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fter years of struggle, Opung Putra Lumbangaol, 61, breathed a sigh of relief last year when the government granted the customary forest to the people of Pandumaan and Sipituhuta villages, Humbang Hasundutan regency, North Sumatra, the place where she has lived her whole life.

The woman, who chooses to be called the grandmother of her grandson rather than use her own name, a common custom of Batak people, said the forest, 5,172 hectares wide, was under the concession of pulp and paper firm PT Toba Pulp Lestari (TPL) before the government returned it to the villagers.

The land is one of nine customary forest areas, amounting to 13,100 ha, that was returned to its people by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s administration on Dec. 30. The acknowledgment of customary forests is one of several initiatives by the government to support its agrarian reform and social forestry policies.

“For more than 300 years,” Opung, a Pandumaan resident, said, “natives in Pandumaan and Sipituhuta have made ends meet by harvesting incense in the customary forests.”

The land was taken over by TPL in 1992 and turned into plantations.

Opung said she is thankful for the government’s help in bringing back the people’s land, but she claimed the released area was still miniscule compared to what the company has taken away.

She hopes that all customary lands in the area could be returned to the people.

TPL director Mulia Nauli told The Jakarta Post that the company had been communicating with the Environment and Forestry Ministry to follow up claims by natives regarding their customary forests, adding that TPL would seek the best solution for the locals.

The government’s agrarian reform and social forestry policies seek to reduce economic and social inequality among citizens.

In the agrarian reform policy, the government targets legalizing land ownership plots of 4.5 million ha and redistributing 4.5 million ha of land to specified citizens, such as small farmers. In the social forestry scheme, the government aims to allocate 12.7 million ha of forests to local communities.

Forest areas, including in Pandumaan and Sipituhuta, have been regularly used by large corporations for industrial logging, pulp and paper and palm oil plantations, triggering conflicts as locals’ rights are neglected due to land seizures.

Earlier this year, Indonesian Ombudsman commissioner Alamsyah Saragih estimated that nearly 97 percent of production forest areas were occupied by corporations, leaving the remaining 3 percent to locals.

Agrarian and Spatial Planning Minister Sofyan Djalil said land tenure conflicts posed a problem for the ministry to carry out the agrarian reform policy.

“Locals demand that the government not extend HGU [right-to-cultivate] permits that are nearing expiration, so that the land can be included in agrarian reform. It will be difficult as companies owning the HGUs have stronger legal basis, claiming they have paid restitution to locals when they gained the permit in the past,” Sofyan said in a discussion on Sunday.

“If the government decided not to extend the HGU permits, it would create new problems,” Sofyan said.

In Tulang Bawang, Lampung, earlier this month, a local court sentenced four farmers to prison for inciting a riot in October between farmers and plantation firm PT Bangun Nusa Indah Lampung (BNIL).

The dispute erupted when a group of residents tried to reclaim their land that had been turned into a sugarcane plantation.

The Agrarian Reform Consortium (KPA), an advocacy group that has been tracking land disputes, recorded that the farmers in Tulang Bawang have been fighting since 1991 to reclaim their land that they were forced to surrendered to BNIL.

“Resolving land conflicts is not easy,” Sofyan said.