Indonesia to form new body to oversee land conflicts, reform
Competition between the state, companies and communities over land leads to legal disputes and violence
[JAKARTA] Indonesia will form a new body to oversee land reform and settle related conflicts, in a bid to address longstanding problems that have plagued plantations, mines, farmers and indigenous communities.
Officials on Tuesday (Sep 22) passed the Agrarian Reform Law that places the new body directly under President Prabowo Subianto, and gives the body powers over implementation, supervision and conflict resolution, lawmaker Iman Sukri said during a plenary hearing at parliament in Jakarta.
The government will prepare rules that detail the powers of the fresh entity, set minimum and maximum limits on land ownership and govern the transfer of state property, Nusron Wahid, Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning Minister, said at the same hearing.
Competition between the state, companies and communities over land is a persistent problem in South-east Asia’s largest country, and something that has led to legal disputes, business disruptions and violence.
Attempts to address the problem stretch as far back as the early 1960s, when a newly independent Indonesia tried to reconcile an inherited patchwork of colonial and customary land ownership regimes.
Under Prabowo’s administration, the state has been seizing millions of hectares of land that it deems is being used illegally, in a significant tightening of oversight of the nation’s sprawling natural resources sector.
Nusron noted: “Agrarian reform does not stop at rearranging land control and ownership.”
He added that it must ensure that land becomes a source of livelihoods and prosperity, as well as a “foundation for sustainably improving people’s living standards”. BLOOMBERG
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