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UK funding (231 055 £) : Anticiper la prospérité : une étude des attentes de la communauté et de l’industrie pétrolière au Timor-Leste Ukri01/05/2015 UK Research and Innovation, Royaume Uni
Vue d’ensemble
Texte
Anticiper la prospérité : une étude des attentes de la communauté et de l’industrie pétrolière au Timor-Leste
| Abstract | Timor-Leste is a small country in Southeast Asia currently facing the challenge of state-building after an exceptionally brutal occupation by Indonesia (1975-1999) and prior colonisation by Portugal. Historically, Timor has recurrently evoked El Dorado-like dreams of great resource wealth, which until recently were never realised. When the country re-gained independence in 2002, the government managed to secure a 50% share in revenues from its offshore oil and gas reserves that Australia had claimed. Even though negotiations with Australia are still ongoing, the East Timorese government is currently planning to build a large industrial complex to bring oil and gas from offshore fields in the Timor Sea to its shores. The planned scheme has given rise to a great sense of anticipation that Timor-Leste's oil wealth will facilitate the development of a modern and prosperous nation. The aim of this study is to examine these visions of the future ethnographically and to explore how public expectations are articulated in relation to pre-existing ideas about the sacred significance of the lived environment. It seeks to advance anthropological debates about resource extraction and related expectations of modernity by investigating how local logics inform national imaginaries of modernity and how government promises foster utopian dreams of sudden societal transformations. The Petroleum Corridor is the centrepiece of the national Strategic Development Plan for 2020, and envisages the development of three industrial clusters on the thinly populated southwest coast of the country. Plans include the building of a supply base, a pipeline, a port, an oil refinery, a petrochemical complex, an LNG plant and a modern four-lane highway. Residents along the highway route and around the sites of the new facilities would be relocated to grid-planned 'new cities'. Hence despite the great sense of hope connected to the petroleum industry, concerns have been raised that affected populations will loose their land and that the planned resettlement may intensify current conflicts over land ownership. This research aims to document existing tensions over resource entitlements, information that is essential for securing the livelihoods of rural communities and to establish a socially responsible extraction industry. Today, Timor-Leste is the second most petroleum-dependent country in the world, yet 50 per cent of the population live below the poverty line. This has given rise to warnings that the country will soon be subject to the 'resource curse', a term used to describe the problems oil-rich economies face as they become dependent on import with little investment in agriculture and other economic sectors. Similarly, most current social science studies approach the topic of petroleum by examining the corruption, violent conflicts, environmental destruction and social inequalities that this 'cursed' resource can engender. While these analyses are important, they tend to draw a rather absolute distinction between state-planners on the one hand, and local communities that are marginalised by these projects on the other. By contrast, the focus of this project is on the expectations and aspirations that are connected to natural resources, identifying not just the concerns that the growth of the petroleum industry creates, but also the anticipation and hope that such schemes evoke. It will do so by teasing out the differences between state and local perspectives as well as taking into account variations in attitudes among affected populations. An ethnographic study of divergent public attitudes towards the petroleum industry may help to avoid its potentially adverse impact, ensuring that people benefit from the country's wealth in ways that they themselves desire, thereby fostering peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region more generally. |
| Category | Research Grant |
| Reference | ES/L010232/1 |
| Status | Closed |
| Funded period start | 01/05/2015 |
| Funded period end | 31/10/2019 |
| Funded value | £231 055,00 |
| Source | https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FL010232%2F1 |
Participating Organisations
| University of Kent | |
| University of Lisbon |
Cette annonce se réfère à une date antérieure et ne reflète pas nécessairement l’état actuel. L’état actuel est présenté à la page suivante : University of Kent, Canterbury, Royaume Uni.
