REDD+ Governmentality: Governing Forest, Land, and Forest Peoples in Indonesia

Aimed at lowering forest carbon emissions through financing improved forest governance and socially inclusive land and natural resources use, the REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Plus) program is attracting widespread interest and investment in Indonesia. REDD+ introduces new governmental rationalities, in which forest carbon is used as a standard to measure a country’s performance in keeping its tropical forests intact and defines the financial rewards the country will receive. REDD+ is one factor in an emergent new political conjuncture in Indonesia that is opening up to the possibilities for reworking forest governance. This thesis employs Foucault’s concept of governmentality to examine how governmental technologies are formed, contested and implemented through REDD+ and some of the early impacts the program is having (Foucault, 1991a).  Drawing on grounded empirical data and inspired by a ‘not-quite neoliberal nature’ framework (de Freitas, Marston and Bakker, 2015) I show how place-based discourses, politics, actors, and interests are shaping the way REDD+ unfolds in Indonesia. This is achieved through three case studies focused on the REDD+ Taskforce; the One Map Initiative; and an Indigenous land claim in a community in Central Kalimantan. Findings from the three case studies show how current deficiencies in forestland governance have been problematized where there is no clarity over who has rights to forestland, who owns the concessions and where they are. Thus, addressing current complexities is becoming the Taskforce’s priority through series of governmental technologies including the One Map Initiative. Meanwhile, activists are making use of this opportunity to render visible Indigenous land rights in an attempt to subvert focused technical fixes to more open social justice ends. By discussing the messy actualities of developing, implementing and responding to governmental technologies the thesis problematizes pro- and anti-REDD+ debates.  Rather than view REDD+ governmental technologies through “a programmer’s view” (Death, 2013) as a finished or rigid project implemented on others, I see it as an ongoing attempt to govern human – forest relationships that are shaped by contestations and resistances. Thus, the thesis makes an important contribution to neoliberal nature literature by showing that neoliberal governmental programs, such as REDD+, should be seen as sites of struggle, with different actors experiencing and engaging the program in different ways. As such, this thesis highlights how neoliberal mechanisms can be co-opted by particular actors in order to achieve diverse economic, social and environmental goals. Through engagement with governmental technologies the landscapes of forest politics change in both enabling and constraining ways.