Palm_oil_power_and_participation_Accepted.pdf (363.08 kB)
Palm oil, power and participation: the political ecology of social impact assessment
journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-07, 06:46 authored by Izabela Delabre, Chukwumerije OkerekeThe Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), as a form of neoliberal environmental governance operating beyond-the-state, seeks to address its democratic deficit and gain legitimacy through deliberative and consultative processes. The RSPO requires companies to conduct participatory Social Impact Assessment (SIA) for both new developments and existing operations in an attempt to identify and address the critical social impacts associated with palm oil production. Using a political ecology framework, and a mixed methods approach, this study explores SIAs as sites of power struggles, to understand the contestations, inequities, and marginalisations that occur in SIA processes. By exploring the nature of SIA as a market-led regime that privileges certain knowledges and politics, and is co-opted and controlled by powerful actors, the paper challenges the notion that SIA can ensure the inclusion of previously marginalised people in decision-making processes. Participation in SIA is found to be, at most, consultative and top-down, and risks the further disempowerment of affected peoples. By viewing SIA as a discrete intervention, without a clear wider political project for social change for local peoples and workers, the RSPO risks “rendering technical” and “marketable” the multifaceted social impacts associated with palm oil production as it simultaneously enacts particular global, neoliberal “participatory” strategies that are applied locally in ways that (re-)produce hegemony and legitimacy.
History
Publication status
- Published
File Version
- Accepted version
Journal
Environment and Planning E: Nature and SpaceISSN
2514-8486Publisher
SAGE PublicationsExternal DOI
Issue
3Volume
3Page range
642-662Department affiliated with
- Management Publications
Research groups affiliated with
- Sussex Sustainability Research Programme Publications
Full text available
- Yes
Peer reviewed?
- Yes
Legacy Posted Date
2019-09-23First Open Access (FOA) Date
2019-09-23First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date
2019-09-23Usage metrics
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