Key issues facing the land sector in Indonesia include a high imbalance of land ownership and control, many agrarian conflicts, human rights violations, and environmental damage due to the wide-scale exploitation of agrarian sources by large land investors.

In 1960, the Indonesian government established the Basic Agrarian Law to sustain the administration of the country’s land, forests, coasts, and other natural resources. More than six decades later, the law remains one of the only legal safeguards to protect the land rights of farmers, smallholders, and other vulnerable tenants.

However, the implementation of the law and the rights it enshrines -- at least in theory -- are impeded by overlapping ministerial jurisdictions and land investments and measures that interfere with rural communities’ access and management of natural resources. Such obstacles often exacerbate land conflicts in the process.

In 2014, the election of President Joko Widodo led to a new surge of momentum around Agrarian Reform. The government established novel ministerial institutions, such as the Ministry of Agrarian Affairs, the Spatial Planning, the National Land Agency, the Ministry of Rural Development, and the Ministry of Environment and Forestry.

While the Widodo government has committed to redistributing more than 12 million hectares of forestland, it remains unclear how and when the redistribution will take effect. 

AGRARIAN REFORM PROGRAMME

The Widodo government has failed to redistribute the land to IPs and local communities under the agrarian reform policy. As of the end of 2023, the government was only able to redistribute 1.8 million hectares of land to communities, short of the 4.5 million targets. This figure reflects the fact that from 2013 to 2018, the number of peasant union households - farmers with almost landless or owned or managed agricultural land less than 0.5 ha - increased sharply from 11.5 million to 15.8 million.