• Indonesian President Joko Widodo last month gave several indigenous communities back the land rights to the forests they have called home for generations.

A small community on the island of Sumatra is at the heart of a battle for traditional territories that could finally resolve the muddled and exploitative system of laws governing land ownership in Indonesia

As a young man, Abdon Nabadan loved nature-tripping—climbing mountains and trekking forests.

Little did he know that his love of nature would lead him to reconnect to his ethnic roots and become one of Indonesia’s leading advocates of the rights of indigenous peoples (IPs), locally known as the masyarakat adat.

Poverty eradication is high on President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo administration’s agenda. On his election campaign trail in Bandung, West Java, on July 3, 2014, he elucidated how he would address the acute poverty among 29 million citizens, 18 million of whom live in rural areas. A priority program he envisaged was provision of land to 4.5 million poor families.

ASOLOKOBAL, Indonesia — Laurensius Lani’s footsteps can be heard at dawn alongside the traditional honay thatched-roof houses of the Baliem Valley, here in the archipelago country’s eastermost Papua province.

Land reform has been much talked about lately, but not everyone understands what it really means. The term is interesting because it is related to what is really needed to be revised in our existing agrarian field.

In almost every aisle of the grocery store, you can find products from the palm oil, soy, wood, and cattle industries. Together, these industries are responsible for more than a third of tropical deforestation annually, according to the non-profit organization Forest Trends.

Community groups in South Sumatra are protesting against Asia Pulp & Paper's planned choice of timber supplier for its massive new pulp and tissue mill, which they say used the army and police to intimidate them during a public consultation over land use.

By: M Rahmat Ulhaz

Date: 28 February 2017

Source: Mongabay

By: Adisti Sukma Sawitri

Date: 21 February 2017

Source: The Jakarta Post