Communities lose out to landgrabbers
Community lands and resources are being targeted as never before in Indonesia. International concerns over food, energy and financial security and the climate, plus the profit motive are combining to attract developers and investors into ‘frontier’ areas across the country. There are few effective protections for local people living in those areas because key legislation has never been implemented. Fourteen years after the fall of Suharto, the security forces are still being used to deal with people who protest against the loss of their land and livelihoods.
As communities and civil society organisations call for deep reforms, it is becoming more crucial that their voices are heard.
From the DTE team: We look at land-related developments from national, international and local perspectives, with the aim of providing information and context to inform current debates about land-grabbing, and the need to protect community rights to land and resources. DTE would like to thank all our contributors and commentators for helping us put this publication together. To our wider readership - we hope this edition of DTE is useful for your work. |
