Claiming the Grounds for Reform: Agrarian and Environmental Movements in Indonesia

Abstract

This essay examines the convergences, tensions and mutual influences of agrarian and environmental movements in Indonesia and their connections to transnational movements under state‐led development and neoliberal governance regimes. The authors argue that environmental movements of the last quarter of the twentieth century affected the strategies, struggles, mutual relations with, and public discourses of resurgent agrarian movements in diverse ways. Environmental movements had significant influences on national policy, law and practice within a decade of their emergence under the state‐led development regime of President Suharto. Environmental activists used the appearance of technical ‘apolitical’ concerns to their advantage. They mobilized at multiple scales, targeting laws and other institutions of state power at the same time as organizing the grassroots. The repression of the Suharto regime forced agrarian reform activists underground, while environmental issues were mainstreamed. Agrarian movements in Indonesia today, under a decentralized regime dominated by neoliberal policies, have faced new opportunities and constraints due to national and transnational influences of environmental and agrarian reform discourses and networks. We show how these influences have changed the political fields within which Indonesian agrarian movement groups operate: forming, shifting and struggling over critical alliances.

Climate change disputes and justice inCentralKalimantan,Indonesia

“…The Indonesian environmental movement and the Indigenous Peoples' Movement emerged during the time of New Order dictatorship that built upon the massacre of almost half a million ‘communists’ and peasant organisation members (BTI) across the country. Political activism was considered potentially subversive, and thus, environmental activism and speaking out for environmental sustainability became a channel to voice not only environmental but also political concerns in the 1970s and 1980s (see Peluso et al ., ). In Indonesia, environmental justice NGOs (as opposed to conservationist NGOs) were founded in the 1980s, with legal advocacy and grassroots work as their main focus.…”

“…It was difficult to resist state‐led development projects, but struggles intensified over the course of the 1990s, and the environmental justice movement formed diverse alliances with government actors (e.g. the Ministry of the Environment) and other agrarian and peasant movements, ultimately impacting on environmental policies in the country (Peluso et al ., ). After 1998, environmental activists could freely gather and participate in the public debates over forest and land rights.…”

“…As noted by Peluso et al . (), the Indonesian environmental movement has experienced shifting alliances, tensions and relations with other agrarian movements and state institutions over time, linking transnational, national and local arenas.…”

Peatlands and plantations in Sumatra, Indonesia: Complex realities for resource governance, rural development and climate change mitigation

“…In Indonesia, there has been an active and vocal environmental NGO community since the 1980s (Peluso et al ., ), which, together with civil society groups, is finally gaining traction in their long struggle for greater environmental justice and forest peoples’ access rights and sustainable livelihoods. Sadly, little of this has found its way into international scholarly literature.…”

Confusion over land rights and development opportunities through communal titles in Sabah, Malaysia

“…Various studies have been carried out concerning this issue, where rural communities and their connection with the land and natural resources have often been subject to state scrutiny (e.g. Ngidang, , Anaya, ; Doolittle, ; Ngidang, ; Peluso et al ., ; Majid Cooke, ). These studies generally agree that due to various state policies, it is unclear how rural communities achieve equitable control while sustaining the use of their immediate surroundings, which since time immemorial have always been available and accessible to them.…”