Abstract
Since the beginning of the new millennium, initiatives known as roundtables have been developed to create voluntary sustainability standards for agricultural commodities. Intended to be private and voluntary in nature, these initiatives claim their legitimacy from their ability to ensure the participation of all categories of stakeholders in horizontal participatory and inclusive processes. This article characterizes the political and material instruments employed as the means of formulating agreement and taking a variety of voices into consideration in these arenas. Referring to the specific case of the “Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil”, I undertake a detailed analysis of the tensions relating to different forms of participation, which create a gap between “local minority voices” and international stakeholders—either non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or industries. Local communities and small-scale farmers face difficulties when making their voices heard in the form of debate proposed. Firstly, some participants attempt to re-impose a vertical hierarchical relationship between small-scale farmers or affected communities and company managers/directors in order to deprive the former of their powers of representation and of being able to transform reality. Secondly, the liberalism of interest groups in the roundtable accords value to experts, global knowledge, strategy, and detachment, at the expense of other capabilities of rooted or attached people who come to defend their real lives with a desire to raise critical issues of injustice. In this context, I highlight the capacity of local NGOs to relieve some of those tensions and to help locally affected communities and small-scale farmers introduce public stages for debates, by accommodating other forms of participation apart from the liberal one. By being close to and by restoring their dignity through a specific work of solicitude and care, local NGOs prepare affected people for public speaking.
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Notes
The Brundtland Report of the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development, published in 1987, and the Earth Summit, which took place in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, together introduced the concepts of sustainable development, of the participation of civil society and of the necessity of reconciliation between economics and ecology (Mert 2009).
The RSPO was followed by the Roundtable on Responsible Soy (RTRS) in 2005, the Better Sugar Cane Initiative (Bonsucro-BSCI) and the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) in 2006, and the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB) in 2008. In parallel to these, a number of Aquaculture Dialogues were promoted by the World Wildlife Fund from 2005 onwards.
In 2011, the RSPO had 569 ordinary members. The General Assembly elects 16 representatives of the different categories of stakeholders to make up the Executive Board.
Based on political philosophy, Boltanski and Thévenot (2006 [1991]) identified six “orders of worth” which are different ways of characterizing the common good: the “market” competition, the “industrial” efficiency, the “fame” in public opinion, the trust and reputation based on customs (“domestic”), the “civic” solidarity aiming at a greater equality, and the creative “inspiration”.
For example, the “economic pillar” of sustainable palm oil production has been translated through criteria for the “economic viability” of agricultural production by the interest group representing farmers (big companies), whereas public consultation over the Internet indicated other possible conceptions, which on the contrary were not considered (in particular, a principle of equity or value sharing, which would enable small-scale farmers to undertake long-term investments).
The Indonesian NGO Sawit Watch (SW) was established on 25 July 1998, subsequent to large forest fires linked to the conversion of forests into oil palm plantations, and with an impetus from the Walhi NGO (a member of the Friends of the Earth network). SW promotes the rights of indigenous and local communities, farmers and those working on palm oil plantations. In 2012, SW had a staff of 26 people and consisted of a network of 140 individual members (themselves most often connected to a civil society organization at the local, national, or international level).
The sustainable palm oil standard was defined between 2003 and 2005 without direct smallholder representation. Negotiated by industrial producers, it requires practices—such as impact assessment studies – that are specific to industrial plantations and which cannot always be adopted by the farmers.
Smallholders have two different statuses. They can be “independent”, which means that they planted their plots independently of a company, or they can be “tied” into a “scheme”, which means that they are under a binding contract with a company, which is the form encouraged by the government.
Family farmers recall situations in which they felt cheated because the terms of the original contract were not upheld. They struggle to access official documents—such as Memorandums of Understanding, which bind companies and farmers contractually—and to be heard when prices in multi-party commissions are being fixed, etc.
Contract farming facilitates access to credit and involves the supervision of smallholder agricultural practices by oil palm company managers.
The RSPO standard requires long-term planning operations, documentation to be produced and maintained on the practices, and funding of impact assessment studies conducted by experts. In such cases, all of this is taken charge of by the managers of the company contractually connected to smallholders.
For reasons of anonymity, the names of individuals and companies have been replaced by pseudonyms.
This was important for the constitution of a transnational arena, with heterogeneous stakeholders, and with emphasis placed on rapid (re)action of a business community.
The “worthy” ones are the guarantors of a given “principle of coordination” (an “order of worth”). They are worthy in this order of worth but can become “unworthy” in other orders of worth (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006).
Interview that included my colleague Philippe Barbereau.
The “k index” issue supposes a debate about farmer prices and about a more equitable sharing of the value along the chain.
The first time a smallholder spoke in plenary to share the difficulties they face on the ground, has also remained in the memories and was firmly disapproved of by some Executive Board members, conveying a “Never again!” message as a warning.
We include the SPKS coordinator in SW since his position was created and managed by SW.
They report, for example, cases of violation of their customary land rights, affecting their livelihoods and attachments to places (lands, graves, etc.).
This type of meeting clearly contrasts with the RSPO meetings, where people are expected to voluntarily take the floor by themselves, sometimes on a “first mover” basis, to serve specific interests. It also contrasts with the strategic engagement of some persons responsible for drafting the summary of short group meetings in the RSPO, discarding, for example, some of the opinions expressed (Cheyns 2011).
This farmer mentions his suspicions of corruption (the company arranging false testimonies to go against his own).
The SPKS coordinator was an SW member.
Earn recognition for the care and support extended to those affected without it being seen by other participants as a manipulation of their voices by local NGOs, establish forums where they can get together with one another, earn recognition for the legitimacy of local and practical knowledge to express itself in the plenary, accommodate critical participation open to a specification of the common good, etc.
Abbreviations
- MSI:
-
Multi-stakeholder initiative
- NGO:
-
Non-governmental organization
- Q & A:
-
Questions and Answers
- RSPO:
-
Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil
- SPKS:
-
Indonesian Oil Palm Farmers Union (Serikat Petani Kelapa Sawit in Indonesian)
- SW:
-
Sawit Watch
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Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Philippe Barbereau who conducted some interviews with me during his Master’s thesis in 2009. I would also like to express my gratitude to Lawrence Busch, Florence Palpacuer, Lone Riisgaard, and Laurent Thévenot for their comments on a previous draft. This work received the support of the French National Research Agency (ANR-11-CEPL-0009, project PRIGOUE).
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Cheyns, E. Making “minority voices” heard in transnational roundtables: the role of local NGOs in reintroducing justice and attachments. Agric Hum Values 31, 439–453 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-014-9505-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-014-9505-7