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CHAIRPERSON

Prof Jonathan Rigg, Asia Research Institute, and Department of Geography, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

In Southeast Asia, actors in civil society have negotiated new social and economic realities at the conjuncture of intensifying governance and commodity production in frontier areas. As these spaces intersect, NGOs and their allies have reflected on the legitimacy of their interventions in terms of how local farmers view contrasting benefits relative to the changing expectations and promises emerging at the nexus of governance and commodity production. This paper explores how a long-standing NGO network on Palawan Island, the Philippines, has drawn on its moral capital and legitimacy in forging a grassroots consortium that has implemented the carbon governance mechanism, REDD+ in a changing rural ‘economy of expectations’—one that is contested and differentiated based on its offerings and aspirations. I argue that as the NGO consortium, CODE REDD, tried to reframe REDD+ as a means of supporting indigenous livelihoods and climate change mitigation, it has placed its integrity and leverage at risk as other indigenous farmers rejected the claims and promises of the NGO REDD+ platform. I focus on a case where the NGO consortium’s efforts to reframe REDD+ in terms of indigenous, pro-poor discourse progresses well in some quarters, aligning with anti-oil palm social movements, but fails to meet the growing aspirations of former indigenous allies who question the consortium in favor of investing in oil palm on ancestral lands. I conclude by suggesting that as NGOs adjust their political objectives by adopting market-based governance, they may lose leverage in negotiating the impact of lucrative commodity booms.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Wolfram H. Dressler currently holds an ARC Future Fellowship (2014-2018) at the School of Geography, the University of Melbourne and a Visiting Affiliate with the Asia Research Institute. His research examines local socio-political responses to the convergence of transnational governance, resource extraction/ investment (biofuels) and climate change in the Philippines and Indonesia. As an entry point, he examines the process and outcomes of indigenous social movements engaging the nexus of boom crop production and carbon governance in the context of agrarian change in southern Palawan.

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