Political Ecology and the Economics of Care in Southeast Asia's Community Forestry toward Sustainable Development
By Reni Juwitasari
Researcher
Disaster Resilience and Environmental Sustainability (DRES) Program,
Asian Research Center for International Development (ARCID),
School of Social Innovation, Mae Fah Luang University
Care has increasingly become central to critical debates in international development, underscoring the need to shift beyond growth-centered models toward approaches that prioritize relational well-being, social reproduction, and ecological sustainability. Traditionally overlooked in development frameworks, care work, both paid and unpaid, underpins all economies and communities, yet remains systematically undervalued, primarily when performed by women, ethnic minorities, or indigenous populations (Razavi, 2007; Tronto, 1993). Despite decades of global discourse and policy reform, the dominant development paradigm remains anchored in capitalist logic, privileging economic growth over ecological sustainability and social justice. This framework reduces nature to a tradable asset, one that is extractable and disposable, thereby reproducing a dangerous dualism between caring for people and caring for nature (Schildberg, 2014; Pla-Julian & Guevara, 2018).
Informed by feminist political ecology (FPE), care is not merely the unpaid labor often relegated to women in households and communities. Care is a profoundly relational practice grounded in interdependence, reciprocity, and responsibility across human and more-than-human worlds (Tronto, 1993). In many parts of the Global South, especially in rural and forest-dependent areas, care practices are deeply embedded in customary knowledge systems, kinship structures, and ecological stewardship, offering alternative models of development grounded in reciprocity and interdependence (Arora-Jonsson, 2011).
Care is a socially essential and historically feminized practice, comprising the recognition of need, responsibility, action, and evaluation, as defined by Fisher and Tronto (1990) as the four phases of care. Reframing care as a relational, ecological, and economic foundation challenges its marginalization in development discourse and highlights its centrality to sustainable futures. Integrating care into development policy requires a fundamental shift from technocratic, growth-oriented approaches toward frameworks that centre human and more-than-human well-being, equity, and shared responsibility. Such a reframing enables more inclusive, context-sensitive, and sustainable strategies within international development discourse and practice.
This article focuses on two communities: Kampung Naga (Naga Village) in West Java, Indonesia, and an Akha village in Chiang Rai, Northern Thailand, selected for their distinct yet compelling models of care-based sustainability. Kampung Naga, a traditional Sundanese settlement governed by adat (customary law), maintains sacred ecological boundaries through ritual practice, ancestral memory, and collective restraint. In contrast, the Akha community has developed a dynamic forest governance system rooted in spiritual zoning, rotational agriculture, and adaptive resistance to state-driven conservation regimes. While Kampung Naga exemplifies care through cultural continuity, the Akha demonstrate care through strategic negotiation and resilience.
By placing these two communities’ side by side, this study does not propose a universal model of sustainability; instead, it underscores the plurality of place-based care practices that challenge dominant state- and market-oriented paradigms. In both contexts, women emerge not merely as caregivers but as central actors, such as custodians of ecological knowledge, cultural transmission, and everyday forest governance. Their practices compel a rethink of conventional development frameworks by raising critical questions: What might sustainable development look like if grounded in care rather than control? And what new possibilities emerge when women's labor, knowledge, and relational ties to land are taken seriously as foundations for sustainability?
Case Study 1: Forest Care in Kampung Naga (Naga Village, Indonesia)
Joan Tronto's framework of care (comprising attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness, and solidarity) provides a powerful lens for understanding environmental stewardship as a lived, relational, and gendered practice (Tronto, 1993). When situated in the context of Kampung Naga, a traditional Sundanese village in West Java, Indonesia, care emerges as a territorial and embodied way of life. Nestled in a lush valley in Tasikmalaya Regency, Kampung Naga lies between the Ciwulan River and a network of steep, terraced rice fields, bordered by bamboo groves and leuweung leutik (secondary forests). This geography, situated at the ecological interface between upland forest and cultivated lowland, supports a harmonious agroecological mosaic that is crucial for both livelihoods and ritual life (Nurkamilah, 2018).
