The BFL differentiates between state forest, that is a region of forest that is not subjected to private rights, and proprietary forest or a region that is sanctioned with private property rights (Wright, 2011). According to BFL a private right over land is usually indicated by the presence of cultivation activities. This classification system led to fallow fields or adat forest owned by Indigenous communities being classified as state forest (Rhee, 2006). Moreover, a new Government Regulation Number 21/1971 that was issued in 1971 as a follow up to the BFL further weakened Indigenous rights by subordinating them to the rights of commercial loggers. Article six in the government regulation states that,
1. The rights of the adat community and its members to harvest forest products...shall be organized in such a manner that they do not disturb forest production;
2. Implementation of the above provision is [delegated to the Company] which is to accomplish it through consensus with the adat community, with supervision from the Forest Service;
3. In the interests of public safety, adat rights to harvest forest products in a particular area shall be frozen while forest production activities are under way (Barber, 1990 cited in Ross, 1996, p. 140).
To further marginalize Indigenous and local communities, the New Order stigmatized the idea of being Indigenous as meaning “backwards”, “primitive” or “wasteful” (Li, 2001; Rhee, 2006; L. Bakker, 2009). The stereotype had become an efficient technology to humiliate Indigenous identity. Hence, communities were reluctant to openly declare their identities and utilizing it as a basis for land claims (L. Bakker, 2009). The classification of Indigenous and local communities as deficient subjects has justified state interventions that are concealed in the notion of
“development” and “modernization” (Dove, 1993, 2006; Dove and Kammen, 2001). These “development” processes rearrange people and their resources in a way that gave privileges to Soeharto and his closest allies’ authority to decide how and by whom forest resources can be used (Li, 1999, 2007d; Tsing, 2005; McWilliam, 2006). To effectively run the “development” schemes and to make the government’s authority felt throughout the outer islands, a law on Village Governance was enacted in 1979. The Village Law effectively “transformed local leaders from representatives of villagers to representatives of the state” (Rhee, 2006, p. 86).
The reorganization of Indigenous and local communities’ property rights to the forest through the above legal apparatuses paved the way for timber industries to flourish in Kalimantan and Sumatra (Ross, 1996). High ranking army officials owned many of these timber industries (Ross, 1996). They formed business alliances with Chinese tycoons, whose business skills boosted the military’s lack of business experience, yet because of Soeharto’s patronage, the military retained exclusive access to contracts and concessions (Ross, 1996; Siscawati, 2012). The army’s companies also often acted as the domestic partner of foreign investments that swarmed after the enactment of the Foreign Investment Law in 1967 (Ross, 1996).
While some of Indonesia’s Chinese tycoons joined the ranks of the world’s richest men, millions of Indigenous and local communities lost access to their land and agricultural crops (Siscawati, 2012). Before Indonesia’s independence in 1945 these communities possessed more flexible mobility in expanding land and opening forest, however, the construction of state brought limitations and law enforcement “to which their interests would be subjected” (L. Bakker, 2009, p. 63). A minority of these communities organised resistance, however this has led to oppression and, in some cases, assassination (L. Bakker, 2009). Other communities pragmatically chose to engage with the timber industries either as a cheap source of labour or as collaborators by supplying additional illegal timbers coming from the forest located outside of the concession areas (Ross, 1996).
The marginalization of Indigenous communities in Kalimantan and Sumatra was further exacerbated by the transmigration policy which began in the early 1970s
(Fearnside, 1997). The policy was intended to rationalise land use and management to achieve land efficiency and effectiveness by expanding the agricultural area in the outer islands and reduce population density on the islands of Java and Bali (Fearnside, 1997; O’Connor, 2004; Rhee, 2006). Millions of Javanese migrated to forest areas in the remote parts of Sumatra and Kalimantan in the hope that they would start clearing forests and cultivating rice and other agricultural products. Millions of hectares of forests were opened through ‘pioneer slash-and-burn’ for agricultural practices (Vayda, Colfer and Brotokusumo, 1985).
The modern farming methods adopted by Javanese farmers was seen as superior to the collective management approach commonly used in the adat communities (Dove, 1993). The communalistic nature of land ownership and swidden culture in these communities were deemed by the state as inefficient and thus subjected to several modernization programmes and policies which included exposing them to ‘better and civilized’ Javanese migrant farmers (Dove, 1993; Cramb et al., 2009; Fox
et al., 2009). This created new pressures and tensions for the forest and the local
Indigenous communities. When the initiated new modern agricultural activities were unsuccessful, transmigrants had no other options than to work as labourers for logging companies or taking shortcuts by supplying timber from illegal logging (Ross, 1996).
In the early 1980s the MOF banned the selling of raw log timber and encouraged the development of plywood industries to extract additional value from forest resources (Ross, 1996). However, despite the logging limitation, Indonesia had risen to become the biggest producer and exporter of plywood in the world (Ross, 1996). This was made possible by the continuous supply of timber from illegal logging that supported the plywood industry (Ross, 1996). The environmental implications of the illegal logging practices were particularly concentrated in Sumatra and Kalimantan (McCarthy, 2010). In addition to the environmental destruction, there were the rent seeking practices of the forestry officials both at the national and local levels who intentionally overlooked forestry crimes due to bribes and sometimes committing crimes themselves (A. Dermawan et al., 2011). Corruption, collusion and nepotism, a set of corrupt practices that is well known in Indonesia as Korupsi,
Kolusi, dan Nepotisme (KKN) have been common throughout forest governance (Robertson-Snape, 1999). The next section discusses the rise of environmental and Indigenous activism that responded to the messiness of Indonesia’s forest governance.