A tale of two networks: Market formation on the Cambodia-Vietnam frontier

Although South‐East Asia's trading networks have existed for millennia, recent decades have seen markets dramatically intensify in the region's frontiers, bringing social and environmental upheaval. Within political ecology, such transitions are framed as frontier incorporation into global capitalism – a process that has been ongoing since European colonisation. This paper, however, responds to recent calls for commodity network studies to better account for specific material and social variances in “actually existing capitalism.” My analysis focuses on Mondulkiri province in north‐eastern Cambodia, where a boom in cassava cultivation has produced two distinct commodity networks. The first network supplies dried cassava chips to trans‐border markets that serve bioethanol and livestock production. The second network supplies fresh cassava to Vietnamese starch and processed food factories. In order to understand why two market networks have evolved from one crop, I analyse the social, material and spatial relationships in each network. Comparative analysis shows that both networks involve land and labour commodification and respond to global demand. Yet subtle geographical variations in transport networks, migration patterns and the availability of uncleared land, support dried cassava production in some areas and fresh cassava in others. The cassava case shows that although frontier markets are propelled by globally connected processes of commodification, they ultimately take form through co‐productive networks that mould to and shape frontier landscapes. Furthermore, market networks are not only mobilised, but also can be demobilised by environmental, economic and social pressures – a point that frontier incorporation perspectives may overlook. The paper therefore argues for an understanding of frontier geographies as dynamic and constitutive in market formation.This research is supported by the Australian Research Council (FT130101495 Frontiers of change: resources, access and political agency on the Cambodia–Vietnam borderland)

Learning in sustainable natural resource management: challenges and opportunities in the Pacific

The importance of learning in natural resource management (NRM) is being recognized by an increasing number of scholars and practitioners. A learning approach to NRM applies principles and theories of adult, organizational and social learning, and is underpinned by three core elements – systems thinking, negotiation and reflection. By combining learning theories with concepts from adaptive management, co-management, and participatory resource management, this article explores how the explicit inclusion of learning principles and processes can strengthen community based natural resource management. Case studies from the South Pacific are used to draw out lessons for the wider application of learning approaches to NRM

The evolution and evaluation of an online role play through design-based research

This paper presents selected findings from a 5-year design-based research case study of the evolution of an online role play that allows postgraduate students to explore the complexities inherent in land rights negotiations between indigenous peoples and others. In the context of Laurillard’s (2002) conversational framework and a design-based research methodology, diverse private and public discussion forum spaces were created for group negotiations on a learning management system (LMS) platform. Our analysis of the conversational framework structure in the evolved role play showed that all four stages – discursive, adaptive, integrative, and reflective – were evidenced, with the adaptive and integrative stages cycling through multiple times. The online role play, whilst implemented as a simple virtual world, facilitated personal, deep and socialised learning experiences focused on consultation, negotiation and decision-making. We also found that student anonymity was not necessary for full engagement in role play, and that students chose to incorporate communication technologies outside the LMS into their learning activities. This research shows that with a strong pedagogical design, and attention paid to an evidence-based iterative improvement cycle, online role plays can provide powerful collaborative learning experiences

From "land to the tiller" to the "new landlords"? The debate over Vietnam's latest land reforms

