Potential Deviations to Land Reform

Indonesian Version

 
Ricky Pratomo, CR-20
 

 

In line with Indonesia’s medium development plan for 2016 – 2019, the Ministry of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning/Head of the National Land Agency (Ministry) has prepared a number of programs to implement the land reform objective. Unfortunately, such land reform programs are predicted to fail due to deviations from irresponsible parties.
 
As shared to hukumonline by the end of September 2016, Khalisah Khalid, Campaign and Network Manager for the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Wahana Lingkungan Hidup Indonesia – WALHI) estimated that land reform programs will most likely fail because of land misappropriations, instead of undistributed lands.
 
Elaborating his statement, Mr. Khalid then explained that one of the causes to such misappropriation is the Ministry’s non-transparency regarding the indicative map of the locations of lands which are allocated for land reform. Meanwhile, Mr. Khalid believed that such transparency is important for public.
 
“The misappropriations of land reform will be more worrying rather than obscurity of land redistribution,” Mr. Khalid stated.
 
Mr.Khalid further argued that the possibility of those misappropriations may be worsened by government’s plan to coordinate the land reform programs with the infrastructure projects. In this regard, Mr. Khalid also pointed out the danger of companies that intend to change the function of lands that are subject to land reform programs for plantation purposes via forest-areas relinquishment scheme.
 
Supporting Mr. Khalid’s argument, Dewi Kartika, the Deputy of Secretary General for National Land Reform Consortium, also concerned about the possibility of misappropriations in land reform due to the discrepancy of land reform objects and subjects, including the discrepancy derived from the release of forest areas.
 
“In West Kalimantan, there are more than 130,000 acres of lands targeted as Lands Subjected for Land Reform (Tanah untuk Objek Reforma Agraria – TORA) through the scheme of releasing forest areas,” Informed Ms. Kartika.
 
Further, Ms. Kartika revealed that the Ministry of Environment Affairs and Forestry (Kementerian Lingkungan Hidup dan Kehutanan – KLHK) once claimed that there are 15 spots of TORA established through the forest areas relinquishment. However, the site visit showed that 14 of 15 TORA spots claimed earlier overlap with industrial forests (hutan tanaman industri).
 
“We assumed that such TORA spots were intentionally proposed by regional government for palm oil plantation expansion in West Kalimantan,” said Ms. Kartika.
 
As background information, the government has allocated up to 9 million acres of lands for TORA, comprising of 4.5 million acres for asset legalization and another 4.5 million acres for land redistribution. In regard to asset legalization, the government allocates 0.6 million for uncertified transmigration and 3.9 million acres for public assets legalization. Meanwhile, the 4.5 million acres for land redistribution will include 0.4 million acres for abandoned land and 4.1 million acres for forest areas release.
 
Based on this TORA’s allocation, most of the lands for the redistribution purpose will be retrieved from releasing forest areas. In that sense, the land redistribution targeted under the land reform programs really depends to the forest-areas relinquishment which falls under the authority of KLHK.
 
Government’s Hidden Agenda
 
Other than land misappropriation, Ms. Kartika also believed that the concept of “land bank” is another obstacle to land reform program. This concept was initially proposed by National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) in order to provide land for public interests.
 
“Meanwhile, land reform actually targets the land-less farmers, not the provision of lands for infrastructures development,” Ms. Kartika expressed her concern.
 
According to Ms. Kartika, the “land bank” concept is highly linked to strategic infrastructure projects as the government is in need of vast areas of land for strategic infrastructure projects, such as the construction of airports, toll roads, water-reservoirs, power plants.
 
“And this so called 'land bank' will be the institution to acquire the lands which may be used for strategic projects in various sectors at anytime,” Ms. Kartika explained.
 
In line with Ms. Kartika’s statement, Mr. Khalid added that land procurement for public interests is not the purpose of land reform. Instead, such scheme will only cause more reasons for people to lose their land. To Mr. Khalid’s belief, the use of land reform to facilitate big-scale infrastructure projects will only defeat the land reform agenda itself.
 
Adding from academic perspective, Suparjo Sujadi, Agrarian Law expert from University of Indonesia, addressed similar critic. Mr. Sujadi assessed that so far, land reform’s agenda have always been combined with government’s target on economic development. Mr. Sujadi argued then that such inclusion is a misinterpretation of land reform’s concept which might harm the realization of land reform  through land distribution.
 
In response to Mr. Sujadi’s opinion, Mr. Khalid suggested the government to create fairness through this land reform, instead of merely focusing to the economic growth. With that end in mind, Mr. Khalid expected that the government will follow the land redistribution policy with the provision of incentives for the farmers as well as protection for their lands from future occupancy by big-scale investors.
 
(cd/rfs)