Penyelesaian tenurial perkebunan kelapa sawit di kawasan hutan untuk kepastian investasi dan keadilan (original) (raw)

Despite its large contribution to the Indonesian economy, the palm oil sector has had to contend with illegal plantations that overlap state forest lands, making actors concerned face legal hurdles in getting their plantations certified and considered sustainable. Of 14.03 million ha of palm oil plantations, around 21% or 2.5 million ha appear to occupy state forest lands and are considered illegal according to prevailing regulations. Smallholder plantations in trouble with the law constitute 1.7 million ha, while another 800,000 ha are controlled by companies. In resolving these tenure conflicts, the government has already put in place some policies to give companies the opportunity to obtain permission from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry for forest conversion or land swaps. These policies also grant local communities land ownership through agrarian reform or greater use rights to land through social forestry schemes. The aim is to create a good climate for investment and satisfy equality principles for people. The paper aims to promote better understanding as to why and how these tenure issues occur and to assess how different actors use their strategies for controlling state forest land, by either legal or illegal means. It also assesses the implementation of policies already in place such as those that deal with forest conversion and land swap, agrarian reform and social forestry, and aims to resolve these tenure issues by identifying the challenges that impede the effective implementation of the policies. Based on the field observation and stakeholder input, this paper offers some policy options for resolving tenure issues. Research-on which this paper is based-used various data collection and analysis methods. Drawing on case studies in Central Kalimantan and West Kalimantan, we first review the history and give updates on the development of oil palm plantations in the two provinces and discuss the strategies used by companies and local communities to take control over lands. With the help of spatial imagery analysis, we present the extent and spatial distribution of overlap between oil palm plantations and state forest areas, corroborating previous assumptions on the magnitude of the tenure case. We analyzed relevant secondary literature and government as well as company documents and collected primary data through in-depth as well as semistructured interviews with 40 reviewees and 86 respondents, respectively, concerned with issues around tenure, land, forestry and the oil palm industry. In order to better understand how various stakeholders view the tenure and oil palm issues and to solicit input on how existing policies can be made effective in resolving the tenure issues, we engaged participants representing various groups at national, sub-national and local levels in a series of focus group discussions and at one national workshop.