Sustainability and Social-Ecological Systems: Navigating Oil Palm Cultivation and Sustainable Livelihoods

Abstract

This study reports on the results of research undertaken to assess the role of oil palm cultiva-tion for local livelihoods in the sub-district of Karaket in Thailand. Oil palm cultivation has become a product of heated debate within the international community and various stakehold-ers have raised serious concerns over its environmental and social sustainability. Karaket has recently experienced substantial uptake of oil palms by independently operating smallholder farmers. As such, it served as interesting case to explore the main outcomes of oil palm culti-vation for local livelihoods; regarded to operate in a system at interface with the social and the ecological. Through placing such system outcomes in the context of economic, social and environmental sustainability, implications for sustainable local livelihoods were unveiled. The study was guided by its own conceptual model and relied on interpretive, qualitative case study evidence that put local stakeholders at the centre of investigation. Evidence showed that oil palm cultivation has created high social and economic value for sustainable livelihoods without seriously undermining the natural resource base. Data revealed that multiple interrelations between the contextual, governance, resource, and resource user system have created such values, and if beneficial system interrelations are strengthened, sustainability may be secured