Grounding the Research
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My positionality
1As a former bachelor’s student in International Relations and now a master’s student in Development studies, I have become interested in understanding why people, myself included, wish to work in these fields. What makes people want to generate change and help others, and why so often across the globe rather than in their own home towns and countries? In the past few years, the undeniable lack of effectiveness of so many multilateral and international organisations geared towards poverty alleviation, peacebuilding, and environmental protection has hindered my initial naive aspiration of wanting to ‘do good’. I became concerned with the various ethical fallacies of these many programmes and projects, as well as their long-term goals (or absence thereof). Having lived for several years in The Hague and in Geneva, I became interested in understanding why and how my academic peers, colleagues and neighbours, involved in the diplomatic and development professional spheres of these two cities, had become involved in these sectors. What legitimacy and knowledge, biases and points of view, interests and goals are they bringing to this work? I started this course of study precisely with the aim of exploring the field of development itself, with its aesthetics, affective promises, expectations and symbolisms; its actors and their knowledge, vernacular, and relations with each other; but also its temporalities and inscriptions in historical processes as well as its afterlives, and imagined, material, or unintended consequences.
2As part of my master’s programme at the Geneva Graduate Institute, I became involved in one of the collaborative ‘Applied Research Projects’ which form part of the curriculum. These projects aim to provide students with research and teamwork skills as well as practical experience, and the opportunity to set foot in the professional world. Between February and December 2022, small groups of three or four students worked together to conduct policy-relevant research for international organisations and NGOs from Geneva and beyond. Each student of the interdisciplinary Development Studies and International Affairs Masters cohorts applied to their preferred project out of a list of over 50 projects, and was consequently allocated a group of students, an organisation, and an elaborated project proposal. During this period, groups carried out the different research steps, from inception and the definition of Terms of Reference to implementation and management through the crafting of a literature review, elaboration of methodology and data collection and analysis, to the finalisation with a presentation to partners and academic supervisors as well as the handing in of a final report.
3Along with three fellow students, I was allocated the project ‘Securing Indigenous/Community Ownership of the Upper Baram Forest Area (UBFA) in Malaysian Borneo‘, in partnership with Swiss NGO Bruno Manser Fonds (BMF). This biodiversity conservation project, which will be further detailed in the sections below, is different from the other national parks of the area in light of its aims to incorporate indigenous peoples, allow for the conservation of their cultural heritage, and promote alternative sources of income. Upon the successful endorsement of the UBFA project by the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) and the (albeit partial) securing of funding, BMF aimed to gather data on similar co-management, participative or community conservation projects in order to identify ‘best practices recommendations’ for active indigenous participation in the park. In other words, what necessary steps would ensure the genuine involvement of indigenous peoples in this top-down project? Through in-depth desk review of a few similar forest conservation projects across the world combined with interviews with the most relevant stakeholders involved in the project, our research was aimed at pinpointing practices which could successfully prioritise indigenous agency and involvement in forest governance. The first part of the research process, namely the comprehensive literature review of similar conservation projects around the world, would allow us to get a glimpse of general successes and failures in similar projects, while interviews with representatives from partner organisations and members of some of the concerned indigenous communities would allow us to tailor these recommendations to this specific situation.
Figure 1 Map locating the UBFA, previously labelled Penan Peace Park
Source: Harrison, 2014.
4The questions guiding our research were the following:
How can ownership of the Upper Baram Forest Area by the local indigenous people be achieved?
What kind of institutional setups for parks are required for shared governance to work? Which safeguards must be in place during the implementation phase?
What are the power asymmetries (financial, technical, legitimisation, world views, network access, etc.) between the actors involved and how should they be addressed?
What would be ideal vs. what is realistic in the specific context acknowledging these power asymmetries between the actors involved?
Which safeguards must be in place during the implementation phase to address these power asymmetries to move towards a more even playing field?
5Although not initially proposed due to budget restrictions, we collectively established that in-person fieldwork would be crucial to understanding the specific interests and expectations of communities who would be affected by this proposed park. To this end, we set out to identify additional sources of funding, notably via the Graduate Institute, external scholarships, and BMF. Even though our research and applications fell short of securing external funding, Bruno Manser Fonds generously offered to cover on-the-ground expenses (food and accommodation) if we were able to pay for our own flights, and the Institute contributed a small stipend for each of us. Unfortunately, two members of the group were unable to join for personal reasons. This led us to rethink the design and structure of our research: while the two of them would focus on the review of similar projects, my other research partner and I were to conduct ethnographic fieldwork in Borneo.
