Paper short abstract:

In Indonesia, devolution of tenure rights is precipitated through local-global coalitions via social forestry schemes, often around discourses of indigeneity. This paper analyses how deliberative politics within coalition networks shape exclusion or access for diverse and marginalised stakeholders.

Paper long abstract:

70% of landcover in Indonesia is registered as state forests, effectively rendering forest-dwelling communities, such as the indigeneous Dayak of Kalimantan, illegal squatters. Tenure reform initiatives encompassed in social forestry schemes seek to devolve tenure rights and formalise communal territorial claims. Formalisation aims to improve livelihoods, protect against land grabs, and improve sustainable land management. However, not all local actors are impacted equally by such projects. And the deliberative politics of devolved forest governance may engender unanticipated forms of inequity and new subalternities.

Indonesian social forestry is contingent upon coalitions between local actors and civil society organisations. In this context, discourses of indigeneity have emerged as powerful platforms for articulating and mobalizing collective political will within coalitions. However, these networks may privelege some actors and interests to the exclusion of others. In Indonesia, where indigeneity is a complex and contested concept, the ways that indigeneity and its entitlements are discurisvely imagined, performed, asserted, and/or contested within coalition networks may shape perceptions of stakeholder legitimacy within policy deliberations.

This paper thus examines the discursive production of legitimacy within tenure deliberations in the Berau Forest Carbon Project (BFCP), a jurisdictional social forestry project in East Kalimantan. Combining a critical reading of Indonesian tenure policies and ethnographic interviews from two villages involved in tenure deliberations in the BFCP, I analyse how the discursive politics of legitimation affects new boundaries of access and exclusion in environmental governance and how changing ideas of indigeneity are implicated within these processes.

Paper short abstract:

What kind of disturbance effects could have a law of enclosure? I examine the Hungarian Forest and Pasture Separation Act of 1853 implementation, and it is short- and long-term effects on the current high nature and cultural value of wood pastures and silvopastoral systems.

Paper long abstract:

Wood pastures and silvopastoral systems are recognized in Europe as a high natural and cultural value habitat and management. In addition to natural values, they also provide the basis for traditional ecological knowledge and traditional pastoral communities. From the point of view of disturbance ecology, wood pastures are already interesting. They are developed and maintained at local levels by herders and farmers on a fine scale. Furthermore, they are directly significantly influenced by forestry and agricultural policies and law. Examining the history of contemporary Hungarian ancient wood pastures, they almost always highlight the law and implementation of the Forest and Pasture Separation Act of 1853. In my research, I examine how this enclosure law has been implemented, and it is short- and long-term effects on the current high nature and cultural value of wood pastures. As a result of this separation Act, grazing areas have drastically decreased. The pastures were demarcated due to this enclosure during the 19th century, and the remains of the land are the ancient wood pastures of today. This also affected the management of the silvopastoral systems themselves. As a result, communities and even decision-makers and scientists had to rethink pasture and forest management at the local and country-level end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. In conclusion, historical human disturbances could have a strong and not-recognized impact on the contemporary landscape and raise the questions of rethink traditional managements and human disturbance narratives.

Paper short abstract:

The government of Georgia, partly because of its perceived threat from Russia, has cooperated where it can with the European Union and the USA. There is a perennial problem of Georgia dependent on outside sources of energy and yet it has a network of rivers which could provide hydro-electric power.

Paper long abstract:

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Chicago based consultants Mackenzie have presided over the quiet signing of a 99 year lease to a Turkish company to build a hydro-electric dam with the sale of energy to Georgia for 15 years, after which it will sell anywhere that is commercially advantageous. Furthermore, the agreement is unclear about the land ownership of the site nor who is to be employed for building the dam and much else. The Parliament has not ratified the contract but payments have been made and a start on the work has begun, including blocking off the direct road to villages in the area which forces them, when travelling from the capital, to go on a large circuit to get there.

Our paper focusses on the huge reaction of the public to the issue, both the locals who are concerned about the eco-enclave for growing particular plants, access to their homes and that the location of the dam is on an earthquake fault line. And then there are the intellectuals and committed youth from the capital city who have organised a formidable resistance with 249 nights of vigil at the entrance to the site and counting. We observe the national and religious symbols that have been taken to the site and the repertoire of traditional histories which has attracted supporters. The EU has been brought in to intervene and mediate between the government and the protesters and we examine the clash of cultures and the consequent results as they unfold. We note the contrasts of discourse between the locals, the urban protesters, the government representatives and the international communities and how their dominance ebbs and flows.