A Case Study on the Persistence of Swidden Agriculture in the Context of Post-2015 Anti-Haze Regulation in West-Kalimantan

Paul Hasan Thung

doi:10.1007/s10745-018-9969-y

Abstract

This case study analyses a ban on the use of fire in a district of West-Kalimantan in response to the 2015 Southeast Asian Haze crisis. Based on stakeholder interviews and participant observation, I address the dilemmas encountered at the district and village level as a result of transnational environmental politics. A stark example of a wider tendency for policies to restrict swidden agriculture, the case study provides insight into the persistence of swidden. Contradictions between different stakeholders’ experiences and understandings of local human ecology and haze politics ultimately rendered the ban ineffective. Future efforts at regulating fire in smallholder agriculture would therefore benefit from a clearer understanding of the relationships between fire, subsistence, and haze.

Highlights

Overviews of where and how swidden agriculture1 is practiced currently report a rapid decrease in the extent of swidden in Southeast Asia (Padoch et al 2007; Schmidt-Vogt et al 2009; Van Vliet et al 2012; Li et al 2014)
The results reveal that the ban should be understood as an outcome of the dilemmas that transnational environmental politics impose upon local actors
The very agencies that implemented and supported the ban acknowledged that it could and should not be strictly enforced, but used it to show to their political superiors that they were preventing a crisis

Summary

Introduction

Overviews of where and how swidden agriculture1 is practiced currently report a rapid decrease in the extent of swidden in Southeast Asia (Padoch et al 2007; Schmidt-Vogt et al 2009; Van Vliet et al 2012; Li et al 2014). A shared understanding of the importance of swidden agriculture for subsistence and the limitations of state power in the illegible landscape led actors to act in mutually accommodating ways. I argue that local interpretations of what ‘the state’ sees led some to support the ban, while a subsistence ethic and landscape illegibility impeded effective enforcement.

Results

Conclusion