ABSTRACT
Indonesia
Mapping Communities and Resources
Empowering Indigenous Peoples through Mapping of Customary Lands
Indigenous Peoples’ (IP) constitute approximately 40-45 million, roughly about 20 percent of
Indonesia’s total population, and are referred to as masyarkat adat communities. They have
strong spiritual, cultural, social and economic relationship with their customary land areas.
These communities recognize their customary traditions and laws as central cultural pillars
but they are increasingly put under pressure by commercial forces and demand for land for
several other uses. Overall, available reports suggest that IP communities in Indonesia face
serious problems, some of which endanger their very survival in a rapidly changing socioeconomic-political environment.
Two interlinked characteristics define the land and forestry sector in Indonesia. First is the
vast expanse of state forest land encompassing not only forest areas but also millions of
hectares of agricultural land cultivated by poor smallholders and estate crop companies, small
and large-scale mining concessions, major river systems, upstream villages and downstream
settlements affected by what happens inside state forest areas. Second is its multi-sectoral
nature, arising from development linkages with national (and increasingly) local) government
policies for local economic development. Disagreements over control of land and forest areas
have created disputes between investors and local communities, as well as between national
and local governments. Illegal logging brings military, police and judiciary into the sectors’
orbit.
While the Ministry of Forestry (MoFor) lays claim to 70 percent of Indonesia’s land as
forestlands (about 133 million hectares), the remaining is theoretically under the control of
the National Land Agency (Badan Pertanahan Nasional, BPN). Within the Forest Estate
itself, of the 133 million hectares that the MoFor claims as forestland, there are about 41
million hectares of non-forested land. A further 15 million hectares of forested land lies
outside of the Forest Estate and as such, is vulnerable to exploitation.
On the other hand, huge areas that should not be inside the Forest Estate include 26 million
hectares of land without forest cover as well as many towns and an estimated 33,000 villages.
Villagers in the forest zone are hindered from establishing livelihoods since many potential
economic activities are illegal and leaders who issue permits for plantations on land that is
actually in the forest zone can be subject to criminal sanctions. All of this is linked to the fact
that the forest zone boundaries were declared without adequate mapping and ground
verification.
Lack of Respect for Land Rights of IP Communities
Indonesia’s land law has a rich pedigree but is complex and contradictory in its approach to
customary land rights. The Indonesian Constitution respects the existence of adat and adat
law communities, acknowledges their rights to be self-governing and recognizes their
customary rights to land. However, other subordinate and sectoral laws (e.g., Basic Forestry
Law, Mining Law, and Oil and Natural Gas Law) provide only weak recognition of
customary rights and allow government agencies a great deal of discretion in deciding
whether to respect them or not.
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For several years now, Alliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara (Indigenous Peoples Alliance of
the Archipelago, AMAN) is actively engaged in highlighting the land rights issues of IP
communities in Indonesia and successfully challenged the Forestry Law on behalf of IP and
forest dwelling communities in the Constitutional Court in recent years and also advocated
adoption of an IP Land Rights Bill.
Reforms and Opportunities for Strengthening Land Rights of IPs
The recent judicial decisions on (a) Forest Land Determination Process, February 2012, and
(b) Customary Rights of IP Communities to Forestland Areas, May 2013 provide a rationale
and strong support for responding to AMAN’s advocacy work for the recognition of the
Indigenous Peoples communal and territorial lands under community maps produced for the
Ancestral Domain areas. In turn, local governments are working with AMAN to revitalize
Ancestral Domain Registry for customary/indigenous lands, introducing a cultural factor into
resource management. Additionally, it could be improve the Indonesia’s mapping and its
identification, delineation and gazettal of all state lands as well as the mapping of all private
lands, and for government to give priority to funding mapping.
Further, recent developments at the national and local levels have created opportunities to
further push the agenda for securing land rights for IP (e.g., adoption of UN Declaration on
the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, UNDRIP in 2007), drafting of IP Land Rights Bill (April
2013) and forest dwelling communities and strengthening land governance in their territories.
