There can be no sustainable development without indigenous participation.

Abstract

Palm oil cultivation in the East Malaysian state of Sabah, represents a double-edged sword generating millions of state revenue albeit at the expense of environmental destruction. Despite driving in a considerable amount of wealth for certain actors, the infiltration of neoliberalist ideas since the influences of the colonial era in Sabah’s palm oil industry allows for the marginalisation and exploitation of Sabah’s 39 indigenous communities, as exemplified most prominently within the largest ethnic minority group, the Kadazan-Dusuns. Furthermore, the government’s celebration of commodity projects as required development pipelines enables a fertile environment for interventionist policies pre-conceived by Western discourses of extraction and profit to bring ‘progress’ to ‘backward and primitive’ regions of Sabah. Hence, the reconstructing of Sabah’s identity in the social imagination of its population which instilled a belief that nature cannot coincide with a modern society for the sake of ‘development’. They buttress the hierarchical structure in which power dynamics deprives their agency of an intergenerational way of life through subsistence farming and constrains their livelihoods to cash crop and monocropping, defined by socially constructed norms and values. Through analysing the politics, relations, and networks between various actors, this essay has aimed to generate a nuanced analysis of the intersectional neworks and historical colonial reproduction of class, environmental racism and extractivism in the context of a unique Southeast Asian environment. Employing theoretical frameworks of political ecology, for instance, theories of dispossession, marginalisation and decolonisation, this body of work showcases that these are not static across spatial or temporal domains, bringing the multifaceted essence of power to the foreground. Moreover, an interwoven analysis of Sabah’s multi-ethnic background sheds light on the dominant narrative and intrinsically complex role of ethnonationalism in influencing environmental agreements and policies of economic development to achieve national stability. The exploration of historically specific ideations and relations, politics, networks, and imaginations deployed by different actors, reveals the region and industry are realised as a leaky structure, subjected to political plurality and interests operating at individual, local, and global scales.

Key words: Indigenous practice, international development, development studies, sustainability, climate change.

Introduction

“When saying indigenous peoples can contribute to sustainable development, it is not merely meant that their traditional knowledge and cultural practices support the pursuit and achievement of sustainable development goals. Instead, they provide us with different foundations for, and perspectives of, sustainable development. If we are serious about the contribution of indigenous peoples, then we must also admit that no serious conversation of indigenous perspectives of sustainable development can occur without self-determination, allowing them to decide their own development methods and to partake in national and international decision-making that affects them now and in the future.”

(Watene and Yap, 2015, pp. 52-53)

This quote forms the basis of my argument and emphasises that it is fundamental to increase the recognition and respect to indigenous rights to self-determination. However, their voices need not only to be heard but more importantly valued at local, national, and international contexts. Sissons’ (2005, p.23) ‘ecoindigenism’ brought the notion of nature and more specifically its harmonic connection to a land’s natives, to the forefront of environment and development. Although not entirely false (Salmón, 2000), these images rather, as Mendoza and Reese (2001) highlight, are taken to be more genuine than others because they conform to Western constructions of indigenous narratives. This essay will argue that ‘ecoindigenism’ is controversial as it often relies on a pre-arranged agency and subjectivity of the indigenous’ and their environmental connections. Brayboy and Deyhle (2000) and Foucault (1982) note despite individuals possessing inadequate encounters on the reality of indigenous’ lived experiences, that societies’ power dynamics drive such forces of cultural homogenisation. It will focus on the case of postcolonial development in the East Malaysian state within Sabah’s indigenous community and the implications of the expansion of palm oil plantations. Indeed, Crewe and Harrison (1998, pp.92), highlight ‘a division between indigenous and Western or scientific knowledge that is based on preconceived ideas about people rather than objective differences in knowledge or expertise’. Therefore, the role of indigenous expertise and knowledge in supporting the goal of sustainable development approaches in modern societies is often diminished (Kothari, 2005). Despite this, my purpose isn’t to romanticise or simplify indigenous peoples’ cultures — instead bringing attention to the relations of power between states and their indigenous communities. Moreover, how governments can better provide their indigenous inhabitants with the necessary foundations to facilitate a greater exercise of agency, self-sustaining and traditional economies that do not induce a negative and disproportionate impact on the environment.

