Seminar: "When Development Meets Crime: The Myth of Growth in Borneo"

This interactive, discussion-oriented seminar addresses the current development agendas for Borneo, the resulting environmental harm and environmental crimes, and how Indigenous communities experience this process through dispossession, loss of territorial control and the criminalisation of customary practices. The seminar is of interest to colleagues working on environmental crime, development studies, political economy, socio-legal research, and environmental governance. 

Across Indonesian Borneo, development interventions in forestry, infrastructure, and extractive industries are widely framed as engines of economic growth and sustainability. However, a growing body of empirical research demonstrates that these development agendas are deeply intertwined with environmental harm, particularly timber laundering and the legalisation of illegal extraction. Rivers play a central role in these processes, connecting forests to markets while blurring the boundaries between legality and illegality through licensing systems, development permits, and sustainability narratives that often function to normalise rather than prevent environmental harm.

At the same time, Indigenous communities experience development as dispossession, loss of territorial control, and the criminalisation of customary practices. Their lived experiences and territorial knowledge are essential to understanding how environmental harm becomes criminogenic in practice. This seminar creates a focused space to examine the intersection of development, environmental crime, and river-based frontier governance through academic analysis and Indigenous perspectives.

Contributions

The seminar will include the following contributions:

• Titi Haryati - Environmental destruction in Borneo from an Indigenous perspective
• Mariyam Jameelah and Seno A.K. - Development, timber laundering, and contested legality in Borneo
• Kei Otsuki - Rivers as frontier spaces, political economy, and the role of development narratives in shaping environmental governance and crime

The seminar is designed as an interactive, discussion-oriented session rather than a formal conference panel. The topic will be of interest to colleagues working on environmental crime, development studies, political economy, socio-legal research, and environmental governance.

Registration

If you want to attend the seminar, please fill in the online registration form: