TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Land certification a ticking time bomb
Amid the government vision of agrarian reform, there is a need to rethink the actual impact of land certification for agricultural land.
Change Size
The land certification program has good intentions by giving legal certainty to farmers, especially decades after brutal land grabbing for the interest of plantations and mining. (JP/Seto Wardhana)
A
mid the government vision of agrarian reform, there is a need to rethink the actual impact of land certification for agricultural land.
Instead of providing social security as originally envisioned, the PST-LP program can instead harm the societies it is intended to help. This is because various social-cultural backgrounds of societies do not necessarily conform to the program’s mind-set, that land can be owned by individuals.
Take Maluku. In Maluku society, land has never been owned by individuals, but instead by clans, negeri (villages) and soa (constitution of several clans). Individuals can own only trees, not land. Variations of this form of ownership are commonly found across Southeast Asia.
Anthropologists such as Roy Ellen call this an arboreal-based subsistence economy, in which trees provide autonomy by giving basic needs to the people.