Indigenous land grabbing and dispossession

Following independence in 1963, the state had the right to isolate land for development through its Federal Land Development Authority (FELDA) diversification program to reduce Sabah’s dependency on rubber and logging (Toh, 2013). In the 1980s, substantial forest areas in Sabah were land grabbed and burnt for oil palm cultivation, demonstrating how ‘resources’ can be imposed by the powerful (Jomo et al. 2004; Rowe, 2021). By 2003, some 87% of the total land cultivated in Sabah was under oil palm leading to extensive deforestation as demonstrated in Figure 1 (Toh and Grace 2006). Although the worldwide impact of humans on the environment gained acknowledgement since the 1800s, only about a decade ago, was it widely introduced through the Anthropocene discourse by the academic community (Steffen et al., 2011). The term’s ambiguousness and informality is further demonstrated through the range of human impacts and eras that it applies to and the sum of many scholars referring to a particular period under the umbrella term in attempt to achieve its formalisation (Corlett, 2015). Indeed, Simpson (2020) notes this unequal distribution of the causes and impacts of the ecologically destructive effects of racialised colonial capitalism are obscured by the Anthropocene discourse. This implores that it is the Anthropos, or society that is largely involved in these negative environmental implications, which only perpetuates exploitative habits from the past.

Nixon’s (2011) theory of ‘slow violence’ depicts this invisibility of environmental injustices through the manipulation of Western media, causing extraordinary damage on impoverished communities concentrated in underdeveloped nations across vast spatial and temporal scales. Although the impacts of deforestation and problems of the indigenous communities are ‘out of sight,’ and consequently out of mind, conducting fieldwork potentially brings them to the forefront of consciousness. Notably, Wilson et al. (2018) gain in-depth knowledge from interviews, surveys and observations with palm oil smallholders, uncovering the ongoing challenges and demands of indigenous peoples which resulted in the recently developed agenda of Sabah’s Jurisdictional Certification of Sustainable Palm Oil. Therefore, the so-called ‘ecoindigenist’ discourse which attempts to “revalue primitism and and tribalism in relation to destructive western relationality” (Sissons, 2005, p.23) was overcome through a multistakeholder effort involving both public and private actors and practices while preventing the act of thrusting the sole responsibility of environmental protection on indigenous groups (WWF, 2021).

Like many global occurrences, Sabah’s indigenous communities struggle to maintain their identity and control over their lands and resources in the face of growing encroachment on their territories. Palm oil land conflicts pinpoint the incommensurability and value pluralism of nature, highlighting how one group's natural resource can be another's dispossession (Li, 2010). Li (2014) highlights the challenge of finding a single definition of land given its use by a diverse society which give rise to conflicting values and objectives, rather than a singular, homogeneous entity, which is further exacerbated by Malaysia’s plural legal regime, that operates on an individual state level despite being subjected to the Federal Constitution. Although two main state institutions more-or-less grant customary rights for Sabah’s indigenous peoples: the Sabah Land Ordinance and Adat, indigenous communities possess a limited understanding due to asymmetric information while being subjected to strict deadlines and arduous procedures resulting in losses on formal registration; undoing progress on the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Colchester and Fay, 2007; Ghee and Gomes, 1990; Seng, 2000; UN, n.d.).

The marginalisation of indigenous voices

DuBois (1920) notes that indigenous peoples would inevitably be Westernised to facilitate compatibility with the current capitalist dominance. This expansion into other lands and manipulation of “darker peoples” occurs neatly after the depletive exploitation of European white working classes and is used strategically to increase Western intervention through a machinery of colonial capitalism to modernise and civilise these “backwards societies” (Alatas, 1977). Wade (2002, p. 9) further reifies that the denotations of ‘race’ emerge out of specific historical conditions, for example, the long-standing relationship between race and dominant European histories of colonialism, slavery, and conquest. Indeed, it is well-documented in the existing literature that ethnic and racial divisions in Malaysia arise from British colonial rule (Andaya and Andaya 1985; Hirschman 1986) while scholars have historically linked the Kadazan-Dusun to “Mongoloid” origins (Encyclopedia, 2019). This posed a question of how governments can be persuaded to listen to these groups in the first place if they are continued to be seen as primitive, backward peoples in constant need of ‘saving’?

Malaysia’s ethnic categories were therefore divided into four groups as per the British administration: Malay, Chinese, Indian and “others”, known locally as “lain-lain”, whereby individuals identifying as Orang Asal (the “indigenous peoples” of Sabah) would be classified under this label (Nagaraj et al. 2015). Despite colonialist influences remaining deeply ingrained into the ongoing race relations of modern Malaysia, Kothari (2006) notes it is imperative to investigate how theoretical and lengthy conceptualisations of ‘race’ continuously mutate spatially and temporally across multiple social contexts given its ‘unstable’ and ‘politically contested’ nature. Contestably, development should not only be examined from a neo-colonial perspective and instead requires analysing current racialised formations that have come to our attention. The narrative of colonisation as a driver of victimisation provided an idea on how race can be strategically manipulated, particularly by the Malay identified ‘colonised intellectual’ (Manickam, 2009). This gave rise to the politically defined Bumiputera category, known in English as ‘son of the soil’ which combined the Malays alongside other various indigenous groups as one despite constituting a smaller ethnic population in the state as shown in Figure 1 (IWGIA, n.d).

