FairFrontiers is an inter- and transdisciplinary research project
examining transformations of tropical forest-agriculture frontiers
in Cameroon, DR Congo, Indonesia, Laos and Malaysia;
with a focus on issues of politics, power, precarity, and equity.
FairFrontiers Seminar and Photovoice Exhibition: The Making and Un-Making of Frontiers
Seminar – 16 October 2025
Photovoice exhibition – 8-23 October 2025
Proliferation … is a key principle of capitalist expansion, particularly at capitalist frontiers where accumulation is not so much primitive, that is, archaic, as savage.
TSING (2004), Friction, p. 27
Today’s frontiers of capitalism are not remote or ‘‘newly discovered’’ spaces. Instead, these frontiers are new commodity forms within the confines of already formalized state lands.
Some of these lands were set aside in reaction to the most rapacious forms of capital, and some were a product of capital’s working through the state to dispossess competing land claimants.
KELLY & PELUSO (2015), Frontiers of Commodification: State Lands and Their Formalization
The history of the making of the modern world is a history of the expansion of commodity frontiers, a historical process so spatially, socially and structurally all-encompassing that it still awaits its persuasive analysis.
BECKERT, BOSMA, SCHNEIDER & VANHAUTE (2021), Commodity frontiers and the transformation of the global countryside
Reflections from the field
Some observations and thoughts by our project members
- Reflections from the TC/ESG 2025 ConferenceSome reflections on the Transformations Community/Earth System Governance Conference 2025 which was held in Johannesburg, South Africa. The blog post is by Dr. Eda Elif Tibet from the Bridging Values project.
- Mongabay: What have we learned from 15 years of REDD+ policy research? (analysis)This article presents an analysis of more than a decade of comparative research in REDD+
- Histories (and the dead) in paths for a just futureProject leader Grace Wong shares her relfections from Oaxaca, Mexico, where the 5th Global land Programme was held.
Get to know our project members!
Our FairFrontiers project members and collaborators are of diverse backgrounds and expertise surrounding forest frontiers. This interview series will introduce some of their experiences and personal thoughts on the issues that the project is examining.
Recent publications and resources
- Paper: Forest land deals, resistance, and legitimisation – a comparative analysis of discourse coalitions and silent actors in Cameroon and Malaysia
- Seminar: The Making and Un-Making of Frontiers
- Paper: Perceived ecosystem service bundles across forested landscapes in transition: A case study in southern Cameroon
- Paper: Fatal attraction to win-win-win? Debates and contestations in the media on Nature Conservation Agreement in Sabah, Malaysia
- Book review: Transforming Borneo: From Land Exploitation to Sustainable Development
- Paper: Radical incrementalism: hydropolitics and environmental discourses in Laos
Our publications translated in French
- Can REDD+ finance compete with established and emerging land investments? The case of Mai-Ndombe, Democratic Republic of Congo
- Book chapter: State of Congo Basin Forests on Local Communities and Indigenous Rights in Central Africa
Latest news / Upcoming events
FairFrontiers Seminar at RIHN – The Political Frontier: Bridging political economy & political ecology
An international seminar featuring presentations by Nancy Lee Peluso and FairFrontiers project members, Maria Brockhaus, Kelvin Egay and Muhammad Alif Sahide was held at RIHN on January 2025. To view a recording of their talks, click here
Transformations Community/Earth System Governance Conference 2025: Navigating Sustainability Transformations Towards Justice and Equity
August 18-21 2025
Johannesburg, South Africa
FairFrontiers and ForEqual organized a session titled: History, science and data in forest land frontiers – breaking silence within infrastructures of inequality
Transformations towards just and sustainable futures in frontier regions have been often derailed by disruptive economics, politics and historical path dependencies that reinforce business-as-usual interests and practices. Where there are innovative initiatives and policies to foster more equitable forest and land uses, there are also powerful institutions and discourses that silence alternative voices and diverse perspectives. This session aimed to identify the underlying mechanisms that produce and reproduce silence and injustice, and highlight how silences can have voice. Click here for more details of the session, as well as the talks presented by our project members in the conference!
Forest and Society Special Section/Issue
Navigating change in forest-agriculture frontiers: Centering equity and justice in land use transformation in the Global South
The journal Forest and Society now has a Special Section/Issue in collaboration with FairFrontiers. The aim of this special section is to highlight existing research and practices that can contribute to advance our understanding of equity and justice during the processes of land-use change in the Global South. To read the articles under this section, check the Forest & Society website.
FairFrontiers Research Brief Series:
The series will highlight and share new/emerging research findings from the project worth sharing publicly. Briefs are available to read in the Publications section.
1 Panel and 4 Papers accepted at GLPOSM5
A panel and four papers by FairFrontiers team and collaborators were presented at the Global Land Programme’s 5th Open Science Meeting (GLPOSM5), on 4-8 November 2024 in Oaxaca, Mexico.
For those interested in the talks, please email us at ayami.kan*chikyu.ac.jp (replace asterisk with at mark).