As clear as mud: understanding the root of conflicts and problems in Indonesia's land tenure policy

The Ministry of Forestry (MoF) has designated 120 million ha of forest as state forest (kawasan hutan), corresponding to 62% of the total land surface of Indonesia. The MoF has legal authority to plan and regulate all forest tenure and to use its arrangement in its jurisdiction. Meanwhile, the MoF jurisdiction to designate the state forest plays its part to the confusion paradigm between state rights and customary (adat) rights on controlling forestland. The confusion derived from different perceptions about customary forest from different laws, Basic Forestry Law 1999 (BFL 1999) and Basic Agrarian Law (BAL 1960). The BFL 1999 categorized customary forest as state forest, that is state forest of which the management is delegated to customary communities. Meanwhile, the Basic Agrarian Law 1960 (BAL 1960) provide more recognition by separating the customary rights from the state, equally to other four legal rights such as the right to own (hak milik), the right to cultivate state land (hak guna usaha), the right to build and own building (hak guna bangunan), and the right to use or collect products from state or private land for a certain period (hak pakai). The government unwillingly to solve this confusion as the MoF has the justification to control all the forestland based on ecology reason such as hydrology, biodiversity and nowadays climate change. The paper argues that these ecology reasons become the foundation for the MoF to designate and control the state forest and help the environmentalis t interests to preserve threatened resources and habitats, supporting the MoF’s legitimacy to control all forest land, but contributing to the disenfranchisement of customary people to resource claims, the people’s poverty and the confusion of customary forest recognition. The more confusing, the more legitimating for the MoF.

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