Figure 1 – Sabah’s Population Census 2010 (Ang, 2014).

Ravendran (2021) spotlights that drawing lines of comparison across time and space on the assumption of race as an analytical category result in a diminishing of differences between races, a homogenisation and essentialisation. Namely, individuals with East Malaysian roots would identify themselves regionally as ‘Bornean first’ or as Sabahans depicting strong state identities which illustrate that they may rank their multiple identities differently and are less affiliated with their national identities citing a lack of representation or the media’s tokenistic representation of their identities, shown in Figure 2. Peninsular Malaysians remain largely unaware that Sabah is home to 39 indigenous groups through the public education system’s camouflage and insufficient media portrayal; depicting the divide between federal and state political dynamics and racial demographics considering the narrative of Malay supremacy (Alagappar, David, and Gan, 2010; Chin, 2015).

Figure 2- Malaysian media’s tokenistic representation of local ethnic communities (Good News Malaysia, 2019).

Bulan (n.d.) examines Foucault’s governmentality in her account of indigenous’ non-attendance in decision-making processes in Malaysia, individuals specifically originated to express local concerns in the face of top-down power. This was seen in the case of a “nature conservation agreement” which took place on October 28th with reasons for non-attendance being a lack of public awareness and transparency on the deal towards indigenous groups while the state leader argued that they had previously sought legal permission from the natives during the classification these forests (Cannon, 2021). Historically, publicly held meetings have been unofficially dominated by a Malay-Muslim majority, meaning that non-Malay-Muslims’ indigenous political parties such as the UPKO (United Pasokmomogun Kadazan-Dusun and Murut Organisation) or Sabah United Party (PBS) remain largely under the control of the United Malay National Organisation (UMNO) and the passivity created by being constantly ignored or talked over (Bulan, n.d). This is a direct example of social norms dictating character to limit ethnic minorities’ power over natural resource management and their fundamental rights to indigenous agency and self-determination.

The case for indigenous representation in sustainable initiatives

Ulloa (2004) highlights the reduction of indigenous peoples to an ‘Ecological Native’, where they are stereotyped to make specific claims in defence of nature, possess specific characteristics (traditional dress, lack of technology, lack of formal education), and live in specific surroundings (rural areas). Namely, coalescing these anthropogenic effects into an undifferentiated category of the Anthropocene conceals and depoliticises the specific role of colonialism, criticised by Whyte (2017) as the failure to differentiate various types of anthropogenic change, such as the difference between the symbiotic relationships of indigenous peoples’ culture with thousands of plants, animals, and ecosystems and colonial interventions that brought disruption on these reciprocal relationships. Thus, the self-representation of Indigenous peoples, their criticisms and claims beyond the domain of ‘Ecological Native’ is largely ignored, obstructing systemic change.

Todd (2015) further highlights the Anthropocene as a knowledge structure which favours colonial objectives, questioning whose interests it ultimately serves given the Euro-Western dominated influence on scholarship where various humans are given unequal participatory rights which appropriates and conceals indigenous practices. Similarly, “there is a great danger that only Western voices are given airtime in the current Anthropogenic discussions” (Last, 2017, p.162). The Eurocentric development pathway is then used as a rationale and justification for the colonisation of underdeveloped nations to channel progress and assistance in advancing historical development, modernization, and Enlightenment, as exemplified by Marsh’s (1864) support for the ‘diffusion’ of the knowledge of ‘advanced’ peoples to other ‘classes’ of people. Thereby, allowing human cultures to step out of savagery portrayed by a primitive state of nature and into a state of Civilization while preserving a contemporary theory of human supremacy over nature (Comte de Buffon, 1778; Head, 2016).

