Publications

Niak Sian Koh, Grace Y. Wong, Thomas Hahn. 2024. Radical incrementalism: hydropolitics and environmental discourses in Laos. Environmental Politics. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2024.2372236

The Nam Theun 2 dam is an influential case of applying safeguards to mitigate social and environmental impacts from hydropower, being used as a model for large dams globally. However, these safeguards have produced mixed results. We examine the role of safeguards in hydropower, and how stakeholders have discussed its use. Based on a literature review and stakeholder interviews, we conduct a discourse analysis of narratives use...

Ayami Kan, Maria Brockhaus, Gordon John, Helena Varkkey, Grace Y. Wong. 2024. Fatal attraction to win–win-win? Debates and contestations in the media on Nature Conservation Agreement in Sabah, Malaysia. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11027-024-10172-y

Contestations around forests and lands have a long history in Sabah, Malaysia and the divergent interests of the ruling State, private business and indigenous and local peoples have played out in narratives shaping policies and debated in media since colonial times. Coalition building among actors is one avenue of influencing policy and securing benefits from policy outcomes. Here, we examine print media related to the Nature ...

Grace Y. Wong. 2024. Transforming Borneo: From Land Exploitation to Sustainable Development. Chun Sheng, Gohand, LesleyPotter. ISEAS‐Yusof Ishak Institute. 2023. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjtg.12557

Grace Yee Wong, Mawa Karambiri, Thu Thuy Pham, Alizée Ville, Tuan Long Hoang, Chi Dao Thi Linh, Andrea Downing, Amanda Jiménez-Aceituno, Maria Brockhaus. 2024. When Policies Problematize the Local: Social-Environmental Justice and Forest Policies in Burkina Faso and Vietnam. Forest and Society. https://doi.org/10.24259/fs.v8i1.34276

We examine social-environmental justice in forest governance by asking who is problematized as drivers of deforestation and forest degradation. We adapt Bacchi’s “What is the problem represented to be” approach to the community forest (CAF) model in Burkina Faso and the Payment for Forest Environmental Services (PFES) in Vietnam and examine the implementation of these policies in specific sites through disaggregated focus grou...

Paula Andrea Sánchez García, Grace Yee Wong. 2024. The political economy of deforestation in the Colombian Amazon. Journal of Political Ecology. https://doi.org/10.2458/jpe.5230

The Colombian Amazon has experienced rapid forest loss in the past decades due to growing colonization, infrastructure development, and commercial agriculture expansion. While much of the analyses of deforestation in the Amazon have been in Brazil, there is a need to extend to Colombia where forest and land use exploitation are driven by post-conflict social and political dynamics. This research contributes to this knowledge g...

Ahmad Dhiaulhaq, Catherine M. Hepp, Laetitia M. Adjoffoin, Corine Ehowe, Samuel Assembe-Mvondo, Grace Y. Wong. 2024. Environmental justice and human well-being bundles in protected areas: An assessment in Campo Ma'an landscape, Cameroon. Forest Policy and Economics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2023.103137

Justice and human well-being are increasingly used as key considerations when assessing the socio-economic impacts and trade-offs associated with forest conservation on local and indigenous populations. This paper incorporates environmental justice framework and human well-being bundles to get a more comprehensive understanding of the social-economic impacts of forest conservation. Through household surveys, focus group discus...

Mawa Karambiri, Alizée H. G. Ville, Grace Y. Wong, Amanda Jimenez-Aceituno, Andrea Downing, Maria Brockhaus. 2024. What is the Problem of Gender Inequality Represented to be in Inter-National Development Policy in Burkina Faso? Forum for Development Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/08039410.2024.2303004

This article contributes to critical policy analysis scholarship from a post-structuralism perspective. Employing the ‘What’s the problem represented to be’ (WPR) framework, a Foucault-influenced post-structural approach, we investigate what is the problem of Gender Inequality (GI) represented to be in development in Burkina Faso. Based on systematic analysis of selected (inter)national development policy documents and in-dept...

Wong, G. Y., Holm, M., Pietarinen, N., Ville, A., Brockhaus, M. The making of resource frontier spaces in the Congo Basin and Southeast Asia: A critical analysis of narratives, actors and drivers in the scientific literature. World Development Perspectives. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wdp.2022.100451

Forest frontiers are rapidly changing to sites of commodity agriculture throughout the tropics, with far-reaching transformations in landscapes and livelihoods. Many of the dynamics that drive frontier commodification are well-rehearsed since colonial times. Policies to deregulate markets, privatize or formalize land tenure and open borders to trade have stimulated resource exploitation. The accompanying territorial interventi...

Brockhaus, M., Di Gregorio, M., Djoudi, H., Moelino, M. et.al. 2021. The forest frontier in the Global South: Climate change policies and the promise of development and equity. Ambio. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-021-01602-1

Halting forest loss and achieving sustainable development in an equitable manner require state, nonstate actors, and entire societies in the Global North and South to tackle deeply established patterns of inequality and power relations embedded in forest frontiers. Forest and climate governance in the Global South can provide an avenue for the transformational change needed—yet, does it? We analyse the politics and power in f...

Brockhaus, M., Di Gregorio, M., Djoudi, H., Moeliono, M., Pham, T., Wong, G.. 2021. The forest frontier in the Global South: Climate change policies and the promise of development and equity. Ambio. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13280-021-01602-1

Halting forest loss and achieving sustainable development in an equitable manner require state, non-state actors, and entire societies in the Global North and South to tackle deeply established patterns of inequality and power relations embedded in forest frontiers. Forest and climate governance in the Global South can provide an avenue for the transformational change needed—yet, does it? We analyse the politics and power in ...