Project

Palm Oil Conflicts and Access to Social Justice in Indonesia

This project is the first-ever study of general patterns and outcomes of oil palm conflicts between communities and companies across Indonesia. Using an innovative mixed methods approach and collaborating closely with local NGOs, the project documents 150 conflict cases in four provinces of Indonesia: Riau, West Sumatra, Central Kalimantan and Western Kalimantan. The scientific aim is to give an impulse to academic debate within and outside Indonesia on theories and methodologies to study contentious politics of communities and companies in palm oil conflicts. The societal aim is to provide input for legal reform and governance initiatives that will strengthen the capacity of rural communities to address grievances caused by oil palm expansion.

Background

Indonesia is the bigger producer and exporter of palm oil in the world. To meet the increasing global and domestic demand for this versatile crop (that is used for food, fuel, health products and industrial purposes), palm oil production in Indonesia has increased enormously during the last two decades. This has resulted into many conflicts over land between communities and palm oil companies. In spite of different conflict resolution mechanisms, many conflicts have persisted and new ones have emerged. A structural cause of these conflicts are the curtailed nature of land rights in Indonesia and the collusive relationship between business actors and state authorities. These two key characteristics of the Indonesian state have led to a condition that can be termed as de facto rightlessness or the ‘emptiness of rights’.

Seeing that public regulations and dispute settlement mechanisms are not helping them, communities have resorted to rightless resistance in Indonesia. This study details the rightless resistance of communities as well as the contentious politics of palm oil companies. Our data have been used to provide recommendations to address drivers and causes of the problems at micro-, meso- and macro level.

Description

The current palm oil boom is arguably one of the most rapid agro-environmental transformations in modern history. In Indonesia, the world’s largest producer of palm oil, the size of palm oil plantations has almost doubled over the last decade. This expansion has caused massive deforestation, forest fires, as well as intensifying conflict between oil palm companies and rural communities. Communities are protesting against both companies and governments, engaging in demonstrations, lobbying and litigation as well as road blockages, destruction of property and violence. They protest against the loss of access to land and the lack of adequate compensation, but also against pollution, labour conditions and the implementation of joint ownership schemes. The resulting conflicts generally have lengthy, complex trajectories that often end in stalemates, causing considerable economic damage and human suffering.

Rural communities can take their grievances to three main types of mechanisms: Indonesia’s legal system, the dispute resolution facility set up by the Round Table for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO, a transnational multi-stakeholder body) and more informal, third-party mediation often guided by politicians and/or NGO’s. This project’s guiding hypothesis is that a more effective resolution of palm oil conflicts requires engagement with the plurality of formal and informal conflict resolution mechanisms.

The status quo

So far, palm oil conflicts have only been studied through case studies that highlight the relative powerlessness of rural communities when they are confronted with corporate violations as well as repression from state institutions. There is an urgent need to move beyond case studies. Lacking reliable documentation of a broad set of conflicts we know relatively little about the usage and effectiveness of the different available dispute resolution mechanisms – or how they can be improved. The new, mixed methodology adopted by this project will allow – for the first time – to study how dispute resolutions mechanisms are generally used and why they often fail. With this knowledge we can identify, and advocate for, policy measures that can improve the effectiveness of these mechanisms.

The main aim of this project is to strengthen the capacity of rural communities, oil palm companies and government institutions to address the grievances caused by oil palm expansion.

To achieve this goal, the project aims to:

  1. Collaborate with its local NGO partners to document the trajectories and outcomes of a targeted 220 conflicts that have surfaced in Riau, West Sumatra, West Kalimantan and Central Kalimantan in the period 2005-2018;
  2. Use this dataset to study comparatively the usage, accessibility and effectiveness of Indonesia’s legal system, RPSO’s dispute resolution facility and informal third-party mediation as means to address palm oil conflicts;
  3. Use the resulting findings to advocate for policy measures and initiatives to improve the accessibility and effectiveness of conflict resolution mechanisms.

This three year-long research project (2019-2022) is a collaboration between KITLV, Andalas University, Wageningen University and six Indonesian NGO’s (Walhi Kalbar, Gemawan, Walhi Kalteng, Scale-Up, HuMa and Epistema). It is funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education of the Republic of Indonesia (Ristekdikti).

Results

The project has resulted in peer-reviewed scientific publications, policy briefs at regional and national level, media coverage and interviews in newspapers, academic debate at some 12 universities in Indonesia, and a book (in Bahasa Indonesia and a forthcoming one in English).

Publications