The enactment of the Geospatial Information Law in April 2011 also paved the way for key
improvements in mapping and geospatial databases, including land. The law provides a
framework for acquiring accurate geospatial data and creates a regulatory framework for the
administration of national geospatial information. The government’s National Mapping
Agency (BIG) has launched a number of initiatives to implement the 2011 law. This includes
the OneMap program which in the last two years, has caught the imagination of the
government and civil society alike.
Building IPs and Public Confidence through CLM
In Indonesia, the mapping of indigenous lands to secure rights, tenure, manage natural
resources, and strengthen cultures has involved a variety of methodologies, ranging from
highly participatory approaches involving village sketch maps to more technical efforts with
geographic information systems and satellite imagery.
Since its formation in the late 1990s, AMAN has made an explicit commitment to get land
mapping done base on customary values. The main purpose of this mapping activity has been
to assist IPs claims and defend their ancestral lands and resources. Other purposes include
strengthening IP’s organizations, economic planning and natural resource management, and
the documentation of history and culture to salvage and reinforce cultural identity for public
purposes.
A structured process has evolved over the years with standard manuals, guidelines, methods
for data validation, and costing of operations. Several community level facilitators have been
trained to support communities to prepare the maps. Progress has also been made to link up
with the CLM with government ministries and agencies through dialogue and exposure to the
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work done by civil society groups in land mapping. There have been some attempts to secure
legal acceptance of the maps produced and government is beginning to recognize the
importance of CLM products too. A Memorandum of Understanding was signed in 2011 with
BPN for receiving the CLM outputs and recording the details in the cadaster and the
President issued an instruction in 2012 confirming such formal arrangements.
Lessons Learned
The experience in Indonesia shows that development planning and land governance can
benefit from geospatial data produced by indigenous communities communities and ordinary
citizens themselves. Community participation is possible because the CLM methodology is
simple and aims for reasonable accuracy only. Data collection includes identification of
cultural areas; sociocultural institutions and exploring soil, water quality that make up a local
watershed, assessing tree cover, and identifying land areas that could be potentially used and
also identifying landmarks. In the process, community members develop their critical
thinking base in their own sociocultural values, communication, and group work skills, while
addressing a problem that is important to them and their community.
AMAN’s work with the IPs has provided the insight that communities have varying degrees
of direct or residual control over land within their customary domains. These typically
involve a mix of communal land with various entitlements, including territorial lands, which
could be certified under ancestral domain and the national law. Tightening customary rules
represents the most obvious planning and land use toll that lies within the authority of local
IP associations. As the mapping experience has shown, this was evidently not possible
without seriously circumscribing the options of members who held private rights. While
restriction of land sales was widely regarded as critical to maintain control over land use, the
presence of vested interests has meant that local governments have not been prepared to
tackle this issue. One of the critical lessons learnt was that if action was to be taken, it was
mostly to be at the community level, and it would have to be part of a scheme that could
persuade broad segments of these communities to monitor compliance in the common
interest.
AMAN’s experience has shown that CLM work needs to be grounded in reality as those
exercise take place in a wide variety of political, economic, and cultural contexts. Hence a
thorough social preparation is critical for its success. Further, experiences gained so far have
shown that the mapping exercise does raise a number of issues such as: managing
information on ownership, and access and exclusion; potential conflict resolution
management; at times, mapping exercise triggering community divide and even stratification;
lack of representation of women and economically poorer households within the IP
communities.
Learning from AMAN’s experiences producing community land maps, the government has
started to prepare Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for receiving, verifying, and
accepting community maps. This SOP, once agreed upon by all stakeholders, can generate
geospatial information and provide some degree of certainty to customary lands held by IP
and adat communities involved in CLM. Essentially, it will help in establishing benchmarks
to monitor progress made in managing forestlands and the land rights of IPs.
Jakarta, November 2013.
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