Indonesia

Indonesia has great natural wealth but many of its citizens live in extreme poverty. Democratic progress has been made since the resigation of former president Suharto in 1998, but many civil society organisations feel that far too little progress has been made towards sustainable management of the country's resources, and ensuring that Indonesia's diverse communities have a real say in decisions which affect their future.

Indonesian edition of AMAN-DTE book published online

Press release by AMAN and DTE

May 21st, 2013

Following last Thursday’s landmark ruling on customary forests by Indonesia's Constitutional Court, AMAN and DTE have announced the publication online of the Indonesian edition of their book Forests for the Future. The printed version will be available at a later date.

Letter from John Hayes MP, Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, London, dated 22 March 2013 in response to DTE letter dated 4 February to Ed Davey.

DTE 95, March 2013

Indonesia’s Catholic Church leaders have expressed concern about the over-exploitation of natural resources and the resulting social conflict and marginalisation of vulnerable communities. Short-termism in politics and the denial of environmental justice makes matters worse, they say, calling on politicians, business and the Christian community to take steps to protect resources, livelihoods and the right to life of current and future generations.

DTE 95, March 2013

A round-up of recent material about MIFEE, (first published in January 2013)

Indigenous communities living along the Bian and Maro Rivers in Merauke, southern Papua, have demanded the return of their customary lands taken for the Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate (MIFEE) mega-project. A set of demands issued after four days of community discussions in December also called for the revoking of location permits covering their customary land and for the companies involved to restore the damage done and pay compensation to affected communities.

Community lands and resources are being targeted as never before in Indonesia. International concerns over food, energy and financial security and the climate, plus the profit motive are combining to attract developers and investors into ‘frontier’ areas across the country. There are few effective protections for local people living in those areas because key legislation has never been implemented. Fourteen years after the fall of Suharto, the security forces are still being used to deal with people who protest against the loss of their land and livelihoods.  

DTE 93-94, December 2012

In this article we highlight some of the influences at work inside Indonesia which are contributing to the ongoing transfer of land from communities to corporations. These influences include national and local government policies, laws, governance and practices, whose provisions for supporting indigenous peoples and communities’ rights and livelihoods have been deprioritised in favour of large-scale, commercial ‘development’ projects. The result is a growing disparity between rich and poor, worsening imbalance in the control over agrarian resources and more and more conflicts between communities, private sector and the state.

DTE 93-94, December 2012

By Noer Fauzi Rachman*

The systemic agrarian conflicts referred to in this article are protracted conflicts arising from opposing claims made on particular pieces of land, or over natural resources and community-owned areas or territories, by giant corporations in the business of infrastructure, production, resource extraction and conservation, and where each opposing side is taking direct or indirect action to negate the claim of the other.