| Abstract: |
| Oil palm plantations have expanded rapidly in Indonesia in the last decade. They cover more than seven million hectares and are managed by more than 600 companies and one million small farmers. An additional eleven million hectares of forest land was allocated to the oil palm industry but never planted; after cutting and selling the wood, the companies simply abandoned the lands. Local and provincial governments have plans to issue licenses for an additional 20 million hectares of oil palm plantations. It is expected that most of the permits will be issued in forest areas, as the timber obtained from forest conversion can pay for plantation establishment costs.
West Kalimantan is planning to expand oil palm plantations by five million hectares, more than any other province in Indonesia, followed by Riau and Papua provinces both with expansion plans of three million hectares. Forest areas and smallholder agricultural lands without official land title are often classified by the government as “non productive lands” or ”bare lands” and are targeted for conversion to oil palm plantations. According to the NGO Sawit Watch, West Kalimantan has the second highest level of land conflict related to oil palm plantations in Indonesia, after South Sumatra.
Three case studies of four ethnic subgroups of the Dayak Bidayuh indigenous people (Hibun, Sami, Jangkang and Pompang), describe and explore conflict and collaboration between these communities in West Kalimantan in relation to the expansion of oil palm plantations over their customary territories. This study does not attempt to estimate the quantitative scale of the conflict, such as number of people affected in terms of communities or households or the amount of indigenous land that has been taken over by the palm oil companies. Instead, the study explores qualitative aspects of the conflict, such as the feelings of members of these indigenous communities about the conflict, their ways of resolving conflict, and the impact on indigenous peoples’ institutions and their customary lands. Although the study is not necessarily representative for the whole of West Kalimantan, it provides a fairly complete picture of how, in West Kalimantan, people in the villages confront the large scale palm oil plantations and how they cope with the opportunities but also with the conflicts caused by the way these plantations are started and implemented. The cases concern different stages and conditions in the conflict between oil palm plantations and Ips which together are indicative of the situation for Ips in other areas of Kalimantan. In my opinion, similar conflicts over land stimulated by oil palm plantations took place in Sumatra in the 1970-1980s and similar conflicts over land will likely take place in the near future in Sulawesi, Papua and small islands in Eastern Indonesia as the oil palm industry expands eastwards. |
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