Decoupling and Resistance: Local Responses to Global Environmental Norms in Indonesia’s Palm Oil Sector

Global environmental norms increasingly shape commodity governance in the Global South, with the EU Deforestation-Free Regulation (EUDR) representing a prominent attempt to govern land-based products through extraterritorial sustainability criteria. This study examines how such norms are received, reinterpreted, negotiated, and resisted in Indonesia’s palm oil sector, focusing on smallholder-dominated value chains in Serdang Bedagai and Simalungun, North Sumatra. Centered on everyday resistance and policy decoupling as its core interpretive lenses, and drawing on habitus as a supporting concept, the study employs qualitative fieldwork, in-depth interviews, field observations, and critical discourse analysis to investigate tensions between deforestation-free supply chain expectations and local realities marked by fragmented landholdings, informal tenure, intermediary dependence, and cashflow-oriented livelihood strategies. The findings show that the EUDR is widely perceived not as a sustainability opportunity, but as an externally imposed regulatory pressure that threatens income stability and market access. Local actors respond through discursive reframing, continued reliance on informal trading practices, and partial or symbolic implementation of legality and traceability requirements. The study argues that inclusive deforestation-free governance requires differentiated obligations, transitional legality pathways, and cooperative-based traceability mechanisms that better align global norms with local institutional capacity and livelihood structures.