At a Distance from the Territory: Distal Drivers in the (Re)territorialization of Oil Palm Plantations in Indonesia

Abstract

Exponential growth in oil palm land and palm oil production in Indonesia currently makes the country the world’s largest producer of this vegetable oil. Throughout its tumultuous political past from the 1960s until today, conditions were created which enabled the expansion of oil palm plantations. Under President Suharto’s “New Order,” territorialization processes were used to bring land and people under the control of an increasingly powerful central government. Plantations were instrumental in this regard and additionally formed the basis for the production of palm oil as an important export commodity in the opening of the Indonesian economy. In the wake of the 1997/1998 Asian economic crisis and with the end of Suharto’s rule, Indonesia entered a period of reform marked by decentralization and reterritorialization processes. Oil palm plantations continued to grow as foreign investment and plantation ownership by private businesses became increasingly relevant. Throughout both of these periods, the land-use decisions, which fostered the expansion of oil palm plantations, were not made by the people on the ground, but at a spatial, temporal, and functional “distance.” While distal drivers strongly shaped the development of land use, the consequences of these changes had little impact on the drivers. As plantations expanded farther into territories already claimed for other forms of land use (e.g., rainforest, subsistence agriculture land, indigenous land), they were increasingly likely to confront competing claims to land. Under the perceived greater political freedom of the reform period, the competing claims more often triggered conflicts, which, however, had limited bearing on these distal drivers.