From Participatory Mapping to Agrarian Reform
Indonesia - 23 July, 2018
As a follow-up action agreed at the National Tenurial Conference on 26 October 2017 in Jakarta, Laman Satong Village, of which a large part is located in the State Forest, has been selected by National Government as target priority for TORA (land for agrarian reform).
Indonesia under President Joko Widodo has seriously accelerated agrarian reform. Recently the Government issued President Regulation No. 88/2017 on land tenure settlement on state forest land. This has opened opportunities for villages or local communities whose land is located on state forest land to gain ownership and access through either TORA ('land for agrarian reform') or the social forestry scheme.
All land in Laman Satong Village originally fell under state forest areas, until 2007, when due to the effort of oil-palm investors, 55% of the land was converted into Non-forest land-use (APL). The remaining land, which has been utilized by the local community during the last 50 years, remains under state forest land to date.
In 2017, Tropenbos Indonesia (TBI) facilitated participatory mapping and land-use planning in Laman Satong village. The key output was village-level spatial planning map, in which the boundary with surrounding villages is clearly defined based on inter-village boundary negotiation. Based on this ‘clear and clean’ village boundary, the remaining village land (minus the oil-palm plantation) was classified as Convertible Production Forest (20%), Production Forest (2%), Protection Forest (11%) and National Park (10%). This means that villagers will not be entitled to a land certificate, as these are only issued for land outside the State Forest, in the APL. This is a problem for local development.
Considering the long-term constraint, TBI assisted villagers to find a platform for their problem at the national level. Key champions from Laman Satong and Ketapang District participated as resource persons in the Tenure Conference held in Jakarta on 25 – 27 October 2017, which was co-hosted by the Ministry of Environment and Forest, the Executive Office of the President and the Civil Society Coalition for Tenurial Justice.
This facilitation led to a significant impact. The national and province government identified the tenurial problem in Laman Satong as a target priority, and recently a Mapping Team from West Kalimantan Province Forestry Agency has started collecting spatial data as a basis for TORA and Social Forestry in Laman Satong Village. The expected result, in the near future, there will be a transfer of legal land ownership of the land, which is ‘de facto’ has been utilized by village for public support (roads, village hall etc.) and villagers for housing and farming, but ‘de jure’ is state forest land, will become village government and individuals’ land.(EP)