources. In response, new state- and civil society-led governance initiatives have emerged with the goal of making natural resource supply chains more environmentally sustainable and socially just. These range from certification schemes designed to reward “good” behavior to policing efforts aimed at taming “bad” behavior. Intended or not, these interventions—and the sustainability discourses they draw on—have often involved either blaming or excluding smallholders, informal laborers, and petty producers, which has in turn benefited large-scale operations and states.

This panel features research on such governance initiatives in Southeast Asia: a region where, despite decades of commercialization of resource extraction activities, small-scale producers remain extremely important contributors to transnational commodity sectors. Oversimplified environmental narratives decrying illegal mining, seafood “slavery,” or the backwardness of peasant agriculture tend to obscure the interconnected nature of small- and large-scale operations within these production networks. The resulting environmental and social governance initiatives, which tend to demand that resource production activities become more regulated and “legible,” can reinforce longer histories of small-scale producers’ marginalization and state assertions of territorial control. This panel highlights the unintended effects of new sustainability discourses and resource governance regimes in Southeast Asia. It calls particular attention to how such efforts affect large- and small-scale producers differentially despite their often-ignored interdependencies.

Presentations:

• Taming “Wild” Mining: Examining Governance of Informal Gold Production in Indonesia
  

  Paper Presenter: Matthew Libassi – University of California, Berkeley
• Slavery Scandals, Sustainable Fisheries, and COVID-19: Migrant Workers and Fishing Industries in Taiwan and Thailand
  

  Paper Presenter: Peter Vandergeest – York University
• Explaining the Limitations of Corporate Sustainability Initiatives in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia’s Smallholder Cacao Sector
  

  Paper Presenter: Lisa Kelley – University of Colorado, Denver
• Modern Farmers and Sustainable Smallholders in Myanmar’s Emergent Agritech
  

  Paper Presenter: Hilary Faxon – University of California, Berkeley