- In Mekar Raya, a semi-remote pocket of Ketapang district near the west coast of Indonesian Borneo, the local Dayak Simpan Indigenous society are navigating the complex bureaucracy of the state in a bid to gain semi-autonomous control of their customary forest.
- Under the national “social forestry” program, Indonesia’s central government has released more than 8 million hectares (20 million acres) from the national forest estate to management by local and Indigenous communities.
- The Dayak Simpan in Mekar Raya have previously resisted attempts by the palm oil industry to survey local land. Local sources say devolved management of the forest to the community will all but eliminate the risk of this land-use change.
- Several areas of the forestry are held sacred by the Dayak Simpan, with customary rules prohibiting the felling of trees or disturbance of water courses.
MEKAR RAYA, Indonesia — Yulius Yogi kneels under the forest canopy here on the island of Borneo, surveying land he plans to reclaim for his Dayak Simpan Indigenous community.
“Our ancestors safeguarded [the forest], now it’s our responsibility to look after it,” Yulius, 35, told Mongabay Indonesia on the outskirts of Mekar Raya village, in Ketapang district, West Kalimantan province.
As leader of the local forest management institute, a village-level institution in Indonesia’s heavily decentralized political framework, Yulius is responsible for drafting a forest management proposal to the central government in Jakarta.
That application requires merging centuries-old customary traditions, regulated by Dayak elders, with the rules of the modern state introduced after Indonesia declared independence in 1945.
Here in Mekar Raya, a successful petition could entail the handover of up to 2,000 hectares (5,000 acres) of forest upland, bisected by rivers the Dayak consider protected by a higher authority.
In August last year, then-forestry minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar said Indonesia’s community forestry program had so far transferred more than 8 million hectares (20 million acres) for local leases (hutan desa), and in some cases Indigenous control (hutan adat), comparable to a sort of communal freehold.
These two categories of rural devolution had reached 1.4 million families by August last year, the minister said.
In May 2020, the forestry ministry authorized a 9,480-hectare (23,426-acre) hutan adat forest to the Dayak Iban community in the north of Indonesian Borneo.
That was the largest award to an Indigenous community at the time, spurring diverse societies across Indonesia to build capacity to themselves engage in the formal process.
The Ancestral Domain Registration Agency (BRWA), an initiative established by more than 200 civil society organizations across the archipelagic country, estimates that more than 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) in the five provinces of Indonesian Borneo alone could potentially be recognized.
Customary law
Dayak custom has already ensured protection for areas like Gunung Juring and the Riam River, one of several waterways in Mekar Raya that the Dayak hold as sacred. Belief here contends snatching just one fish from the river would augur disaster.
“These rules have existed since the Dayak community first lived in this area,” Yogi said.
Today, it’s Yogi’s responsibility to transpose these customary rules to the bureaucratic framework required by law under the state’s program for community forestry.
In practice, this means codifying rich traditions into plain text for the first time. Ordinarily, hukum adat, or customary law, was handed down from one generation to the next via the oral tradition.
Yogi has to transcribe how ngalayo is a ban on cutting down any fruit tree within a tembawang, a kind of agroforest on land previously used in the community’s shifting agriculture system. Likewise, only the descendants of the people who previously worked that land may pick the fruit there.
Two main rites govern food production, with mulang semparan and nyapa taun carried out at planting and harvest, respectively.
A less-frequent ritual, known as bebantan, is performed every three years.
“That’s a way of purifying the village,” said Ignatius Tondi, a 35-year-old Mekar Raya resident.
Documenting the adat, the collective term used for customary rules in Indonesia, can be a challenge for communities for whom protection of forest and water sources is often more intuitive.
“This mountain and river are part of our identity as the people of Mekar Raya,” Ignatius said. “If we don’t preserve it, then the next generation will never know the value of this place.”
Public utility
Thousands of unique Indigenous societies exist with varying degrees of integration with the Indonesian state. Often this is determined by proximity to built-up areas, supply chains and local government institutions.
Ignatius said the younger generation of Dayaks in semi-remote Mekar Raya want to foster the old traditions while embracing new scope to invigorate the local political economy.
Mekar Raya previously obtained a hutan desa lease permit for the Mount Juring area in 2023. Today six small neighborhoods are sustained by water channeled to homes from a spring on the mountainside. That Mount Juring spring water is then bottled and managed by a village-owned enterprise.
“It comes straight from the mountain and it doesn’t need any treating,” said Ricki, a village administrator, adding that the village had yet to encounter water scarcity.
Village leaders decided to consolidate the success of the Mount Juring case by applying for wider license of the surrounding forest under the hutan adat scheme.
Administrators say obtaining a hutan adat decree is a far more complex procedure because the outcome is comparable to a freehold, rather than a typical 35-year lease awarded under a hutan desa license (although communities are barred from selling any land devolved by the government under hutan adat).
“We wanted to apply for the determination of customary areas,” said Toni, the elected head of Mekar Raya village.
A successful bid requires verification of zoning details by the Ketapang district government before the application is sent to national officials in Jakarta for approval.
“The aim is when the decree is issued and recognized by the district and central governments, it means that we have the authority to protect the forest,” Toni said.
Sustainable development
The state’s social forestry plan also requires communities to submit business cases detailing plans for nontimber forest products and services, like tourism.
In Mekar Raya, the community aims to meet this requirement in part by planting scores more fruit trees.
“These will be durian, petai, mango, rambutan, avocado and guava,” Yogi said.
In 2023, Yogi and the Mekar Raya community documented the tembawang fruit trees as well as several sacred hilltops and rivers with support from Tropenbos Indonesia, a foundation based south of Jakarta that works on building landscape governance with 23 villages in West Kalimantan province.
These maps were then registered with the Working Group on the Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas (ICCAs), which was established by several civil society organizations to strengthen Indigenous communities’ capacity to integrate environmental governance.
That reflects efforts globally to amplify the voice of Indigenous communities in international schemes to limit climate change, such as national carbon markets.
“The hope is that the conflicts that befall Indigenous communities will be reduced and they can carry out their role as guardians of nature,” said Noor Asti, a knowledge management officer at the working group, which is commonly known as WGII.
Mekar Raya residents have also formed their own working group to raise awareness locally of the changes and requirements of the social forestry program.
Mansen, who leads the community governance desk at the Ketapang district government, said that after the mapping and verification stage, the Mekar Raya community must get its application validated by civil servants before issuance of the final decree.
Research shows that building sustainable local economies in nontimber forest products and freshwater fisheries will take on increasing importance in the next decades as weather patterns become increasingly erratic.
“Indigenous communities living around forest areas are among the groups who are vulnerable to environmental change,” Ketapang’s Mansen said.
The tree near where Yogi kneels is surrounded by rivers and intact forested land, which has remained untouched by encroachment or industrial plantation development. The Dayak Simpan say that remains the case because they are wardens of the landscape, an assertion Indonesia’s government may soon formally recognize as fact.
“We are aware of the pressure to open up land here,” Yogi said. “However, we have a moral and cultural responsibility to continue to maintain this forest.”
Banner image: Ignatius Tondi, a Mekar Raya resident. Image by Aseanty Pahlevi/Mongabay Indonesia.
This story was first published here in Indonesian on Feb. 1, 2025.
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