Land reform needed to phase out poverty<\/p>\n
Tantri Yuliandini, The Jakarta Post, Nusa Dua, Bali<\/p>\n
Indonesian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other
\ngroups fighting for the rights of indigenous people strongly
\nurged the government to initiate land reform to break the cycle
\nof poverty and to eliminate the degradation of natural resources
\nin the country.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of years of injustices to the people -- enforced by
\nthe colonial occupation and the New Order regime -- over land
\nownership have caused landlessness especially among rural
\nIndonesians.<\/p>\n
Noer Fauzi from the NGO Coalition for Agrarian and Natural
\nResources Governance Reforms said that since the New Order came
\ninto power in the late l960s, it had appropriated land from the
\npeople and claimed it as its own.<\/p>\n
\"The government grabbed people's land and claimed it as state
\nproperty. The new rights were then doled out to big industrial
\ncompanies,\" he said in a discussion here on Thursday.<\/p>\n
As a result, companies were given control over a lot of land
\nand the right to manage and exploit forest areas for mining and
\nlarge-scale plantations, said Noer, who is also from the
\nConsortium for Agrarian Reform (KPA).<\/p>\n
In l998, over 650 companies acquired forest concessions
\ntotaling an area of about 48.3 million hectares. Every company
\nheld at least 72,500 hectares, he said.<\/p>\n
In 1999, around 561 companies controlled 52.5 million hectares
\nof land for mining.<\/p>\n
In 2000, over 2,000 companies were operating big plantations
\ncontrolling a total area of 3.52 million hectares.<\/p>\n
In contrast, the l993 agricultural census revealed that the
\ncountry's 19.71 million farmers only controlled a total of 17.14
\nmillion hectares of farm land, meaning that each one only had
\n0.87 hectares of land on average, Noer said.<\/p>\n
The government's policies, which favored corporations, have
\ncaused serious environmental damage and even conflicts with local
\npeople, Noer said.<\/p>\n
Den Upa Rombelayuk from the Archipelago Indigenous Peoples
\nAlliance said that the rightful owners of the land are the
\nindigenous people, not the state, and that the government has no
\nright to manage land without prior consultation with the people
\nwho have lived on the land for thousands of years.<\/p>\n
\"The land has been handed down to us from generation to
\ngeneration for hundreds and even thousands of years, long before
\nthere was a state of Indonesia,\" she argued.<\/p>\n
The NGOs and indigenous people groups demanded the government
\nto reform the current unequal distribution of land as well as to
\nresolve all agrarian and natural resource management conflicts.<\/p>\n
The government must also revise and improve agrarian-related
\nlaws and regulations, and enact new principles in natural
\nresource management that referred to principles of justice,
\nsustainability and respect for people's rights.<\/p>",
"url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/land-reform-needed-to-phase-out-poverty-1447893297",
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"sponsor": "Okusi Associates",
"sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com"
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