Doctoral Dissertation Research: Resource Booms and the Geography of Oil Palm Expansion

本项目考察了最近大规模油棕项目的扩张，以调查资源繁荣的地理位置是如何产生的，以及不同的利益联盟如何影响国家在环境治理中的作用。该项目解决了促进或抵制大型油棕项目的“增长”和“反”联盟之间的斗争；油棕的材料性质如何塑造扩张过程；以及国家干预油棕扩张的方式。这项研究将通过提供油棕种植园健康发展所需的社会和环境标准的政策相关分析，为资源繁荣的文献做出贡献。这项研究还将为更广泛的读者撰写学术论文和文章，将本案例与政治生态学和发展研究中基于理论的政策辩论联系起来。本研究的理论框架借鉴了政治生态学中的文献，这些文献关注的是土地转型的社会维度，以及大规模的土地征用和“土地掠夺”。该项目侧重于对秘鲁亚马逊几个地点的油棕扩张进行案例研究，主要采用定性方法，包括开放式半结构化访谈、项目区实地观察、技术协调委员会参与观察和空间分析，以及审查与油棕投资有关的政策文件、法律框架和新闻报道。收集数据的地点涉及不同的投资者，处于项目开发的不同阶段，其中三家报告了冲突，而一家没有。这种多样性将使研究人员能够评估关于资源繁荣的地理分布是如何在不同背景下产生的因果关系。

This project examines the recent expansion of large-scale oil palm projects to investigate how geographies of resource booms are produced and how different coalitions of interests affect the role of the state in environmental governance. The project addresses the struggles between "growth" and "counter" coalitions to promote or resist large-scale oil palm projects; the ways in which the material nature of oil palm shapes the expansion process; and the forms state interventions take to govern the expansion of oil palm. This research will contribute to the literature on resource booms by providing a policy relevant analysis of the social and environmental criteria required for the sound development of oil palm plantations. This study will also produce academic papers and pieces written for broader audiences that link this case to theoretically grounded policy debates in political ecology and development studies. The theoretical framework for this study draws on literature within political ecology that is concerned with the social dimensions of land transformation and with large scale land acquisitions and "land grabs". The project focuses on a case study of oil palm expansion in several sites of the Peruvian Amazon and utilizes principally qualitative methods that include open-ended semi-structured interviews, field observation in project areas, participant observation in technical coordination boards and spatial analysis, and a review of policy documents, legal frameworks and press reports related to oil palm investment. The sites for data collection involve different investors, are at different stages of project development, and three of them have reported conflicts while one has not. This diversity will allow the investigators to assess causal claims about how the geographies of resource booms are produced across different contexts.