Purity and Danger

This chapter examines the project to certify sustainable forestry in Indonesia. Although the field of forest certification was created in large part to counteract deforestation in Southeast Asia, the growth of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification in Indonesia proved to be quite slow and contentious. Companies that did get certified often struggled to reform destructive logging practices and tense relationships with communities. This chapter asks why forest certification was underdeveloped and what kinds of reforms it brought about. Drawing on interviews with practitioners and documentary evidence, the chapter shows how certification was impeded not only by convoluted market linkages but also by democratization and domestic governance of land. As indigenous communities pressed their claims to customary land rights, companies seeking FSC certification struck new bargains, but most often these amounted to shallow solutions to deep problems.