Email: perdana.roswaldy@northwestern.edu

Affiliation: Department of Sociology, Northwestern University

Nationality: Indonesian

Green Enough for Destruction: Palm Oil Sustainability Certification and the Making of Indonesia's Economic Dependence on Plantations

Abstract

International and regional organizations have mainstream sustainability certification as one of the solutions for contemporary environmental crises, including for one of the most notorious agricultural commodities, palm oil. Existing studies on palm oil sustainability certification have shown mixed results for farmers' livelihoods and environmental restoration. The cost, the lengthy process of certification, and the labor input outweigh the benefits of labeling palm oil as sustainable. Critics lament certification as a form of commodification, greenwashing, and neocolonialism that further exploit global south countries, particularly their farmers. Such criticisms, however, still assume that certifications can create sustainable palm oil production rather than dissecting whether sustainability certifications and standards as a system may hinder or support agribusiness. Other scholars, using anti-capitalist critique, argue that certification commodifies sustainability. Certification obfuscates the labor and social relations that make commodity production problematic and shifts the problem instead to the commodity itself. Yet, such a critique tends to flatten all actors involved. Thus, it is less clear as to why, knowing that the results are far from satisfactory and the cost and resources for certifications become increasingly more expensive, the standards have only proliferated.

Drawing from ethnography and interviews, I argue that sustainability certifications facilitate palm oil expansions in Indonesia. Thus, the current certification model possesses two more serious implications than simply greenwashing, commodification, and ineffectiveness: it incentivizes states for palm oil expansions and deepens farmers' and workers' dependence on palm oil companies. Sustainability certification helps expansion through the corporate domination over smallholders who need external resources and support to certify their plots. By labeling farmers sustainable, plantation companies expand their territorial power and outreach, furthering their involvement in smallholding production. Such involvement operates through replanting or plot revitalization funds that exemplify how sustainability schemes help plantations expand at the production level, as the replanting fund will be managed both by the smallholding cooperatives and the corporations. Sustainability certifications thus offer various ways to legitimize plantation expansions, particularly for agribusinesses.

Plantation companies—both private and state-owned—have weaponized certifications to determine which subjects in the plantations are worthy of financial distribution and resources.

This situation hinders the potential alliance and organizing solidarity between smallholders and workers who suffer from the social and environmental impacts of oil palm plantations. Workers and smallholders differ greatly when it comes to the benefit of sustainability certification.

Certification processes often rely on uncompensated extra labor performed by workers in the plantations. Hence, they associate sustainability standards with companies' terrible treatment of them. Meanwhile, some smallholders acknowledge gaining financial benefits and improving their farming knowledge following the certification. The "sustainability" label, to produce better palm oil, thus undermines and makes a hierarchy of necessary labor. The amalgamation of incentivizing expansions and creating class antagonism between smallholders and workers has resulted in Indonesia's persistence in its palm oil economy. Sustainability certification thus becomes an avenue for a power struggle between states and corporate control over land resources in Indonesia and ultimately strengthens agribusiness power in the country.

Bio

Perdana "Pepe" Roswaldy is a PhD candidate in Sociology at Northwestern University. Their research focuses on the persistence of monoculture in Southeast Asia. Pepe is an Arryman Fellow at Equality Development and Globalization Studies at the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs. They also have a strong interest in understanding how labor facilitates and shapes human-nature relations, especially under climate and environmental crises. Pepe did her master's thesis on how a failed land grab still leads to socioecological changes among indigenous communities of North Sumatra and disproportionately impacts indigenous women of North Sumatra. The thesis has been published in Antropologi Indonesia (October 2023) and The International Quarterly of Asian Studies (January 2025); another publication will be available in Journal of Agrarian Change in the Spring 2025. They have received numerous funds that support their research in plantations: Kellogg's Dispute Resolution & Research Center, American-Indonesian Cultural & Educational Fund, the History of Political Economy Project, and the Land Deals Politics Initiative.