Palm Oil Pressure and the Vanishing Lands of Ketapang
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| Palm Oil Pressure and the Vanishing Lands of Ketapang: Indigenous peoples of Borneo urgently need international advocacy and global attention. |
How corporate concessions, military backing, and broken land governance reshaped Dayak villages in West Kalimantan.
When corporate concessions began spreading across West Kalimantan, the transformation in Dayak villages unfolded with startling speed.
In the late years of Indonesia’s New Order, plantation licenses were issued across Borneo’s interior at a pace that outstripped local understanding and consent.
Companies arrived with government permits in hand, backed by political elites eager to convert forest and smallholder land into industrial estates.
What looked on paper like “development” often meant something very different on the ground: the quiet erasure of customary landscapes and the entrance of powerful actors into territories where Dayak families had lived, farmed, and raised generations long before the rise of modern agribusiness.
Residents of Sei Melayu recall the moment heavy machinery rumbled toward the edge of their rubber gardens, a sound that signaled not progress but encroachment. Bulldozers and survey teams appeared with military escorts, reinforcing the message that resistance was futile.
For villagers, the rubber groves were not merely plots of land but the backbone of household income and cultural continuity. Yet under the new concession maps, their gardens were redrawn as corporate property.
The shift was abrupt. One day, farmers were tapping latex in the shade of trees they had tended for decades; the next, rows of those same trees were felled in hours to make way for oil-palm seedlings and company roads.
When Companies Arrived, the Land Began to Disappear
As concessions expanded and military support normalized the process, local governance began to fracture. Licenses overlapped with ancestral territories, boundaries became contested, and community voices lost space in the bureaucratic machinery that determined the fate of land. This breakdown in governance reshaped Dayak villages just as forcefully as the bulldozers did.
Without transparent mapping, legal recognition of customary rights, or avenues for redress, families often watched their landscapes vanish in real time. The result was a profound and lasting displacement; not always of people, but of their rights, their livelihoods, and the ecological knowledge embedded in the land they once stewarded.
Families say bulldozers escorted by armed personnel flattened smallholder plots after owners refused to surrender their land. One family, whose rubber garden had provided steady income for decades, watched the final rows of trees fall while the owner was still tapping latex.
Accounts like these echo the broader pattern documented by scholars and NGOs studying palm oil expansion in Indonesia. From the 1980s onward, large estates often entered remote villages backed by political elites and, at times, military territorial operations.
Consent was frequently contested. In Ketapang, residents reported forced acquisition, intimidation, and deliberate burning of smallholdings by individuals linked to plantation companies seeking rapid land clearing.
A Legacy of Disputed Maps and Overlapping Claims
The conflicts surrounding the former Benua Indah Group illustrate the structural problems behind West Kalimantan’s land governance. After the company’s assets and land-use permits became entangled in bankruptcy proceedings, multiple villages were pulled into disputes over HGU concession maps.
Government cadastral maps did not always match the horizontal maps used during the asset auctions, creating overlapping claims between communities and new corporate rights holders.
Public records show protests at regional land offices, petitions to the National Land Agency, and mediation attempts involving local governments.
Yet efforts often stalled because of conflicting evidence: community occupation versus formal land titles, promises of plasma schemes that never materialized, and historical claims that were never legitimized through state procedures.
This administrative fragmentation is not unique to Ketapang. National studies show that ambiguities in licensing and the layering of concessions over customary land are among the biggest drivers of rural conflict across Indonesia.
Human Consequences Behind the Corporate Push
For Dayak families in Sei Melayu, the loss of smallholder land was not merely an economic blow but a rupture in generational continuity. Rubber gardens, sago stands, and mixed agroforestry plots are cultural as much as they are commercial. They bind families to their ancestors, define daily rhythms, and secure food.
Once cleared, the land rarely reverts to community use. Plantation companies, after taking control, often moved swiftly to replant oil palm or assign land to contractors, leaving families with little hope of restitution.
Local NGOs working in Ketapang and broader West Kalimantan have compiled testimonies showing that communities facing corporate land pressure often experience financial instability, declining food security, and psychological distress.
Criminalization of farmers resisting expansion is also documented, with villagers charged for trespassing on plots they have cultivated for generations.
Lessons for Indonesia’s Future Land Governance
Indonesia’s palm-oil sector remains economically central, yet its governance challenges carry long-term consequences. West Kalimantan is consistently listed among the provinces with the highest number of plantation-related conflicts.
Experts argue that three reforms are urgent: transparent and participatory mapping, strict enforcement against illegal land clearing, and accelerated recognition of customary territories. Without these steps, the dynamics seen in Ketapang risk becoming permanent fixtures of Indonesia’s rural landscape.
The family whose rubber garden was destroyed in Sei Melayu has yet to see restitution though years have passed and dozens of appeals have gone unanswered. Their silence speaks louder than words; it is a living testament to how justice often remains out of reach when power, money, and institutional backing dictate who wins and who loses.
Their story reflects a deeper struggle over who gets to shape the future of Borneo. On one side are the Dayak families who have lived on and cared for this land for generations, nurturing it with traditions, dependence, and respect. On the other side stand corporate interests, backed by state licenses and expansion plans; entities ready to claim ownership through paperwork, bulldozers, and legal might, regardless of ancestral ties or community wishes.
Advocacy and international attention toward the criminalization and exploitation of the Dayak people, as the Indigenous inhabitants and rightful heirs of Borneo, are urgently needed and long overdue.
References
Books and Academic Journals:
Cramb, R. A., & McCarthy, J. F. (Eds.). (2016). The Oil Palm Complex: Smallholders, Agribusiness and the State in Indonesia and Malaysia. NUS Press.
Colchester, M., Jiwan, N., Andiko, et al. (2006). Promised Land: Palm Oil and Land Acquisition in Indonesia. Forest Peoples Programme.
Potter, L. (2009). "Oil Palm and Resistance in West Kalimantan." The Journal of Peasant Studies, 36(3), 1–28.
Peluso, N. L., & Lund, C. (2011). "New Frontiers of Land Control." Journal of Peasant Studies, 38(4), 667–681.
Li, Tania Murray. (2014). Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier. Duke University Press.
Vandergeest, P., & Peluso, N. (1995). "Territorialization and State Power in Southeast Asia." Theory and Society, 24, 385–426.
NGO Reports and Official Institutions
Amnesty International. (2016). The Great Palm Oil Scandal: Labour Abuses Behind Big Brand Names.
Sawit Watch. (2014). Palm Oil Conflicts in Indonesia: A National Overview.
HuMA (Perkumpulan untuk Pembaharuan Hukum Berbasis Masyarakat dan Ekologi). (2018). Resolusi Konflik Agraria di Kawasan Perkebunan.
WALHI Kalimantan Barat. (2019). Laporan Situasi Konflik Agraria di Kalbar.
Kementerian ATR/BPN. (2020). Statistik Konflik dan Penanganan Sengketa Lahan Perkebunan di Indonesia.
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