Photo credit: Greenpeace, 2008
I. Introduction
It is quite ironic considering the condition of Indonesia as an agricultural country with abundant natural resources, including diversity of foodstuffs. The country that should be independent in terms of food (production, consumption, and distribution) and should be able to guarantee the attainment of right to food of its people prove to be just the opposite. The state standardizes the food, fails to give access to food, and rely on the global market mechanism to get the necessary foodstuff.
The principle of food security is good in nature but somewhat contentious when national policy is aiming at food estates based on industrial and large scale food production in handful private domestic and foreign companies. The government policy on food estates is based on Law No.40/2009 on Sustainable Agriculture Land which allows the cultivation of agricultural lands on industrial scale by private sectors which will further drives poor people from their subsistent agriculture and traditional livelihoods. The law is among many other legal frameworks on forestry, plantation, mining, and marines that might hamper the national government’s target to achieve a socially beneficial, economically viable, and culturally appropriate food security and production in the country.
Purely from the perspectives of local communities and indigenous peoples as well as social and environmental groups, food security is the realisation of, effective implementation and enforcement of genuine agrarian reforms with due regards to collective and proprietary rights of individual citizens and communal rights of natural and agrarian resources within more self-determined social, economical, and cultural frameworks. Therefore, it is extremely the momentum to secure rights, access to land, and agrarian resources from ultimate control of handful private and industry expansion in high agricultural values.
On the other hand, over centuries, local communities and indigenous peoples have successfully used traditional ecological knowledge to manage natural resources, conserve and maintain ecosystems, secure food, water, and energy, and adapt to environmental changes. They tend to take a comprehensive view considering inter-linkages relationships rather than fragmented approaches.
Local indigenous cosmovision goes beyond food security where factual resources not only seen as commodity and production in the market domain but rather invaluable social, cultural and environmental distinct services where their ultimate lives depending on Mother Earth.
II. Problem Analysis
Indonesia population is approximately 250 million. However, about in 1993, about 33% of all farming households were landless. Another 34% of 10.8 farming households owned less than a hectare of land. By 2003, this number had increased to 13.7 million, or an increase of 2.6% a year. In 1993, over half (52.7%) of the country’s farming households were considered poor. by 2003, the proportion was 56.5%. In addition, the number of families that make their living from agricultural activities increased from 20.8 in 1993 to 25.4 million in 2003, an increase of 2.2% a year.
In 2007 Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) adopted regulating framework on oil palm operational permit that revises size of private landholding from 20,000 ha up to maximum 100,000 ha per company in one province. In other words, permit holders are bound to extend their land holding up to 80,000 at maximum allowable size through mergers, acquisition and applying for new extended land permits. The regulation stipulates operating oil palm companies obliged to allocate a minimal 20% of the landholding should be developed for scheme partnership with adjacent communities. Consequently, the oil palm scheme development is among one of many development activities that pushes off indigenous peoples and local communities away from their traditional agricultural lands and subsistent livelihoods. By 2010, Sawit Watch records both national and regional development plans, there have been 26.7 million hectares land slated for oil palm plantations development. The new contentious MoA regulation No14/2009 which allows limited cultivation of peatland below 3 metres depth can be detrimental to Indonesia’s remaining 21 million ha natural peatland ecosystem and vegetations which is not only important to mitigate climate change effects but also critical to livelihoods of local communities and indigenous peoples.
In Indonesia less than 40% of land holdings have been titled. Most people hold land informally and, especially on the outer islands, most lands are held by custom. Communities governed by custom (masyarakat adat – usually glossed as ‘indigenous peoples’) comprise as many as 70 million people in rural Indonesia. Owing to weak and discriminatory legal protections of indigenous peoples’ rights, companies acquire lands for oil palm estates without respect for customary rights; due process; payment of fair compensation and; without the free, prior and informed consent of the communities. This is leading to widespread land conflicts and associated human rights abuses, including of rights to food, subsistence and associated social, cultural, spiritual and other rights pertaining to relations with lands, waters and forests and the right to freely dispose of natural wealth and resources. Communities have also been intimidated and worse by paramilitary forces and mobile police brigades (BRIMOB).
As a result of land acquisition by palm oil developers, indigenous peoples are restricted to small portions of their ancestral territories. They lose access to their hunting grounds, fishing areas and other resources crucial to their subsistence and forest-based livelihoods. The lands available for farming are also severely restricted. A (contested) proportion of dispossessed indigenous peoples are offered smallholdings planted with oil palm the costs of which are paid for by loans. These smallholders are contractually tied to mills to pay off their debts and complain of discriminatory treatment and poor prices.
III. Sustainability, food security and human rights
Sawit Watch has since 1998 uncovered the imbalance between the economic development interests of the country to become the world largest palm oil producer but taking low priority to the security of food production and security of the peoples leading to serious social and land conflicts, environmental degradations, forest lost, degradation of ecosystems for rare and endangered habitats at stake. Only five years (1999/2004) oil palm planting rate has reached the average 400,000 ha annually and the government still envisage another 500,000 ha annual planting the coming years in order to gear up palm oil production 40 million tons by 2020.
Sawit Watch is of position that the food security in palm oil industry is an extremely crucial issue because (1) conversion of forest vegetations and natural landscapes to which indigenous peoples communities depend their rotational rice farms in Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Sumatra including conversion of natural Sago vegetations. Second, another different model is the conversion on vegetations of peat, mangrove and wetlands where small scale subsistent wet rice farms and traditional fish farms to palm oil market commodity mainly in Sumatra and Kalimantan. Thirdly, changes in food patterns from local subsistent collective food system yet independent to dependent to food market model with less autonomy in case of palm oil smallholders have no options to diversify their food crops because no more land for agricultural purposes. Fourth, the quality of food in oil palm plantation areas is declining compare to before oil palm replacing areas once locally produced foods. Lastly, the government has failed to focus on food sovereignty through the implementation of pure agrarian reforms.
It is also obvious that the impacts of oil palm plantations have been widely recognised in the international debates and fora. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (UN CERD), chairperson of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFii), United Nations Special Raporteur on Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous Peoples, and United Nations Special Rapporteur on Rights to Food (UNSR RF) expressed concerns that unexpected oil palm plantation impacts on local communities and indigenous peoples. The most expanding industry is palm oil to fulfil market demand to produce biodiesel. Moreover, on January 2010, Sawit Watch, AMAN, HuMA and Forest Peoples Programme submitted a case on land rights and the right to food at the call from United Nations Special Rapporteur on Rights to Food (UNSR RF).
However, without proper safeguards and immediate measures, the government policies could further undermine food security fraud with land conflicts and deepen vicious poverty problems in the country. Despite efforts to develop an early warning system based on food security, the government still continue exploitative and extractive development paradigms with more forest concessions for carbon trading, REDD pilots, and mining concessions, private tree and commodity monoculture plantations.
VII. Linkages and sustainability
The initiatives on food security campaign towards sovereignty of local communities, indigenous peoples, smallholders, and labourers over agricultural resources and future livelihoods in the frameworks of sustainable palm oil. This project will contribute to overall inclusive advocacy framework based on an integrated human rights based and human needs approaches. The advocacy works on the grounds with partners, networks, local communities and indigenous peoples, smallholders and labourers. The exchanges and lessons from the studies to enable inter-fertilising and cross-fertilising of the advocacy works.
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