Jakarta – The control of land in Indonesia reportedly shows an imbalance with the allocation for corporations being far larger than for the ordinary people.
Based on a report by the Indonesian Environmental Forum (Walhi) and Auriga, corporations are recorded as managing 92 percent of the land in Indonesia, while the ordinary people only have 8 percent.
The Walhi and Auriga report titled Corporate Control of Land on the Planet was issued in September this year. The method used was the identification and analysis of data from various government ministries and institutions.
"What has been given to the corporations as a whole covers 36.8 million hectares. On the other hand, what has been given to the ordinary people is only 3.1 million hectares", read the report as seen on Wednesday October 26.
"Thus, 92 percent of it is allocated to corporations, and only 8 percent to the ordinary people", it added.
A breakdown of all permits for the utilisation of forestry areas shows that 19 million hectares has been given to logging concessions, 11.3 million hectares to timber plantation concessions, 0.5 million hectares for borrow-and-use mining activities and 6 million hectares have been released for palm oil plantations.
Meanwhile they believe that the amount of land controlled by the people needs to be rechecked because the reality is that much of the land managed by the people has also been annexed by corporations.
The groups gave the example of land opened up for people's plantation forests (HTR) which in practice is still used to meet the timber needs of the pulp and paper industry. "Many more are speaking out, particularly from Sumatra", they said.
Furthermore, the extent of community managed areas (WKR), which imperially are controlled by the ordinary people, is still low.
Under the licensing administration system at the Environment and Forestry Ministry (KLHK), there are six types of land allocations.
They are, village land (HD), public forests (HKm), forestry partnerships (KK), people's plantation forests (HTR), social forestry utilisation permits (IPPS) and customary forests.
"So far, the allocation of these six types of land has only reached 2.7 million hectares", the groups said. (yla/DAL)
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was "Walhi & Auriga: Lahan Kelola RI 92 Persen Korporasi, 8 Persen Rakyat".]
