Though the number of land disputes has decreased this year, the government is faced with resolving issues over vast swathes of land.

The Agrarian Reform Consortium (KPA) revealed on Thursday that there was a drop in the number of agrarian conflicts last year, from 659 conflicts in 2017 to 410 in 2018.

But in terms of the amount of land involved, the number increased to more than 807,000 hectares of land from 520,488 ha in 2017.

The plantation, property and agriculture sectors were riddled with the most disputes.

The KPA revealed 144 cases, or 35 percent of the total number of agrarian conflicts, involved the plantation sector, which deals with 591,640 ha of land, followed by the property and agriculture sectors, with 137 and 53 cases respectively.

KPA secretary-general Dewi Kartika noted that agrarian conflicts in the plantation sector mostly involved palm oil plantations with 83 cases.

According to the latest data from the Agriculture Ministry, there are 14.3 million ha of oil palm plantations, 7.7 million of which are owned by private corporations. The ministry, meanwhile, recorded that 5.4 million ha were under the possession of individual farmers.

“We should remember there are plasma farmers who are working for or on palm oil companies’ plantations. So the field might not be completely owned by the people,” KPA secretary-general Dewi Kartika said on Thursday.

She added that such land ownership inequality in cases involving oil palm plantations should be resolved via the recently issued decree on an palm oil plantation moratorium.

The presidential instruction, signed by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo in September of last year, ordered ministers and regional administrations to deny the issuance of permits for new plantations for the next three years. The decree also mandated a review on existing permits and concessions as well as halted the process of several concession permits that are still being assessed by government bodies.

Beyond the grim statistics, Dewi said the consortium appreciated the President’s initiative to sign a long-awaited presidential regulation (Perpres) on agrarian reform, which was seen as the legal avenue needed to allow various government bodies to ramp up their efforts in realizing reform — one of Jokowi’s priority goals.

Upon his appointment into office in 2014, the President set a target in his administration’s National Medium-Term Development Plan to redistribute 9 million ha of land to farmers under the land objects for agrarian reform (TORA) scheme, as well as 12.7 million ha — which was later revised to 4.3 million ha — to communities through social forestry schemes.

The Perpres stipulates that there are 19 categories of individuals who are eligible to be beneficiaries in the agrarian reform program, including small farmers whose land is less than 0.25 ha, landless farmers and small fisherfolk.

She, however, reiterated her concern about the list, which also includes civil servants, military and police personnel as well as private company employees who have yet to acquire land. These categories, she said, could prevent small farmers from getting their rights due to their lack of access to information.

Prabianto Mukti Wibowo, the assistant deputy minister for forestry at the Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister and member of the National Agrarian Reform Team, dismissed such concerns. “The inclusion of such categories in the Perpres was meant to tackle poverty in city areas, as they also have rights for the land,” Prabianto said.

Apart from the criticism over the Perpres, Dewi also uttered concerns on the slow progress of reform, as the government was only seen to be prioritizing the issuance of land certificates for residents rather than focusing on redistributing 400,000 ha of uncertified plots of land and 2.6 million ha of degraded forests.

“Without restructuring land ownership, authorities will never solve the problem of inequality regarding land ownership,” she said.

An expert of the Bogor Agricultural University’s agrarian study center, Satyawan Sunito, said such inequality in land ownership could lead to economic and political concentration among elites.

“This could cause elites who were elected as leaders in many regions to neglect their duties as public officials. Worse, they could commit acts of corruption related to natural resources,” he said.

Prabianto admitted that progress was sluggish and blamed it on the lengthy mechanism used to verify residents’ claims on land registered for the TORA scheme.

“The Office [of the Coordinating [Economic Minister] will prepare a base rule for the implementation of the program under the Perpres. We are working toward resolutions to agrarian conflicts.”