Participant observation
6In close collaboration with Bruno Manser Fonds, we established an extensive list of questions geared towards understanding existing institutional setups in villages and decision-making processes at intra- and inter-village levels, notably with regards to land use planning and resource management. We also explored past experiences and future expectations in terms of communication and consultation with and from external actors such as the government, NGOs and timber companies. Finally, the questions also aimed to understand which governance structure might be desirable and feasible for the UBFA project, as well as its ideal priorities.
7Upon arriving in Sarawak and meeting with members of the local NGOs, SAVE Rivers and Keruan, we were able to consolidate questions and categorise them into the three overarching topics. The NGO workers’ understanding of linguistic and cultural specificities to the communities we would be visiting allowed us to simplify and rephrase a lot of these questions. Notably, getting acquainted with the differences between the sedentary Kenyah farmers, who originated from the neighbouring Indonesian region of Kalimantan, and the historically nomadic Penan hunter-gatherers of the Baram area, constituted a point of considerable importance in the preparation of our research. We were able to meet our guide-interpreters, one of whom, working with SAVE Rivers and of Iban origin, would be travelling with us to the Kenyah villages and translating from Bahasa Malaysia to English, while the other, working with Keruan and of Penan origin, would accompany us to Penan villages and translate from Penan to English. It was laid out that we would be asking the questions in English, which would then be translated to the target language by our interpreter, who would then directly translate answers to us before we ask follow-up questions. The semi-structured format of these interactions allowed for some flexibility and permitted us to delve deeper into topics which seemed of interest to the respondents, despite not allowing a systematic approach of asking every single question on the list to every single respondent.
8An itinerary was laid out by members of Keruan and SAVE Rivers, in collaboration with BMF, to establish the exact dates, hosts and modes of transportation in and between each village. Participant observation naturally became our approach to this ethnographic fieldwork, as we would be travelling to villages to have access to respondents and conducting interviews at night after workdays. A meeting took place on 21 August in the SAVE Rivers office in Miri with so-called ‘key representatives’1 of various villages, mostly Kenyah, which counted as the first interview. The rest of the interviews took place in the villages between 23 August and 6 September.2 A more comprehensive grasp of respondents’ views and values, social structures, and organisational practices was made possible by immersion in their daily lives. Along with our guides, we were able to accompany people throughout their daily activities, which included fishing or bathing in the river, visiting sites of spiritual value, or going to nearby farms to plant rice. These experiences were supplemented by a number of casual interactions and conversations that improved our understanding of the social and cultural contexts of the study. As people worked on the farm during the day, interviews were conducted in the evenings and typically took place on the verandas of longhouses, the local peoples’ traditional communal residences made of separate apartments under a single roof and common veranda.
Impetus for research
9Throughout the process of conducting fieldwork, many questions, concerns, and discrepancies arose which I extensively considered, wrote about, and discussed with my research partner. Most notably were the stark differences between Kenyah and Penan responses and approaches to problem-solving and decision-making, as well as the relations and importance they ascribe to the forest, land, and the proposed UBFA project. Hearing about these complex and contradictory expectations and being accompanied by NGOs inevitably integrated us in the consultation process for the UBFA, despite our hopes of coming as independent ‘neutral’ researchers. Beyond realising and questioning the various obstacles to securing genuine consent, as provisioned by international standards relating to indigenous peoples and large-scale development projects and as symbolised by the notion of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) (UNDRIP, 2007), I extensively pondered the different meanings ascribed to concepts such as conservation, the forest, land rights, development, and community, by different actors involved in the project. These various gaps led me back to my initial questions regarding development: How do actors and institutions of this field, especially in projects geared towards ‘empowerment’ and ‘participation’ in which consent and ethics are crucial components, interact with the so-called ‘beneficiaries’ and their needs? How is the knowledge of these development ‘experts’ constructed, and how does it relate to indigenous and local knowledge?
