Throughout the tropics, forest-agriculture frontiers dominated by diverse swidden and smallholder practices are rapidly being converted to homogenous landscapes of commodity agriculture.These frontiers of agriculture, fallow and forest mosaics provide multiple ecosystem services, support social, cultural and livelihood needs, and are areas where farmers have traditional rights to land and resources. This is not a simple trajectory of change, however. Land use intensification – often pursued under the guise of sustainable development – has often not led to expected win-win social and ecological outcomes, and smallholders in these landscapes often benefit less than local elites and external investors, reflecting underlying politics and institutional and power structures around forests and land-use tenures. FairFrontiers applies inter- and transdisciplinary approaches to ask: whose interests drive the transformations of forest-agriculture frontiers, who benefits and who is made precarious? What are possible policy options that can deliver ecologically sustainable and socially equitable outcomes?

To address these research questions, the project is organized into 5 interlinked research modules (see Project Structure) and will carry out research in the case study regions of Malaysian Borneo (Sabah, Sarawak), Mainland Southeast Asia (Myanmar, Laos), and the Congo Basin (Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)). The first research module will delve into the historical (colonial) constructs of policies for forest and land and their contemporary pathways, and carry out critical discursive analyses of how policies frame and problematize development in forest-agriculture frontiers. The second and third modules will examine how ecosystem services and wellbeing bundles are changing in frontiers using a set of mixed methods and participatory approaches. The fourth module applies transdisciplinary approaches in the co-production of knowledge on and inclusion of diverse and local narratives of sustainable futures, and actively engages with actor groups who have been traditionally marginalized from decision-making processes. Last but not least, the fifth module will carry out integrative and comparative analyses across modules, scales and countries through structured qualitative and quantitative analyses to identify what conditions are enabling or hindering more equitable and sustainable development pathways. The case study regions provide unique contexts along different ecological, social and institutional gradients such as forest cover, fallow diversity, inequality and human well-being indices, institutional/political control, and democracy and civil society engagement in policy processes. Together, these approaches support the advancement of theory and methods for assessing equity, ecosystem services and well-being, and identification of the enabling and hindering conditions for more equitable and sustainable development pathways for the millions of people who still depend on these diverse landscapes for their well-being.

The project’s analytical framework is built on theories of power and everyday politics, social and environmental justice and ecosystem service science. Over the past year, we carried out in-depth background studies on the theoretical concepts and empirical methods for assessing the multiple dimensions of equity (see Equity Framework) and critical reviews on how forest frontiers and indigenous rights are represented in the scientific literature. Additionally, we carried out an extensive synthesis study building on over 25 years of collective research to examine climate policy outputs through a political-economy lens and transnational perspective to understand equity and sustainable implications (Brockhaus et al. 2021). Our findings suggest that while climate change policies have built on promises of development and equity, they have largely failed to challenge the wider political and economic system governing forests and forest lands. We argue that by only focusing on symptoms and isolated solutions, climate policies risk maintaining and worsening social and environmental injustices of current practices in forest exploitation.

Brockhaus, M., Di Gregorio, M., Djoudi, H., Moeliono, M., Pham, T. T., & Wong, G.Y. (2021). The forest frontier in the Global South: Climate change policies and the promise of development and equity. Ambio,https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-021-01602-1

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