Agrarian change and hydro-social transformations. The socio-natural production of water, risk and inequality in Jambi province, Indonesia

by Jennifer Merten
Doctoral thesis
Date of Examination:2021-01-15
Date of issue:2021-02-23
Advisor:Prof. Dr. Heiko Faust
Referee:Prof. Dr. Heiko Faust
Referee:Prof. Dr. Christoph Dittrich
Persistent Address: http://dx.doi.org/10.53846/goediss-8447

 

 

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Abstract

English

The production of palm oil, pulpwood and rubber has caused a large-scale expansion of agro-industrial plantation systems in Southeast Asia in recent years. This development is highly contested and has sparked conflict over access to land, the loss of tropical biodiversity or the emission of greenhouse gases. A topic receiving rather little attention in this context is water. This doctoral thesis contributes to this gap in literature. It presents insights into the ecohydrological consequences of this agrarian change and the social impacts and dynamics it entails. It builds on in-depth qualitative case studies in Jambi province, Indonesia, and complements these with extensive analyses of ecohydrological measurements and data. In studying the ecohydrological and social, or “hydro-social”, transformation processes in Jambi province, the thesis pursues two main aims. First, it aims to investigate how agrarian change has contributed to a reconfiguration of hydro-social relations in Jambi. Therein, it seeks to disentangle the social and environmental processes that have contributed to the production of new water related risks and social inequality. Second, on a conceptual level, the thesis aims to assess different conceptual and methodological approaches to a more integrated study of environmental risk. It analyzes how the conceptual frameworks critical realism and relational dialectics may help to study the interactions and feedback processes between water flows and local societies. Finally, the thesis explores different modes of combining research data on environmental perceptions and local ecological knowledge with natural science measurements. In total the thesis comprises five articles and manuscripts that explore different aspects and dynamics of the hydro-social transformations in the context of agrarian change in Indonesia.
Keywords: political ecology; Indonesia; flooding; water scarcity; peat fires; peat restoration; climate policy; environmental risk; interdisciplinarity; oil palm; rubber; acacia
 
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