{
  "url": "https://stakesproject.org/cases/indonesia/",
  "language": "en",
  "type": "case",
  "title": "Indonesia: Palm oil",
  "description": "A German discount grocer is among Europe's largest buyers of Sumatran palm oil, on a seam where one EU regime restricts imports and EU trade negotiators work to expand them.",
  "updated": "2026-08-02",
  "project": {
    "name": "STAKES",
    "grant": "353416",
    "funder": "Research Council of Norway",
    "funder_id": "https://doi.org/10.13039/501100005416",
    "host": "Centre for Global Sustainability (GLOBE/SUM), University of Oslo",
    "term": "2025-07-01/2029-06-29"
  },
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "alternates": {
    "en": "https://stakesproject.org/cases/indonesia/",
    "no": "https://stakesproject.org/no/cases/indonesia/",
    "es": "https://stakesproject.org/es/cases/indonesia/"
  },
  "slug": "indonesia",
  "country": "Indonesia",
  "sector": "Palm oil",
  "places": "North Sumatra · Riau · Jakarta",
  "lead": "Jason Miklian",
  "work_package": "WP2",
  "research_questions": [
    3,
    4,
    7,
    8
  ],
  "phase": "Fieldwork 2028",
  "headline": "Can a plantation ever be responsible? Sumatra is where the EU deforestation rules meet the EU trade deal.",
  "summary": "A German discount grocer is among Europe's largest buyers of Sumatran palm oil, on a seam where one EU regime restricts imports and EU trade negotiators work to expand them.",
  "sections": {
    "ground": "Sumatra has a long history of resource extraction, and of the conflict and corruption that tend to accompany it, running through oil, coffee, rubber and now palm. Land tenure disputes, smallholder economics and forest loss are the same problem seen from three directions.",
    "corporate_question": "A German discount supermarket group, one of the larger European importers of Sumatran palm oil, buys under an EU import regime designed to keep deforestation-linked commodities out of the European market, while EU trade negotiators work on an agreement intended to increase Indonesian exports into that same market. The firm sits between two European policies pulling opposite ways.",
    "what_we_ask": "Can plantation-model sourcing be environmentally sustainable and rights-respecting at the same time? Or is the honest answer that it cannot, and the reporting exists to avoid saying so? This is the wicked problem in the study. It feeds the theoretical work directly, and it extends completed work on how business and violent conflict interact in post-Reformasi Indonesia."
  },
  "image": {
    "file": "assets/img/indonesia.jpg",
    "alt": "Cleared and planted land on an oil palm concession in Riau, Sumatra, stretching to the horizon.",
    "caption": "An oil palm concession in Riau, October 2007. Cleared ground planted to the horizon.",
    "author": "Hayden",
    "licence": "CC BY 2.0",
    "source": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Riau_palm_oil_2007.jpg",
    "retrieved": "2026-08-02"
  },
  "company_named": false,
  "naming_policy": "The case company is named once a peer-reviewed output naming it is published.",
  "reading": [
    {
      "title": "Business and violent conflict as a multidimensional relationship: The case of post-Reformasi Indonesia",
      "authors": "Hanoteau, Miklian & Barkemeyer",
      "year": "2025",
      "venue": "Business Horizons",
      "doi": "10.1016/j.bushor.2025.02.014",
      "doi_verified": "2026-08-02 against api.crossref.org"
    },
    {
      "title": "Contextualising and theorising economic development, local business and ethnic cleansing in Myanmar",
      "authors": "Miklian",
      "year": "2019",
      "venue": "Conflict, Security & Development",
      "doi": "10.1080/14678802.2019.1561624",
      "doi_verified": "2026-08-02 against api.crossref.org"
    }
  ]
}