Jakarta, July 13, 2017 – The Government of the Republic of Indonesia has not prioritized customary forests as a national priority in realizing the agrarian reform scheme. This can be seen in the budget politics of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, especially the Directorate General responsible for determining customary forests, namely Social Forestry and Environmental Partnership. This was conveyed by several researchers involved in civil society movements at KeKini Cafe, Jakarta.

Research results from the Indonesia Budget Center (IBC) state that there is inconsistency in the government’s performance targets, which is a form of the Joko Widodo-Jusuf Kalla government’s lack of seriousness in handling tenure conflicts and customary forests in Indonesia. The Work Plan (Renja) of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (KLHK) has not fully adopted the National Medium-Term Development Plan (RPJMN), which has set an indicator of the extent of conflict areas that must be resolved by 2019, reaching 12.7 million hectares. This can be seen cumulatively each year, thus affecting the output of activities to be achieved.

Roy Salam, executive director of IBC, explained, “This assumption arises from reading the government’s work plan in setting output targets each year in the form of percentages, which tend to show the government’s pessimistic attitude in interpreting the high output targets of the RPJMN. The change occurred in the indicator “All customary forests identified, mapped, and managed by indigenous communities.” In the RPJMN document, it was 5,008,000 hectares, then the change occurred in the Renja to 1,252,000 hectares or only 25% of the target.“

In addition, in terms of budget allocation, the analysis of the budget allocation for customary forest areas to date, from 2015 and 2016, amounted to Rp. 2,385 – Rp. 4,551 per hectare. This is a very minimal amount for indigenous communities who have long been preserving their customary forests. Furthermore, this target is further reduced with even lower budget amounts in the following years.

Responding to the budget politics in KLHK, Arman Mohammad, a legal researcher at the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN), stated that the KLHK budget on the implementation of customary forests is a form of crime and shows the government’s lack of seriousness in recognizing the existence of indigenous customary law communities and their traditional rights, one of which is related to customary forests.

“Even though in the nawacita it is clear that Jokowi-JK mentioned would be present in various government programs among indigenous communities, for example, in the promise to pass the Indigenous Peoples Bill, the formation of a task force, conflict resolution, and so on. In addition, the recognition of customary forests is a national program that should also be followed by budget politics,” said Arman.

Furthermore, Arman Mohammad added that this situation also signals the government’s lack of seriousness in the process of passing the Indigenous Peoples Bill, which is currently in the national legislative priority program for 2017. The same goes for the formation of the Indigenous Peoples Task Force, which until now its fate is unclear. Although the Minister of Environment and Forestry was directly asked by President Jokowi to process the formation of this institution.

From a legal perspective, the Community-Based and Ecological Legal Reform Association (HuMa) views the inconsistency between promises and budgets in the implementation of customary forests, depicting the enforcement of the rule of law so far only seen as sweet promises of agrarian reform with no implementation.

Dahniar Andriani, executive director of HuMa, stated, “Legally, the customary forest