Oil palm expansion without enclosure: smallholders and environmental narratives

Abstract

Recent debates on land grabbing and biofuels tend to link oil palm expansion to rural dispossession, environmental degradation and rural resistance. In this paper, we examine to what extent ‘enclosure’, a central concept in two critiques – ‘environmentalism of the poor’ and ‘green grabbing’ – is intrinsically linked to oil palm expansion. We argue that where enclosure is absent, poor peasants may seek greater market integration over resistance to modernisation processes. We analyse how and why peasants engage in oil palm cultivation and how their involvement undermines green efforts to curb its expansion in Chiapas, Mexico. Our analysis suggests that an exclusive focus on enclosure as the main driving force behind contestation and agrarian social relationships is unable to explain agrarian dynamics and the multiple uses to which environmental narratives are put.

Keywords:

• biofuel
• dispossession
• green grabbing
• Mexico
• political ecology

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Abril Aidee Ruiz Medina, Henk van Rikxoort and Carlos Miguel López Sierra for research assistance. This contribution benefited from comments made in seminars at Wageningen University and Chapingo University. We also thank all interviewees for their time. Finally we thank the Land Deal Politics Initiative (LDPI) and the Mexican Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT in its Spanish acronym) for funding this research.

Notes

¹In addition to the environmentalism of the poor and green grabbing theses, there are other analyses of the relationship between accumulation and environmentalism, such as the role of environmental certification (e.g. Jansen 2004), but this paper focuses on the first two.

²This project was previously known as the Puebla-Panamá Plan and aimed to encourage the economic integration of Mesoamerica.

³Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation.

⁴In Mexico, it was mandatory to blend ethanol in fuel in only three urban regions.

⁵Equivalent to USD 97 in June 2008.

⁶Some ejidos such as Flor de Marqués blocked oil palm cultivation per se while other ejidos agreed on banning land transactions with oil palm investors.

⁷The 1992 land tenure reform certainly left ejidos more vulnerable to processes of land concentration. The importance of the ejido tenure is, however, evident when compared to rural communities with private property titles, as in Rio Salinas in the southern Lacandon rainforest where an investor bought about one third of all community lands (informal conversation with local investment manager, 24 August 2012).

⁸For instance, an agronomist working in a large private-sector oil palm plantation was kidnapped and murdered in 2013.

⁹By law, any increase in plantation size of 300 hectares requires the participation of an additional partner to the company. A large-scale producer in Soconusco explained the implications of such a law: ‘It is difficult to go against that law, the Agrarian Law, it is very difficult. I am outside of that [the law]; I know I am in danger, right? But as I have it [the property] divided in names [front men] is okay; but that also creates an internal problem, right? It is not that easy to handle’ (interview, 22 July 2013, Tapachula). As evident in this interview, the risks associated with using front men as a way of legally owning a large area posed an obstacle to the growth of plantations.

¹⁰This minimum was not always strictly enforced.

¹¹Environmental pressure dates back to the period immediately after land distribution. For instance, in 1989, the Chiapas governor, Patrocinio González, introduced a deforestation ban. State interventions also often prioritised productive activities considered compatible with rainforest conservation, such as cocoa or vanilla production.

¹² Otros Mundos Chiapas and Maderas del Pueblo del Sureste are two small Chiapas-based NGOs, which often rely on European funding. While Otros Mundos is part of Friends of the Earth, Maderas del Pueblo del Sureste arose from the division of a larger organisation due to internal conflicts. There are many other environmental NGOs active in Chiapas, but most did not lobby against oil palm or intervene in any way to modify the process of oil palm expansion.

¹³National Comission for Natural Protected Areas (CONANP in its Spanish acronym).

¹⁴While CBMM emerged as part of the Puebla–Panama plan, it was later incorporated as the General Coordination for Corridors and Biological Resources into the National Commission for Biodiversity Knowledge and Use (CONABIO in its Spanish acronym). Full disclosure: Antonio Castellanos-Navarrete was funded by CONABIO on a project to establish the impacts of oil palm in the southern Lacandon rainforest and to propose strategies to reduce them (see Castellanos-Navarrete 2013).

¹⁵An example is a small farmer group pioneering oil palm cultivation in the region: ‘There were lots of obstacles. At slash and burning time, the [Chiapas] government did not want to approve the project because the forest would be devastated’, explained a leader of this oil palm organisation (interview, 18 October 2011, Playón de la Gloria). In the absence of regulation over land use but under environmental pressure, the organisation self-regulated land use by limiting planting to degraded pastures and secondary vegetation patches. Government agencies accepted this as a de facto rule. As a result, the organisation was finally able to access Chiapas government support for oil palm.

Additional information

Antonio Castellanos-Navarrete is a researcher in the Knowledge, Technology and Innovation (KTI) Group at Wageningen University (The Netherlands). His work explores environmental issues pertaining to rural development from both the social and natural sciences. His most recent research focuses on the political, social and environmental dimensions of the Mesoamerican oil palm expansion from a political ecology perspective.

Kees Jansen is Associate Professor at KTI, Wageningen University. He works on political ecology and agricultural and food technology in relation to international development. His current research focuses on the social analysis of pesticide risks and public action related to crop disease control. His publications include: ‘The debate on food sovereignty theory: agrarian capitalism, dispossession and agroecology' (The Journal of Peasant Studies), Agribusiness and society (Zed) and ‘Implicit sociology, interdisciplinarity and systems theories in agricultural science' (Sociologia Ruralis). Email: [email protected]