Transforming the Indonesian uplands

Transforming the Indonesian uplands

At least 30 million people gain their livelihoods in Indonesia's upland regions. Tania Li looks at developments there.

Upland farmers in Indonesia have been viewed variously as innocent tribals, maintaining distinctive traditional ways of life; as peasant farmers, albeit perhaps rather inefficient ones; as destroyers of the environment and illegal squatters; and, more recently, as expert environmentalists, holding the secret to sustainability through their community-based resource management systems.

Huge populations live in Indonesia's upland areas, dependent upon fragile land and forest resources to which their entitlements are generally insecure. Many have lived in upland regions for generations, while others have migrated more recently in search of land and livelihoods. Still others are attracted to the uplands as frontiers for the extension of commodity production, often on a large scale. Where they survive at all, upland forests are treated by government and industry as a harvestable resource, while environmentalists lobby for conservation of forests to protect their biodiversity potential.

As these widely divergent perceptions indicate, there are at least three potentially conflicting interests at work in modern Indonesia's upland regions: environmental conservation, economic development through export promotion, and increased farming activity to meet local needs. Complex patterns of change are being generated within the uplands, in response to, in spite of, or simply on the margins of these externally driven agendas. Transformations have resulted, in many cases, from the impact of capitalized agriculture and changing state-society relations on upland people. In lowland Indonesia during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the widespread introduction of new strains of high- yielding rice and new, industrially-manufactured chemical inputs made possible extraordinary increases in food crop production; the programs brought about equally extensive changes in lowland politics and society. Access to green revolution technologies required new and administratively expensive credit programs. These often have worked to the advantage of middle and large- scale farmers, thus enhancing rather than diminishing rural inequality.

Similarly, efforts to maximize farm profits encouraged farmers in many lowland regions to introduce new and more restrictive forms of labor organization, which often affect poor women most severely. The efficient distribution of inputs and the quick marketing of harvests have required massive investments in the construction and improvement of roads. This, in turn, has facilitated the diffusion of new consumer goods, the movement of investors into rural agriculture and the dissemination of new lifestyles. Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally, the success of green revolution initiatives was accompanied by, and indeed dependent upon, a significant expansion in state capacity. New programs required government intervention into rural communities on a scale and with a duration not previously seen in the independence era.

Throughout the same period, upland areas in the hilly or mountainous interiors of most of Indonesia's provinces were undergoing economic, political and social changes of no less significance. At least 30 million people gain their livelihoods in upland regions through a mix of swidden farming, tree-crop cultivation, forest extraction, fixed-field permanent agriculture, and wage labor. As in the nearby lowlands, recent years have witnessed road construction, crop intensification, capital investment, deforestation and the movement of people and ideas on a significant scale. These developments have transformed the relationship of upland peoples to the environment, markets and the state. In so doing, they have also opened the way for fundamental changes in upland economy, polity and morality, as rural people respond to new pressures and take advantage of new opportunities.

Emphasizing current changes does not mean, however, that isolated, "traditional" people are encountering the modern, commercial world for the first time. Centuries of interaction with lowlanders, with the state, and with national and international markets have been central to the formation and reformation of upland cultures and practices, and their very identities as "communities". The majority of Indonesia's agricultural exports (from the ancient spice trade crops to modern era rubber, cocoa, coffee, cloves, cashews) have always been derived from upland regions, where they are grown by smallholder farmers as well as on plantations.

Ironically, just as the agrarian revolution in upland agriculture is proceeding apace, it is being masked by two external agendas, each with rather strong rhetoric. The Indonesian state continues to see uplanders as backward traditionalists, illegal squatters and agents of environmental destruction. Counterposed to this view, many environmentalists (Indonesian and foreign) argue that "traditional" uplanders are archetypal ecological farmers and conservationists, seeking only to preserve "their own" institutions and practices. Both parties may overlook the extent to which uplanders have again reformulated the image of themselves, and seek the benefits of fuller citizenship. Their demands may include access to roads, education and health facilities. They are also likely to include demands for security of land tenure, and freedom from arbitrary displacement in the wake of state projects designed to "modernize" them.

For Indonesia, as a development-minded state, the portrayal of uplanders as isolated and traditional raises the question: how can these people be made modern? For many anthropologists, the question has been: how can these unique and diverse ways of life be preserved? For ecologists, the question has been: how can these people gain more secure control over their resources, so that they can continue to manage them wisely, and so that the rest of the world can learn from their example? For applied scientists, the questions have to do more with sustainable ways to increase productivity and stabilize the agro-ecosystem.

A re-assessment of upland transformation must move beyond these pre-established agendas, and ask more searching questions about how contradictory pressures are experienced locally and how they are worked out in the context of everyday lives and practices. If we are able to rid ourselves of the image of uplanders as innocents or as victims, and treat them seriously as agents contributing to the making of history, the questions become: What history is desired? How exactly is it being made? Under what constellation of opportunities and constraints? What, in short, are the processes through which agrarian change in the uplands is occurring?

Dr. Tania Li is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at Dalhousie University, Canada. She is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.