Oil Palm Plantation Expansion and Frontier-Making in Papua, Indonesia

Over the past two decades, as global demand for agrofuel and food has increased, Indonesia's forests and agricultural lands have been massively converted into oil palm plantations. This, in turn, has led to a growth in policy discourse on frontier areas as zones filled with opportunities for economic growth and development. Examining the expansion of oil palm plantations under the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) project in southern Papua, Indonesia, this chapter discusses the construction of remote and marginal areas as zones of opportunity in order to understand the complex and interrelated processes through which land, resources, and society are reshaped and integrated into wider political-economic arrangements. We challenge the idea that frontiermaking is a linear process, reaching from the centre to the periphery or from the global to the local. Using relational thinking, we see frontiermaking as an interconnected and complex process of spatial reconfiguration that involves multi-levelled discourses and actors with diverse interests. Through this lens, we also see frontier-making and territorialisation as mutually constitutive processes, arguing that the expansion of oil palm plantations under MIFEE has used a trans-regional logic and connected actors, places, and resources to create space for extensively commodifying nature. © 2023 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.