Paper short abstract:

The RSPO regulates environmental and social problems around palm oil production by a system of certification. How do different local actors involved in conflict use this regime for their interests in the localities of production? And how does that alter environmental and social consequences?

Paper long abstract:

The production of palm oil causes a variety of environmental and social problems. Campaigns by NGOs, concern of Western consumers and corporate risk management has led to a certification initiative which claims to regulate part of these issues.

Certification regimes are constructed by a range of heterogeneous actors in a range of heterogeneous practices and places. It is about consumption, about marketing, about supporting policies and campaigning. It is about processing, about procurement, transport and trade. But perhaps foremost it is about conflict related to local production practices, about land use change, about property rights and access to land, about labour relations, about deforestation, waste disposal and degradation of soils. How do the interrelations between these practices together affect processes of negotiation in local conflicts?

This paper will approach the issue of certification as a web of interrelations between these heterogeneous practices. This research approach focusses on how actors involved in local conflict use these regimes and reproduce them locally in such a way that it fits their interest in contexts of plural legal regimes, and on how that alters environmental and social consequences.

It proposes an ethnographic approach of the different practices and localities that together shape the meaning of certification regimes and emphasizes the interrelations between these practises.