1With a focus on the constitutive interactions between knowledge, power and discourse, this paper set out to examine the processes at stake in the crafting of a development project formulated to combine conservation, sustainable development, and indigenous peoples’ empowerment. The project studied is located in the Upper Baram in Sarawak, Malaysia, and emanated from a local proposal before being endorsed by the ITTO as funder agency and entrusted to the FDS as executing agency, with the supposed involvement of indigenous communities, NGOs and timber companies.

2Historically, indigenous peoples of the Ulu Baram have been subjected to cognitive dispossession through a reframing of their relations to the land towards Western, individually-owned and productivist conceptions, as well as to the imposition of hierarchical colonial governance structures. In these contexts, anthropological knowledge production and categorisation appeared as an important tool for the soft, discursive subjugation of these peoples. Independence from British rule and integration into the Malaysian Federation denoted a shift towards predatory logging frameworks which further the rapid physical dispossession of Sarawak peoples from their ancestral lands and forests. In these frameworks, statist and corporate actors mingle in crony patron-client relations which perpetuate the former’s grasp on power and the latter’s grasp on natural resources.

3Around the same period, increased international recognition of human-caused environmental degradation began to put pressure on the Malaysian-Sarawakian extractive apparatus, particularly in light of Western environmentalists’ incorporation of the Penan struggle. In response to these campaigns, and in alignment with the emerging global paradigm of sustainable development, statist actors developed a powerful public relations response aimed at displaying their historical subscription to the concept. Under this notion, economic growth and conservation can be associated, environmental degradation managed, and the image of the timber industry softened.

4In alignment with these principles, the ITTO, designed to safeguard the interests of the timber industry, partakes in environmental managerialism through the provision of technocratic, rational and productivist approaches to forest management along with the superficial involvement of ENGOs. Developmentalist and statist actors effectively become knowledge producers, through the creation of certification schemes which ensure the pursuit of timber extraction and a symbolic but superficial commitment to conservation and indigenous peoples’ rights.

5The Penan-initiated UBFA project, initially geared towards the affirmation of NCR and self-determination, was endorsed by the ITTO and enlarged to include other ethnic groups as a project centred on the ‘participation’ and ‘empowerment’ of indigenous peoples in achieving so-called conservation and sustainable development.

6During fieldwork, various hurdles appeared to the respect of indigenous peoples’ rights and due conduct of FPIC. Within villages, governance structures inherited from colonial times mark a divide between residents subscribing to government-appointed headmen and those supporting locally-elected leaders. With all communities recognising a single consultation protocol of which the headman forms the core channel, this issue becomes central in duly securing consent from a majority of indigenous populations. Through in-depth consultation, villagers on each side of different political cleavages can be informed and consulted about the project.

7Moving beyond the fixed, essentialised and monolithic Other accounted for in the project proposal, which invokes some of the imagery generated by Penan culture and struggle, fieldwork research revealed stark contrasts between ethnic groups’ way of life, needs and interests. While Kenyah respondents appeared to value bottom-up involvement in economic activities, Penan interviewees ascribed a profound meaning to this project which they seemed to approximate to full, definite self-determination. While Kenyah expectations are relatively closer to the discourse harboured by the ITTO and FDS in the project document, both ethnic groups ultimately make a claim of bottom-up governance and self-determination which is far from the proposed top-down management.

8At the dawn of implementation, the variety of actors involved (communities, local and foreign NGOs, timber companies, state government and funding agency) negotiate their own interests, values, knowledge and expectations by appealing to different concepts and discourses. Ultimately, the project agreement and inception report were signed without a consultation process nor with the substantial involvement of community representatives and NGOs. The latter appear to be involved rather symbolically and aesthetically, while the project remains steered by the ITTO and its environmental managerialism attitude.

9Goals linked with conservation and indigenous peoples’ rights, providing the project with its legitimacy and attractiveness and forming the core of (interviewed) communities’ expectations are ultimately relegated to the goodwill of the state, which has historically neglected these aims. In turn, the project proposes the production of more scientific knowledge in estimating the ‘value’ of biodiversity in the area, which has been advocated by indigenous groups for decades and studied various times, and will likely be conceived in productivist terms as per the agencies’ history. Indigenous ‘subjects’, deemed unproductive and to lack knowledge about ways to ‘utilise’ their land, are in turn subtly incorporated into development, through transformation programmes and land management models that are aligned with the state’s historical commitment to bringing them ‘into the mainstream’. Studies and development models provide technocratic delays to the attainment of inherently political goals, while timber logging and deforestation continue unhindered.

10The UBFA design and early implementation processes have excluded the concerned peoples from meaningful acknowledgement and participation, while converting their aspirations and knowledge into symbolic and economic capital forming the basis of the project’s rhetoric and aesthetics. The latter provides the funding and executing agencies with a smoothened image in the face of international criticism regarding conservation and indigenous rights, allowing them to defuse demands for substantive change and threats of collective action. In sum, and in line with historical trends, indigenous peoples of the Ulu Baram are subjected to cognitive extractivism through which they are physically and semantically dispossessed from the land/forest.

11Moving forward, and in light of its emphasis on knowledge acquisition and production, this paper advocates for ethnographic work and applied anthropology to form an essential element of consultation and a primary goal of any project demanding ‘bottom-up’, ‘community-based’ governance or indigenous ‘participation’ and ‘empowerment’. Embodied anthropology, in observing first-hand the worldviews and practices of local peoples, can enrich development and conservation projects by placing ‘beneficiaries’ at the centre of the design and implementation processes. Furthermore, anthropological practices ought to follow the entirety of projects’ duration and extend well beyond their termination, by properly assessing the remnants and long-term effects of the project and in view of informing future similar initiatives.

12Finally, further research could be conducted on the gender dimension of this project, which forms a crucial component of the ITTO proposal but fell beyond the scope of this fieldwork research.