Program/Project

Fair for Whom? Politics, Power and Precarity in Transformations of Tropical Forest-agriculture Frontiers

Position & Title

Associate Professor, RIHN / Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University

Area of Expertise

Forest Policy, Natural Resource Economics，Development Studies

Biography

WONG Grace is a resource economist and has over two decades of research experience on forest conservation, development and climate change governance in the tropical Global South. She has worked extensively throughout Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Her current research examines global-local interactions on local well-being and ecosystem services, with a particular focus on issues of politics, power, and equity.

Q&A

Q1 What kind of research are you doing at RIHN?

Forest-agriculture frontiers dominated by diverse swidden and smallholder practices are rapidly being converted to homogenous landscapes of commodity agriculture across the tropical Global South. These frontiers of agriculture, fallow and forest mosaics provide multiple ecosystem services, support social, cultural and livelihood needs, and are areas where indigenous communities and local people have traditional rights to land and resources. Land use intensification is often pursued as ‘sustainable development’ and progress, but has often not led to expected win-win social and ecological outcomes. Indigenous groups and smallholders in these landscapes have simultaneously engaged with, adapted to, and resisted against different development, and yet regularly find themselves and their customary rights marginalized at the expense of interests of local elites, State and external investors, reflecting the complexities of underlying politics, institutions and power structures around forests and land-use.

FairFrontiers applies inter- and transdisciplinary approaches to critically examine the histories, policies and politics of forest and land governance; and carries out field research to examine wellbeing-ecosystem service interlinkages in country study sites. Our research asks: whose interests drive the transformations of forest-agriculture frontiers, who benefits and who are made precarious? What are possible policy options that can deliver sustainable and more just outcomes?

Affiliated Research Project