Malaysia and Indonesia have a rather skewed agricultural sector, as the national agriculture policy is shaped by export competitiveness with a specialized product: palm oil. This is especially applicable to Borneo as a major producing region; it produces more oils and fats than carbohydrates based on the current levels of consumption. In the past few decades, the model (export CPO and import cereals and other foods) worked reasonably well for both countries until the sharp decline in 2008–9 (see Figure 7.1). Another period of decline in 2015–18 clearly shows that such a model was no guarantee of food security in economic terms. The situation is severe in Indonesian Borneo, where per capita cereal supply has declined significantly throughout the major oil palm-producing sites in remote districts (MoA Indonesia 2018). This is reflected in the high prevalence of stunting (30–40 per cent) in many districts. While there are no comparable statistics in Malaysian Borneo, a similar trend of stunting (43 per cent) was found among the Penan groups in Belaga, Sarawak (Bong, Norimah A. Karim, and Noor 2018).

In this context, the concept of self-sufficiency has been frequently mentioned in land-use-related discussions with conservation also considered a core element. It is an alternative to the productivity-oriented mentality that essentializes development into economic outputs, especially in rural areas in the context of transforming land-based economies into eco-economies. It prioritizes food-fibre-fuel security and other provisioning services by creating a diversified agroecological and socio-economic landscape, which can sometimes be termed “neo-productivism” (Almstedt et al. 2014). Furthermore, it also advocates for the appreciation of the “traditional” way of living, in the hope of maintaining or regaining health and spiritual benefits through forging a healthy human-environmental relationship as in the past (Dounias and Froment 2011; Abram, Meijaard, et al. 2014; How and Othman 2017). This is not unusual in the developing world, where farming, hunting, and gathering are treated as integral parts of social life and not only for economic productivity (Hisano, Akitsu, and McGreevy 2018). Additionally, some have suggested that the preservation of indigenous agro-ecological and socio-cultural settings can enhance conservation efforts (Altieri 2004; Yuliani, Adnan, et al. 2018).