Instone and Taylor (2015) indicate a paradox when Anthropogenic mitigation is justified through the same technology that originally awakened this chaos while Todd (2015) argues this is where the work of Indigenous scholars and artists vows to retaliate, revolutionise, and transform long-standing human and Eurocentric formulations of the Anthropocene. Indigenous scholarship provides an alternate importance of recognising local land teachings and the recentring of experiential narratives through epistemic, theoretical, pedagogical, and empirical lenses in unravelling indigenous frameworks. This Community-Based Adaptation (CBA) develops locally appropriate activities that replace outdated developmental approaches that overlook the genuine needs of specific local contexts (Reid and Huq, 2007). Halim et al. (2013) offer a good example of Sabah’s government’s encouragement of farmers into palm oil cultivation from subsistence farming following land-grabbing and irrigation, but after experiencing unsustainable yields and livelihoods, indigenous calls for ‘tagal’ or ‘prohibition’ of forest encroachment enhances the needs of local people such as their wellbeing and medicinal aspects; this one case among many, emphasises the crucialness of valuing local knowledge in developing programmes which respond to local environmental change.

Distinguishing the complex nature of communal use and local ecosystem valuation, natural-capital and livelihood relations, and how multi-level governance introduces alternative values and incentives for local resource management may loosen tensions between those with a subsistence relationship to a resource, and those whose relationship is built on economically extractive or harvesting practices (Bebbington 2001; Robbins 2004). Lomawaima (2015, p. 365) juxtaposes this indigenous ‘self’ or ‘local’ education from the ‘post-industrial schooling complex’, noting their traditional but diverse intergenerational revisions in surviving generations through a shared commitment of healthy, functional, caring individuals and lifestyles (Lomawaima, 1999).

Initially, CBA’s framework of valuing indigenous knowledge, education through practice, translation of the science of environmental risk to local languages and a creation of resilience through empowerment seem like a silver bullet (Dodman & Mitlin, 2013), however, calls to mainstream adaptation in development coupled with the establishment of complementary institutions dealing with environmental risk will naturally link the community to a wide scale interdependency of actors and offer a more holistic approach to CBA (Ayers & Dodman, 2010). Hence, many have demanded for participatory encouragement of community groups within a wider political context (Allen, 2006; Ayers & Forsyth, 2009; Dodman & Mitlin, 2013), suggesting CBA’s potential to increase community empowerment prospects and local capability enhancement in “achieving the power to influence the decision that affect one’s livelihood” (Oakley & Marsden, 1984, p.88).

Nevertheless, scholars denote CBA’s structural limitations, which may fail to challenge the problems in social, economic, political, or legal infrastructure identified as causes of vulnerability for communities (Satterthwaite et al., 2007). Whilst we can challenge the homogenisation of the needs of the people that CBA seeks to represent, indigenous stories should not continue to be dominated by Western voices in the local, national, and international political arena (Todd, 2015). Lindroth (2011) provides an example where indigenous peoples are meant to take centre stage in the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues despite merely resulting in the reproduction of confined environments led by the same individuals who altered the power structures in the first place. Likewise, the sufficient ability of community leaders to represent the diversity of locals should be examined, to avoid Wong’s (2010) conceptualisation of “democratic deficit” in deciding on programmes through CBA, notably communities which may be dominated and controlled by charismatic leaders (Desai, 2008). Research must instead centralise the knowledges and realities commonly portrayed as absent in starting the decolonisation process and to dismantle the underlying heteropatriarchal and white supremacist structures that continue to reproduce asymmetrical social, political, legal, and economic relations at local, national, and global levels, for instance the North-South divide (Deloria, 2004; Tom et al., 2017). Indigenous work to protect their communities and cultures not only ensures the continuity of their ways of life but provides an insight into how they are engaged in this work and specifically how we can learn collectively through shared knowledge to ensure our survival (Maffi and Woodley, 2010).

Conclusion

Ultimately, when talking about sustainable development and practice, the failure to engage in power sharing by consulting those who remain disproportionately subjected to negative environments before taking further action only disrespects and renders a pluralistic wealth of knowledge present in various societies worthless by continuing to reproduce exclusive knowledge networks. Policy makers could potentially benefit from indigenous forms of knowledge when it comes to drafting environmental policy at local and national levels, but this is only possible when states, who remain largely responsible for preserving indigenous rights and their non-indigenous citizens, recognise indigenous people’s autonomy and sovereignty. Using theoretical frameworks of political ecology to examine historically specific ideations and relations, politics, networks, and imaginations deployed by different actors, the essay showcases that Sabah’s development trajectory is dynamic, permeated by pluralism and interests operating at national, international, and individual scales. Leveraging educational devices to decolonise our curricula will better facilitate a cultural openness to unconventional ways of understanding traditionally capitalist viewpoints of economic development. Epistemological value and indigenous self-determination are the first step as such for the indigenous community to achieve economic, political, and social sovereignty in the context of development.

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