Discursive barriers and cross-scale forest governance in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Students of social-ecological systems have emphasized the need for effective cross-scale governance. We theorized that discursive barriers, particularly between technical and traditional practices, can act as a barrier to cross-scale collaboration. We analyzed the effects of discursive divides on collaboration on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) policy development in Central Kalimantan, an Indonesian province on the island of Borneo selected in 2010 to pilot subnational REDD+ policy. We argue that the complexities of bridging local land management practices and technical approaches to greenhouse gas emissions reduction and carbon offsetting create barriers to cross-scale collaboration. We tested these hypotheses using an exponential random graph model of collaboration among 36 organizations active in REDD+ policy in the province. We found that discursive divides were associated with a decreased probability of collaboration between organizations and that organizations headquartered outside the province were less likely to collaborate with organizations headquartered in the province. We conclude that bridging discursive communities presents a chicken-and-egg problem for cross-scale governance of social-ecological systems. In precisely the situations where it is most important, when bridging transnational standards with local knowledge and land management practices, it is the most difficult.

How is global climate policy interpreted on the ground? Insights from the analysis of local discourses about forest management and REDD+ in Indonesia

“…Given the obvious unresolved conflicts in Indonesia's forest sector, the risk then is that REDD+ in practice will simply reproduce existing struggles and inequalities between communities, companies, and the state, or indeed exacerbate them, as recent observations of Kalimantan suggest (Eilenberg 2015). For this reason, questions about REDD+ policy formulation have rightly focused on its transformative potential (Gallemore et al 2014, Moeliono et al 2014. However, as we have shown, these inquiries are incomplete without consideration of the multiplicity of discourses at the local level and how this might affect policy implementation.…”

Estate Crops More Attractive than Community Forests in West Kalimantan, Indonesia

“…Mostly, the discourse victimizes people and their landscapes, subjecting them to scrutiny over their socioeconomic disadvantages. Science often situates their problems at the frontier of agribusiness economies and Indonesia's problematic, and often complex, governance arrangements [4][5][6][7]. A common concern entry-point emerges from the challenges and opportunities of new and rapidly-expanding oil palm plantations [8].…”

Analyzing multilevel governance in Indonesia: Lessons for REDD+ from the study of landuse change in Central and West Kalimantan

“…KOMDA has played a critical role as a broker for REDD+ across scales and should be highly influential as it is comprised of department heads (cf. Gallemore et al 2014), but according to provincial respondents not all members are knowledgeable on or supportive of REDD+. For example, the Provincial Environmental Agency (Badan Lingkungan Hidup, or BLH) played a central role, while the Forestry Office was less involved; and departments overseeing plantations and mining had yet to be fully engaged.…”

“…At the same time, REDD+ has encouraged the myriad of agencies to develop collaboration strategies, as exemplified in the One Map System. The profile that former Indonesian In their study of provincial REDD+ developments in Central Kalimantan, Gallemore et al (2014) identify discursive barriers that impede collaboration between actors across different scales of governance from the international to the local. In both Central and West Kalimantan, our study identified the following as significant barriers to cross-scale collaboration: the use of technical and non-local approaches that fail to incorporate customary (adat) approaches to land management; and difficulties in translating and communicating abstract concepts.…”