Choiruzzad, SA, Tyson, A orcid.org/0000-0002-4458-6870 and Varkkey, H (2021) The Ambiguities of Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil Certification: Internal Incoherence, Governance Rescaling and State Transformation. Asia Europe Journal, 19 (2). pp. 189-208. ISSN 1610-2932
Abstract
There are persistent tensions of both a technical and political nature between Southeast Asia’s two major palm oil producers, Indonesia and Malaysia, and the sustainability governance mechanisms shaping global environmental and trade standards emerging from Europe. The establishment of the national Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil (ISPO) certification standard in 2011 is a sign of discontent with the transnational Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) regime, sparking debate about the legitimacy of private governance models initiated by non-governmental organizations and companies in Europe. This article questions whether the adoption of sustainability norms by Indonesia signals normative convergence or the emergence of rival governance structures that challenge the state. Evidence suggests that elements of norm adoption and rival governance coexist in Indonesia and that ISPO certification is an ambiguous policy with degrees of internal incoherence. The ambiguous nature of ISPO certification gives rise to unresolved disputes over power and authority between various actors. This article shows how these disputes came into being by framing these dynamics as part of a long historical process. Novel insights are gained by employing the state transformation framework and the concept of governance rescaling. Within this framework, we argue that the ambiguous nature of the ISPO results from complex interrelated processes of fragmentation, decentralization and the internationalization of the Indonesian state.
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Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visithttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Sustainable palm oil; Governance rescaling; State transformation; Indonesia; Europe |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law (Leeds) > School of Politics & International Studies (POLIS) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number British Academy IPM 16 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 05 Jan 2021 12:33 |
Last Modified: | 30 May 2023 22:35 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s10308-020-00593-0 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:169381 |
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