Attentiveness, as the first phase of care, involves recognizing and responding to signs of ecological and spiritual imbalance through embodied knowledge held by elders, particularly women. They observe the forest with practiced intuition, noticing the wilting of herbal plants, changes in river clarity, or shifts in animal behavior as indicators that the forest is out of balance. These observations are inseparable from their spiritual worldview, such as the "leuweung karamat" (sacred forest), which is understood not simply as a natural resource but as a dwelling place of ancestral spirits, requiring ritual vigilance and respectful distance (Afiff & Rachman, 2020). Female attentiveness in Kampung Naga is thus not abstract. It is a relational act, utilizing sensory, embodied, and culturally situated. It reflects a mode of caring that resists extractivist logic and affirms the inseparability of ecological knowledge, spirituality, and women's roles in sustaining the well-being of more-than-human systems.
Once a need is recognized, Tronto (1993) argues, care requires someone to take responsibility or what she calls "taking care of." In Kampung Naga, this responsibility is encoded within adat, the customary law that governs social and ecological relations (Nurkamilah, 2018). In this sense, environmental care is a shared obligation, performed through gotong royong, a tradition of cooperation that mobilizes the entire community in acts of stewardship, cleaning springs, maintaining sacred boundaries, and tending communal plots (Afiff & Rachman, 2020). Women are central to this effort. Their tasks, such as preparing ceremonial offerings, conserving food forests, and storing seeds, are not merely domestic duties but intergenerational acts of guardianship. To care for the forest is also to care for kin, for ancestral legacies, and for generations yet to come (Saepitri, 2019).
Tronto's second phase, competence, requires that care be skillful, meaningful, and contextually aware. In Kampung Naga, caregiving competence is evident in both everyday and ritual practices: the preparation of jamu (traditional herbal remedies), the honoring of rice spirits during planting ceremonies, and the precision of agricultural calendars based on lunar cycles and spiritual guidance (Entin et al., 2023). Women are the bearers and transmitters of this knowledge, which is taught not through written manuals but through embodied repetition: watching, doing, and reflecting over time. Although national sustainability metrics rarely account for this expertise, it constitutes a living, agroecologically informed knowledge system, locally grounded and ecologically literate (Harcourt, 2023).
Care, however, does not end with giving. It must be received and responded to. Responsiveness, Tronto's fourth dimension, inquires whether care aligns with the actual needs of the recipient and enables recalibration (Tronto, 1993). In Kampung Naga, this principle is practiced with humility. When a forest resource disappears, a spring dries up, or a healing ritual fails to yield results, community elders engage in reflection, such as revisiting stories, retelling ancestral guidance, and, if necessary, adjusting rituals or community behaviors. Nature, here, is not passive; rather, it is a communicator, and women often serve as interpreters of its signs, adjusting care in response to environmental feedback (Arora-Jonsson, 2011).
Ultimately, solidarity extends care into the realm of justice and collective well-being. In Kampung Naga, solidarity is expressed through continuity and refusal. The village has actively resisted state-driven development schemes and international carbon market projects, such as REDD+, opting instead to defend its spiritual forest governance, which is rooted in ancestral trust and non-monetary values (Li, 2014). Women enact solidarity not only within their kin-based networks but also in food sovereignty initiatives, seed-sharing, and shared planting cycles, which reinforce community resilience and autonomy (Saepitri, 2019). The example of care serves as a form of resistance, care as governance, and care as a slow, deep practice of place-based justice.
Case Study 2: Forest Care in the Akha Highlands
High in the forested uplands of Chiang Rai, near the Thai-Myanmar border, the Akha people have shaped their lives around steep mountain slopes, seasonal fog, and ancestral rhythms. Many of their villages, such as those near Doi Mae Salong, sit at elevations between 1,000 and 1,300 meters above sea level, surrounded by montane forests and the remnants of rotational agriculture plots (Duangjai, Schmidt-Vogt, & Shrestha, 2015). Here, the forest is not a distant entity, but rather the stage of life, memory, and survival.
