YUSTINA OCTIFANNY

PhD Student

Research Title: Carbon frontiers in Southeast Asia: Territorialization of carbon markets and socio-environmental transformations
Research Group: Tropical Environmental Change (TEC)
Thesis Advisor: Prof David Taylor

Yustina Octifanny or Fanny (she/her) studies the human-land nexus, specializing in political ecology, spatial inequality, migration, land transformation, livelihood, urbanization, and informality. Fanny is also a professional urban and regional planner by education and training.

For her doctoral research, she is interested in investigating the ongoing socio-environmental changes in carbon-rich landscapes, particularly in peatlands and extended ecosystems, where the surge of initiatives relating to voluntary carbon markets (VCMs) has occurred. Her research focuses on Southeast Asia, where rates of implementation of new regulations and the commercialization of carbon-rich landscapes have been rapid. She is developing a carbon frontier framework to understand global carbon market territorialization and local socio-environmental transformations. In Southeast Asia, environmental governance is transforming through the global valuation of the peatland ecosystem as a tradable carbon sink, forming a new space called the carbon frontier. The carbon frontier is a space of inequality and injustice where global carbon market territorialization on local rural and agricultural landscapes transforms socio-environmental fabrics that disproportionately affect marginalized communities. The carbon frontier also facilitates wealth transfer from rural landscapes to a limited number of VCM professionals and financial institutions in urban centers.

Before coming to NUS, Fanny was a peatland researcher for EU-funded Sustainable Use of Peatland and Haze Mitigation in ASEAN Component 2 (SUPA C2) under the administration of the World Resources Institute (WRI) Indonesia, a member of the People for Peat Coalition. Before her doctoral school, Fanny was also a researcher and evaluator at Dala Institute in Indonesia, where she worked on research, technical assistance, evaluation, and learning for the intersection of nature-society studies and consultation services.

Fanny holds a Master of Urban and Regional Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles, USA, and a Bachelor of Science from Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia.