Indonesia

Alamindo Lestari Sejahtera (ALS) Group, that owns and controls at least three timber companies and industries in Papua, is expanding the business of timber forest products exploitation in the customary area of the Moi Tribe through a company called PT Hutan Hijau Papua Barat (HHPB).

This article tells the story of a women group in Kalimantan called “Hurung Hapakat”, which means “Working Together”. Collectively, and against serious repression, they have reclaimed some land from oil palm plantations in order to also reclaim their food sovereignty, dignity and wisdom. And they are not alone.

Indigenous people from Balik tribe in Sepaku Lama Village, North Penajam Paser Utara Regency, East Kalimantan, carried out an action rejecting the plan to evict their villages around and along the Sepaku river for the project management of Floods or normalization of the Sepaku River center of Indonesia new capital city.

Brazil and Indonesia share a particular similarity: at some point its rulers decided to build a new capital city. While rulers in Brazil built Brasilia some 60 years ago, construction of the new Indonesian capital is currently underway. Both projects reinforce a colonial State, in spite of their promoters claiming the opposite. Both stories however, also show the role of social struggles as a way to revert a history of colonialism. (Available also in Bahasa Indonesia)

People in Pari Island are seeing their houses and business more frequently under water. Besides their struggles against corporate-led tourism, four Island’s residents are taking legal action against one of the major emitters of carbon dioxide in the world and hence a major responsible for their situation: the Holcim cement corporation.

There is no other crop that has grown faster globally in the last decade than palm oil. This almost uncontrollable expansion leaves a deep trail of destruction and conflicts around its giant areas of plantations from Southeast Asia to West and Central Africa. As companies take over more community land, they also grab the water sources from them.

More than 10 million hectares in Indonesia are controlled by the pulp and paper industry, mainly by two giant corporations: APP and APRIL. Despite the companies’ commitments to protect forests and peatland, both keep being associated with deforestation, forest fires and to a business model of violence, criminalization and dispossession of forest communities. (Available in Bahasa Indonesia)

‘Carbon concessions’ established to generate and sell carbon credits are also deeply eroding communities’ structures, their organization and community reproduction.

This publication gathers eleven articles that reflect on fundamental and dangerous dimensions of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), the dominant forest policy around the world since 2007.

Colonial and anti-colonial movements’ have deeply shaped the patterns and impacts of concessions in SE Asia. In some cases, communities have experienced dispossession through land grabs dressed as concessions. In others, concessions are part of a re-concentration of land holding. Either way, the concession model fits well with ideologies of modernisation.

The Balik People will bear the impacts of the plans to build a New Capital City mega-project in Borneo, Indonesia. Government officials and business elites in the country are certainly among those who will enjoy the benefits. Available in Bahasa Indonesia.

Oil palm plantations are one of the most unsafe spaces for women, not only because of their vulnerable working status packed with injustices and precarities, but also because of the potential for sexual violence and harassment. (Available in Indonesian).