Intersectional perspectives on land relations of oil palm plantations: A decolonial feminist approach on Indonesia's bioeconomy

Abstract

Indonesia's oil palm plantations, a critical sector for the country's bioeconomy, have attracted significant attention, especially due to the climate crisis. While the government sought to expand the national industry through boosting biodiesel policy, the European Union (EU) imposes a ban on imports of deforestation-linked commodities, including palm oil. Facing this development, this article seeks to analyse Indonesia's oil palm plantations from the perspective of land relations. Current research suggests that state incentives for a societal transformation towards a bioeconomy tend to exacerbate rather than reduce existing global social inequalities in the agricultural sector. While this critique is built mainly on studies that focus on land-labour relations in a broader way, the studies fall short of developing a more complex and sufficiently historicised perspective on the (re-)construction and (re-)configurations of intersecting categories of inequalities. Drawing on decolonial feminist approach on intersectionality, this article attempts to develop an analytical framework that considers the intersection of inequalities as historically mutually constructing social relations for the study of changing land relations in the context of the expansion of agro-industrial biomass production. The article shows how control over land access and use is reconfigured, perpetuating intersectional social inequalities. This paper argues that a just socio-ecological transformation must incorporate these complexities of social inequalities in order to change them. The aim of the paper is to urge the necessity of intersectional perspectives on social changes in the context of the bioeconomy.