14 - Moving Forward

Summary

The modern development of Borneo has so far been characterized by largescale land exploitation, accompanied by the wax and wane of commodity cycles, economic polarization, rural-urban disparities, and environmental destruction. Especially in the past two decades, the island has been in massive disruption and constant change. It is not simply a series of land cover and biophysical changes but also societal evolution with deep implications for future generations. The transformation is still ongoing and hopefully evolving from large-scale land exploitation to more sustainable ways of development.

How to improve livelihoods without causing further environmental impacts but also repairing the damage done in the past? This book has been written to gather insights into the understanding of such transformation, walking through the changes from 2000 to 2021 using the framework of ten transformative strategies under productivity-oriented “bio-economy” and conservation-oriented “eco-economy”. Generally, utility-based development strategies with wealth creation as the centre of policymaking may prevent further degradation but are inadequate to repair the previous environmental damage to the island. This can be especially observed in the case of Sarawak where no significant restoration initiatives were implemented in the territory in the past two decades. Similarly, strategies that emphasize restoration have shown a relatively limited contribution to economic progress as observed in the case of the Kalimantan provinces. The interconnected nature of economic productivity and conservation means that no single strategy is a perfect solution, although some can be more practical and effective than others in different places and periods, or more acceptable by multiple stakeholders. “Stepping outside rhetorical extremism is necessary”, as Meijaard and Sheil (2019) justly summarized for the case of oil palm, “if we seek resolution and pragmatic advances”.

However, formulating “pragmatic advances” with the right combination of strategies would not be an easy task considering the variation in places and the timing of implementations. For example, boosting upstream productivity of cash crops (Chapter 3) and enhancing landscape agroecological resilience (Chapter 8) can be contradictory or complementary under different conditions, such as the amount of fertilizers or water resources used (Rockstrom et al. 2017).