JAKARTA, KOMPAS – Encroachment on up to 80 percent of the territory of Tesso Nilo National Park in Riau has been resolved through a combination of agrarian reform and social forestry schemes that could become a model for resolving similar problems in other regions.
At the north and west side of Tesso Nilo National Park, there are remnants of concession areas of PT Siak Raya Timber (38,560 hectares) and PT Hutani Sola Lestari (45,990 hectares) whose forest permits have been revoked by the Environment and Forestry Ministry. The concession areas, which for the most part have been turned into oil palm plantation, can now be used for agrarian reform or as social forest.
“In a national park, the people (migrant farmers) must leave. However, we have prepared replacement land in the form of agrarian reform object land,” said Chalid Muhammad, a senior advisor at the Environment and Forestry Ministry in Jakarta on Wednesday (19/4).
Social mapping carried out by the Environment and Forestry Ministry together with the Indonesian Military and National Police as well as NGOs showed that 2,000-4,000 families of smallholder farmers and laborers make a living from palm oil in Tesso Nilo. The laborers work on oil palm plantations owned by brokers that can measure thousands of hectares.
The categorization of smallholder farmers and brokers is in accordance with the Plantation Law. Ownership of land that is less than 25 hectares would classify a person as a smallholder farmer, while more than 25 hectares would require the owner to establish a business entity.
Chalid said that while the encroachment is being resolved, farmers were still allowed to harvest oil palm fruits in Tesso Nilo National Park. Farmers would also be given plantation land outside of the park or on the former concession areas of PT HSL/SRT.
They are given time to harvest oil palm fruit in the national park for half a cycle, or 12 years, without being allowed to nurture the plants. “Because they are not nurtured, there will be a slow natural [restoration] of the forest on the plantations inside the area,” he said.
Yuyu Rahayu, the secretary of the director general of Forest Planning and Environmental Governance, said the efforts to “clean up” Tesso Nilo National Park were a way of thinking about life after the operation. “What is important is that the transition of livelihoods is not severed,” she said.
The locals are also given the option of accessing the Tesso Nilo National Park through social forestry as conservation partners. Under this scheme, people are allowed to take non-timber products, such as honey and rattan, out of forests.
“There are locals that choose social forestry over agrarian reform. It seems complicated, but we are optimistic that it will work,” said Chalid.
He said it seemed complicated because the management of land and forest had been bad in the past. Among the poorly managed procedures were the issuance of land statement letters (SKT) in the forest area and the lack of transparency in the issuance of business or land permits. “This is what the regime, which is only two years old, is trying to improve,” he said.
Broker
As for brokers or companies in Tesso Nilo National Park, he urged that the law be enforced on them. By doing so, law enforcers would target the masterminds behind the encroachment, not the smallholder farmers or workers in the field.
Chalid said the Environment and Forestry Ministry was currently focused on resolving the case of Tesso Nilo National Park, which is 81,793 hectares in size, but 80 percent of which has been turned into oil palm plantations. Furthermore, the national park, which is a habitat for Sumatran elephants and Sumatran tigers, has been subject to careless licensing in the past, overlapping authority and weak supervision.
“Tesso Nilo is the most complex and worst case. So the hope is that if this can be resolved, other places can follow this resolution model,” he said.
Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB) Forest Management professor Hariadi Kartodihardjo said the implementation of agrarian reform would encounter a lot of challenges. One of them, he said, was the relocation of people from the forest area.
“Conditions in the field show that it is impossible for a forest area to be void of inhabitants,” he said.
Given the area’s relative isolation and very little security supervision, Hariadi said agrarian reforms had be accompanied by economic development plans already in place for land recipients. One way to do this was by providing strong assistance for the locals to enable them to make the most of the land and not end up selling it to capitalists. To anticipate this, state-owned companies could play a role by creating a market and developing farmers’ products.
At the moment, Hariadi noted, there were still 58 illegal palm oil factories in and around the Tesso Nilo National Park. “The people’s economy still depends on palm oil,” he said.
(ICH)
