Bill 'must protect' indigenous people

JAKARTA (JP): The future environment law should better protect indigenous people's land rights, sociologist Loekman Soetrisno said yesterday.

At a discussion on the environment bill at the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation, Loekman of Gadjah Mada University said that poverty alleviation and other issues should also be incorporated into the bill.

The government-sponsored environment bill submitted to the House for deliberation last April seeks to amend the outdated 1982 Environment Law.

"The law should guarantee that indigenous people will not be marginalized in the course of local development," said Loekman, also head of Gadjah Mada University's Center for Research on Rural and Regional Development.

Loekman said that existing laws, such as the 1972 Law on Transmigration, the 1967 Law on Forestry and the 1967 law and Government Regulation No. 23/1982 on Irrigation, only addressed issues concerning each particular ministry.

"All these laws protect sectoral interests while people's interest are always sacrificed," he said.

"They contradict the 1960 Agrarian Law which should be the basis for making laws concerning natural resources management."

Loekman hailed the agrarian law as "progressive," particularly for giving people the legal right to own land.

"The agrarian law also explains the social function of land, which requires citizens to make use of their land according to environmental protection principles," he said.

Loekman said that, as long as the existing laws and the next environment law failed to refer to the agrarian law, the country's natural resources management problems would remain.

He attributed the acute problem of poverty to the dwindling size of people's land holdings because of development, including the opening or expanding of mining and forestry concessions, especially outside Java.

In Java, the marginalization of people was caused by industrialization and the development of mega-projects, factories, housing complexes and golf courses, Loekman said.

"People who have been evicted from their land do not have the skills to work in projects on their former land... Many have to go to the forest and exploit it. Who is to blame?" he said.

"The marginalization of people must be addressed by the new environment law, otherwise it will be irrelevant, and it would always be the people who will be blamed for any land disputes," he said. (aan)