Bill 'must protect' indigenous people
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House for deliberation last April seeks to amend the outdated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)