Between Vietnam’s independence and its reunification in 1975, the country’s socialist land tenure system was underpinned by the principle of “land to the tiller”. During this period, government redistributed land to farmers that was previously owned by landlords. The government’s “egalitarian” approach to land access was central to the mass support that it needed during the Indochinese war. Even when the 1993 Land Law transitioned agricultural land from collectivized to household holdings with 20-year land use certificates, the “land to the tiller” principle remained largely sacrosanct in state policy. Planned amendments to the current Land Law (issued in 2013), however, propose a fundamental shift from “land to the tiller” to the concentration of land by larger farming concerns, including private sector investors. This is explained as being necessary for the modernization of agricultural production. The government’s policy narrative concerning this change emphasizes the need to overcome the low productivity that arises from land fragmentation, the prevalence of unskilled labor and resource shortages among smallholders. This is contrasted with the readily available resources and capacity of the private sector, together with opportunities for improved market access and high-tech production systems, if holdings were consolidated by companies. This major proposed transition in land governance has catalyzed heated debate over the potential risks and benefits. Many perceive it as a shift from a “pro-poor” to “pro-rich” policy, or from “land to the tiller” to the establishment of a “new landlord”—with all the historical connotations that this badge invokes. Indeed, the growing level of public concern over land concentration raises potential implications for state legitimacy. This paper examines key narratives on the government-supported land concentration policy, to understand how the risks, benefits and legitimacy of the policy change are understood by different stakeholders. The paper considers how the transition could change land access and governance in Vietnam, based on early experience with the approach.This research was partially supported the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme (project DP180101495)

The FPIC principle meets land struggles in Cambodia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea

Social and environmental safeguards are now commonplace in policies and procedures that apply to certain kinds of foreign investment in developing countries. Prominent amongst these is the principle of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC), which is commonly tied to policies and procedures relating to investments that have an impact on 'indigenous peoples'. This paper treats international safeguards as a possible manifestation of what Karl Polanyi called the 'double movement' in the operation of a capitalist market economy. Our concern here is with the way that the FPIC principle has been applied in struggles over the alienation of land and associated natural resources claimed by indigenous peoples or customary landowners in three developing countries-Cambodia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Case studies of recent land struggles in these countries are used to illustrate the existence of a spectrum in which the application of the FPIC principle may contribute more or less to the defence of customary rights. On one hand, it may be little more than a kind of 'performance' that simply adds some extra value to a newly created commodity. On the other hand, it may sometimes enable local or indigenous communities and their allies in 'civil society' to mount an effective defence of their rights in opposition to the processes of alienation or commodification. The paper finds that all three countries have political regimes and national policy frameworks that are themselves resistant to the imposition of social and environmental safeguards by foreign investors or international financial institutions. However, they differ widely in the extent to which they make institutional space for the FPIC principle to become the site of a genuine double movement of the kind that Polanyi envisaged

Mapping value in a 'green' commodity frontier:revisiting commodity chain analysis

Analysis of commodity chains has provided important insights on how power, resource and market access mediate the distribution of benefits and risks. Given this analytical potential, Commodity Chain Analysis (CCA) is now being applied to the study of biofuels and carbon markets to gain systematic insight into the circumstances, relationships and transformations involved in their production and exchange. By building on and adapting this approach to three distinct case studies (biofuels in Madagascar and forest carbon in Cambodia and Laos), this article contributes new insights on the emergence of value within market environmentalism. The analysis highlights methodological challenges in applying CCA to commodified forms of nature, and the significance of knowledge and value negotiations. All three cases illustrate that it remains highly uncertain whether or not market exchange can ultimately be realized. As in the case of traditional commodities, pre-existing conditions of power and access shape modes of production and network configuration. Parallel and intersecting commodity networks (e.g. for land and timber) also require us to think beyond the traditional single-commodity focus. Thus, we call for an expanded analytical focus in applying CCA to non-material ‘green’ commodities that places greater emphasis on value negotiations and connections within new ‘commodity frontiers’