10While digging into the literature related to the fieldwork, as well as for the purpose of this paper, various strains of thought appeared to provide crucial insights for my inquiry into these complex and multidimensional issues. Understood through the prism of governmentality, developmentalism appears as a discursive construction which arouses a scientific and technocratic apparatus in the name of modernity. In the context of accelerated environmental degradation prompted by extractivism, development harbours a sustainable label which universalises ecological struggles while ignoring colonial and racial structures. Recognising that discourse and knowledge are constitutive terrains of power, scholars call for epistemological decolonisation through renewed perceptions and embodied knowledge.
Theoretical insights
Governmentality and post-development
11First and foremost, this research is anchored in a poststructuralist stance which posits that language and discourse are constitutive of reality, in which their construction infuses power. Anthropological and philosophical insights into the intersection of discourse, power and knowledge have been sparked and guided by Michel Foucault’s work, notably that on governmentality, the broad domain of discourses and practices which allow for the creation and administration of subjects. This concept was born out of the scholar’s examination of the birth of the modern state and the art of government which, as opposed to Machiavelli’s previous understanding of sovereign power over a territory, is concerned with the administration and management of populations. In the eighteenth century context of capitalist expansion and demographic growth, population becomes the terrain of government and must be managed rationally and effectively. What is at stake is the optimisation of life itself by targeting the wealth, health, security and happiness of the collective social body. What Foucault consequently labels biopower, is thus geared towards increasing the utility and docility of the bodies which compose a given population, a duty assigned to itself by the government. The particularity of the notion of governmentality is that it is not limited to conventional political and civil governments or states, but rather broadly, to any rational – considered and calculated – effort to shape, guide, regulate or manage the conduct of individuals or groups towards specific goals or ends. A multitude of entities, organisations and agencies are involved in governmentality, that is in exercising authority over the conduct of human beings (Foucault, 2000; Inda, 2005, pp. 2-6). Governmentality has drawn consequent attention to the ‘multiplicity of authorities, knowledges, strategies and devices that have sought to govern conduct for specific ends’ (Inda, 2005, 7). Scholars from a variety of disciplines have examined the links between rationalities and strategies of knowing and large-scale schemes and entities for managing ever larger domains of the lives of collectivities. In this context, the emergence of the development discourse after the Second World War has been analysed by various scholars as having created an institutional apparatus for producing knowledge about and exercising power over the ‘Third World’.
12Extractivism, namely the mode of accumulation based on the removal and export of large quantities of (mainly unprocessed) natural resources, is commonly associated with what development ‘experts’ label the ‘resource curse’ (Acosta, 2013). This ‘entrapment’ of extractivist economies in underdevelopment (characterised by poverty, great inequalities, conflict etc.), is addressed with suggestions for improved, more efficient, participative and transparent extractivism, and ‘environmental destruction is accepted as the inevitable cost of achieving development’ (Acosta, 2013, 62). By analysing development at the state level of analysis, these accounts fail to address the world-system perspective developed by Wallerstein (1979) which acknowledges the interdependency of Southern poverty and Northern wealth, with the latter thriving on the impoverishment of the former. Through the prism of governmentality, development is understood to have deployed a regime which ensures a certain level of control over its ‘subjects’ or ‘beneficiaries’ of the Third World (Escobar, 1995). Post-development scholars who posit this analysis of development economics understand it as a cultural artefact of the North, a relatively unchallenged system of beliefs in the intrinsic efficiency of growth and of development projects (Rist, 1996, de Sardan, 2021). Considered ontologically, developmentalism commits the ‘fallacy’ of imposing the European path to modernity as a universalised mode of governance, a partially and provincially considered path (Dussel, 1993, pp. 67-68). In this view, still anchored in evolutionary prejudice from primitive to developed, standardised models are applicable universally regardless of local conditions, and concerns such as poverty alleviation are reduced into ‘technical problems’ rooted in evolutionist imaginaries (Ferguson, 1994, de Sardan, 2021). Through scientific and administrative tools for the simplification and ordering of ‘subjects’ and ‘nature’, local differences and expertise are concealed and silenced (Scott, 1998). Development is generated by structures, technologies and personnel of the industrialised world, and diffused by international agencies and multilateral bodies such as the World Bank and the OECD (Escobar, 1995, Rist, 1996).
