New governance strategies, mostly based on certification, emerged as a response to the severe environmental impacts oil palm has had across the globe. Following a political ecology approach, this article argues that dominant understandings of nature–society relations informing palm oil governance limit efforts to prevent and mitigate such impacts. This study analyses oil palm dispersal into protected coastal wetlands in Chiapas (Mexico), the governance strategies it triggered and its causes. Based on ethnographic methods, complemented with archival work and land use and cover change analysis, this article examines the environmental narratives underlying governance efforts and the material entanglements leading to oil palm dispersal from a more-than-human perspective. Dominant environmental narratives, which relied on popular dichotomous conceptions of human–environment relations, blamed smallholders while overlooking the role played by corporations, the state, and oil palm itself. Such narratives have not only political (the disempowerment of smallholders) but also ecological consequences (oil palm dispersal into water chestnut and mangrove forests continues). This article highlights the need to question the knowledge frames driving palm oil governance, to consider the power-laden character of specific forms of knowing and telling environmental change, and to conceive oil palm as necessarily entangled in a complex web of socio-ecological relations.

针对油棕在全球范围内对环境造成的严重影响，出现了新的治理策略，这些策略主要基于认证。遵循政治生态学方法，本文认为，对棕榈油治理的自然-社会关系的主流理解限制了预防和减轻此类影响的努力。这项研究分析了油棕向墨西哥恰帕斯州受保护的沿海湿地的扩散情况，触发的治理策略及其成因。本文以人种学方法为基础，结合档案工作和土地使用以及覆盖变化分析，从多于人的角度考察了治理工作中的环境叙事和导致油棕扩散的物质纠缠。占主导地位的环境叙事，它依赖于普遍的人类与环境关系的二分法，在指责小农的同时忽视了公司，国家和油棕本身所扮演的角色。这样的叙述不仅具有政治意义（剥夺了小农户的权力），而且还具有生态后果（油棕继续散布在nut和红树林中）。本文强调需要质疑驱动棕榈油治理的知识框架，考虑了解和讲述环境变化的特定形式的权力负担特征，以及将油棕视为必然缠结在复杂的社会生态关系网络中的必要性。这样的叙述不仅具有政治意义（剥夺了小农户的权力），而且还具有生态后果（油棕继续散布在nut和红树林中）。本文强调需要质疑驱动棕榈油治理的知识框架，考虑了解和讲述环境变化的特定形式的权力负担特征，以及将油棕视为必然缠结在复杂的社会生态关系网络中的必要性。这样的叙述不仅具有政治意义（剥夺了小农户的权力），而且还具有生态后果（油棕继续散布在nut和红树林中）。本文强调需要质疑驱动棕榈油治理的知识框架，考虑了解和讲述环境变化的特定形式的权力负担特征，以及将油棕视为必然缠结在复杂的社会生态关系网络中的必要性。