Not Just Participation: The Rise of the Eco-Precariat in the Green Economy

Despite recent attention to “frontier” green economies and the governance of emerging ecosystem services, the specific division of labour in these economies has been little studied. As many such initiatives are in the global South, labour’s marginality potentially contributes to the existing precariousness of those who are more often identified as “participants”. This article examines the roles and vulnerabilities of these actors: the carbon counters, species identifiers, GIS mappers, tree planters and others operating in the shadows. We draw on current understandings of labour and precarity to examine the geographical contours of an apparent and emerging “eco-precariat”: a socio-economically diverse group of labourers that address the volatile demands of an ever-expanding environmental service-based economy. We illustrate our analysis drawing on examples from a Blue Carbon project in Kenya, ecosystem services project in the Philippines, and REDD+ scheme in Cambodia. We use these examples to theorise the nature of labour in these frontier economies and put forward a framework for analysing the eco-precariat. We highlight the need to understand the precarity and marginalisation potentially created by this green division of labour in the provision of new ecosystem products and services. This framework contributes to ongoing analyses of labour as a central part of the green economy discourse and to larger discussions in the geographies of labour literature around the future of work in the global South and beyond.We would like to thank all those co-collaborators who supported this work with their intel-lectual and physical labour. Earlier versions of this work benefited from participants at thePolitical Ecology Network (POLLEN) 2018 Conference in Oslo on Eco-precariat labor and atfeedback from the Political Ecology Research Group at Cambridge University. The Cambo-dian research discussed in this paper (Mahanty) was jointly conducted with Dr Sarah Milnewith support from the Australian Research Council (#DP120100270) and supported by aEuropean Research Council Starting Grant (Hicks) (ERC #759457

The impact of swidden decline on livelihoods and ecosystem services in Southeast Asia: a review of the evidence from 1990 to 2015

Global economic change and policy interventions are driving transitions from long-fallow swidden (LFS) systems to alternative land uses in Southeast Asia’s uplands. This study presents a systematic review of how these transitions impact upon livelihoods and ecosystem services in the region. Over 17 000 studies published between 1950 and 2015 were narrowed, based on relevance and quality, to 93 studies for further analysis. Our analysis of land-use transitions from swidden to intensified cropping systems showed several outcomes: more households had increased overall income, but these benefits came at significant cost such as reductions of customary practice, socio-economic wellbeing, livelihood options, and staple yields. Examining the effects of transitions on soil properties revealed negative impacts on soil organic carbon, cation-exchange capacity, and aboveground carbon. Taken together, the proximate and underlying drivers of the transitions from LFS to alternative land uses, especially intensified perennial and annual cash cropping, led to significant declines in pre-existing livelihood security and the ecosystem services supporting this security. Our results suggest that policies imposing land-use transitions on upland farmers so as to improve livelihoods and environments have been misguided; in the context of varied land uses, swidden agriculture can support livelihoods and ecosystem services that will help buffer the impacts of climate change in Southeast AsiaThe authors wish to acknowledge the support of the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) via the award of an Evidence-Based Forestry grant administered on behalf of the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DfID) under the KNOW-FOR programme

The Prospects for Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) in Vietnam: A Look at Three Payment Schemes

Global conservation discourses and practices increasingly rely on market-based solutions to fulfill the dual objective of forest conservation and economic development. Although varied, these interventions are premised on the assumption that natural resources are most effectively managed and preserved while benefiting livelihoods if the market-incentives of a liberalised economy are correctly in place. By examining three nationally supported payment for ecosystem service (PES) schemes in Vietnam we show how insecure land tenure, high transaction costs and high opportunity costs can undermine the long-term benefits of PES programmes for local households and, hence, potentially threaten their livelihood viability. In many cases, the income from PES programmes does not reach the poor because of political and economic constraints. Local elite capture of PES benefits through the monopolization of access to forestland and existing state forestry management are identified as key problems. We argue that as PES schemes create a market for ecosystem services, such markets must be understood not simply as bald economic exchanges between ‘rational actors’ but rather as exchanges embedded in particular socio-political and historical contexts to support the sustainable use of forest resources and local livelihoods in Vietnam

Building bridges: lessons from the Arnavon Management Committee, Solomon Islands

The experiences of the AMC hold a number of important lessons about building bridges in community-based natural resource management. The research found that the AMC played a key role in coordinating the activities of diverse stakeholders in resource management. In particular, it enabled networking between diverse and, at times, conflicting groups of stakeholders that contributed to the development of a resource management system for an area that was previously openly accessible. It also provided access to financial and technical resources to support local initiatives. In fulfilling this role, the AMC also faced a number of challenges