Environmental managerialism and technocratisation
13In a growing context of environmental awareness and movements, scholars have analysed the emergence of an institutionalisation of environmental concerns. The advent of the ‘sustainable development’ discourse of the 1980s-onwards period, epitomises this process of discursive and institutional incorporation of ecological concerns into the field of development. Coined by Arturo Escobar as a regime of ‘environmental managerialism’ (1996), sustainable development enabled a process of professionalisation and bureaucratisation of these issues through which the ‘Western scientist continues to speak for the Earth’ (Escobar 1995, 194). While this environmental institutionalisation may be viewed as positive in many regards, as it raises ecological concerns to higher levels of legitimacy, it in turn inscribes and naturalises certain discourses, effectively precluding certain possibilities for environmental safeguarding or protection. In this sense, moral and political imperatives can be evaded and drowned in bureaucratic and technoscientific interventions. As it draws actors into endless negotiations and compromises, environmental managerialism obstructs significant change, as it privileges certain voices and erases others (Brosius, 1999).
14Similarly, the concept of the ‘Anthropocene’, later identified by Western geologists and climatologists as the current era of human-induced planetary crisis, has also been perceived as an impetus for global action. Both of these concepts have been deeply universalising, assuming all humans aboard ‘spaceship Earth’ are equally responsible for and affected by ecological issues (Ward, 1966). While key in acknowledging the disastrous geological and climatic effects of human presence and activity on the planet, various scholars have noted that this universalising episteme ignores profound colonial structures and continued racial domination (Yusoff, 2019, Gómez-Barris, 2019).
Post-colonial moves beyond extractivism
15Various scholars of anthropology and related disciplines have paid attention to the way power asymmetries and economic structures drive environmental changes and inequalities in the face of these changes, under the field of political ecology. This field suggests that environmental issues are the outcome of political processes, and that ideas and understandings about ‘nature’ are shaped and disseminated in ways that are inherently political (Adams & Hutton, 2007, 149). Political ecology has provided various accounts of ecological injustices and conflicts provoked by resource extraction, particularly among poor and indigenous communities in the so-called global South. A wide array of movements has emerged such as ‘environmental justice’ and ‘environmentalism of the poor’, which make place for marginalised groups, such as poor, non-white and indigenous peoples, whose livelihoods are threatened by extractivism (Nixon, 2011). Highlighting their plight for social justice through claims of recognition and participation, these movements reveal the inextricable link between environmental and human rights issues (Martínez-Alier, 2003).
16In the postcolonial extractivist world, coloniality of power continues as states and corporations become indistinguishable in their economic interests and activities, through which they continue expanding their control over land and peoples (Quijano, 2000). Territories, populations, animals and plants are reduced to extractable data and commodities to be accumulated, while the visible and invisible forces between human and nonhuman worlds are occulted. Various scholars have examined extractive capitalism’s techniques of domination, whether they be rhetorical, economic, legal or political; particularly in the Americas and their indigenous and Afro-descendent territories (Quijano, 2007, Gómez-Barris, 2017). In these processes, the subtleties and complexities of social and ecological life are dramatically reduced, constrained and converted into commodities. This colonial paradigm and worldview, which reduces life in regions of high biodiversity to capitalist resource conversion, is labelled the extractive zone by Macarena Gómez-Barris. The scholar, in a similar fashion to Edouard Glissant’s theory of relationality which invites us to see the poetics beyond the colonial divide and duality, suggests a move beyond these extractive zones through renewed perceptions, autonomous epistemologies and embodied knowledge. This invitation to lift submerged perspectives and social ecologies echoes Quijano’s suggestion that addressing and critiquing the totalising Western paradigm of modernity/rationality must begin with epistemological decolonisation, through new communications, productions of knowledge and exchanges of experiences and meanings (2007, 177). Indigenous resurgence, according to Coulthard, critically draws on the past with a view to radically transforming current power relations, through self-revitalisation and flourishment (2014). Pointing to how scientific knowledge has enabled the colonial Anthropocene, these scholars invite us to move towards a remapping of the land and resurgent resources for renewal.
Notes de bas de page
1People cooperating with NGOs and involved in advocacy work.
2A full list of interviews and the ethnic group of the villages they took place in can be found in Annex 4. Throughout the paper, interviews will be referred to by their number (from 1 to 14) so as to preserve the anonymity of respondents, in the following format: (Interview #, Location, Day Month). The year is systematically 2022. Given their anonymity and in a concern for readability, all citations from interviews and personal communications will be included in footnotes.
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