The Akha attentively observe the land through a spatial logic that divides their environment into multiple zones: pa chao (sacred forest), pa mai (utilitarian forest), and pa chai soi (gathering forest) (Ganjanapan, 1998). These are zones of differentiated attention, care, and responsibility. Each area carries its own spiritual weight and ecological rhythm, and women, in particular, learn to read the signs: when a medicinal root disappears, when a ritual grove falls silent, or when bamboo shoots appear early in the season (Delang, 2007).
Responsibility among the Akha is not conferred by law, but by lineage. To care for the forest is to fulfill an ancestral obligation. Yet this responsibility is made more complex by the legal precarity the Akha face. Their land-use practices, especially rai mun wian, or rotational farming, have long been misinterpreted by state forestry departments as environmentally destructive, despite their ecological logic of soil regeneration and biodiversity (Forsyth & Walker, 2008). In response, Akha villagers have engaged in what might be called the political labor of care, including mapping their territories, documenting sacred and medicinal plants, and collaborating with NGOs to articulate their practices in terms that policymakers can recognize (Trakansuphakom & Kampholkul, 2010). It is not just the forest they are defending, but their right to care for it.
Competence in care, as in Tronto's third phase, is represented in this context. It is carried in the hands and memories of Akha women who know when to burn, when to plant, and when to rest the land. Grandmothers teach younger generations how to chant before a harvest, how to distinguish healing herbs, and how to walk respectfully through sacred groves. This is not knowledge easily captured in policy briefs, as it is embodied knowledge, passed down through watching, doing, and remembering. In many ways, their forest is a living pharmacy, a spiritual archive, and a subsistence system all at once (Delang, 2007).
Even when the state criminalizes their rotational farming or restricts forest access, Akha women continue to practice competence in care. They adapt, negotiate, and translate, bridging the worlds of ancestral governance and bureaucratic scrutiny. Their care is simultaneously political, ecological, and spiritual. In their attentiveness, their burden of responsibility, and their ecological competence, the Akha demonstrate that care is not merely an act of compassion. It is a mode of governance, of resistance, and of living well with the land. Additionally, among the Akha, solidarity is practiced through everyday reciprocity, such as exchanging seeds, sharing harvests, and caring for one another's children and fields. This ethic of mutual care strengthens social bonds while reinforcing their forest stewardship as a collective responsibility. Rather than relying on external systems, their resilience is rooted in kinship networks and communal trust that have been passed down through generations.
Conclusion
This article examines how feminist politics of care offer a transformative lens for rethinking sustainable development through ethnographic engagement with two forest communities: Kampung Naga in West Java, Indonesia, and an Akha village in Chiang Rai, northern Thailand. Both communities demonstrate distinct, place-based systems of ecological governance rooted in spiritual zoning, intergenerational knowledge, and relational responsibility. Women in both contexts act as central ecological agents, preserving seed cycles, preparing rituals, and transmitting forest knowledge. Nevertheless, their contributions remain largely invisible to state frameworks and technocratic development paradigms.
Drawing on Tronto's five-phase care model, which encompasses attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness, and solidarity, the study reveals how care in these communities is embodied, gendered, and territorialized. This localized ethic of care offers an alternative pathway to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly those related to climate action (SDG 13), gender equality (SDG 5), and life on land (SDG 15), by grounding sustainability in lived practice, intergenerational knowledge, and place-based governance systems rather than top-down, technocratic interventions.
Thanks to Assistant Professor Maya Dania, Member of the Disaster Resilience and Environmental Sustainability (DRES) Program, Asian Research Center for International Development, School of Social Innovation, Mae Fah Luang University, for supervising this article.
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