Forest Politics in Indonesia: Drivers of Deforestation and Dispossession

This report brings together a wide range of recent studies on the struggle over control of land, timber and other resources in Indonesia's forest zones, providing an accessible guide to the practices and incentives generated by the country's 'Forest Politics.'

The report also offers broad guidelines on how to design interventions that better engage with how the sector really operates. The report shows that informal clientelistic exchange relations between political, bureaucratic and economic actors – involving exchanges of favours of mutual benefit – are a pervasive feature of governance in Indonesia, and explains how they undermine natural resource and forest governance. 

Read the policy briefing in English or Bahasa Indonesia

Read the full report in English or Bahasa Indonesia

Key Points:

• Indonesian societies have long been shaped by patron-client relations. The Dutch colonial period and the Presidencies of Sukarno and Suharto curtailed the growth of societal pressures for limiting clientelistic politics.

• Indonesia’s multi-party elections have further entrenched clientelism, as money politics dominates the selection of candidates and their success in elections depends on them generating huge campaign funds.

• Decentralization has fuelled clientelistic relations between local politicians seeking election and businesses, which support them with cash in exchange for access to lands for forestry, agribusiness and mining.

• Resulting corporate impunity and illegality allows companies to evade the laws and policies meant to protect forests and human rights, leading to rapid deforestation and dispossession of tens of thousands of rural Indonesians.

• Trade and aid efforts to curb deforestation are failing as they don’t take into account these political realities but rely on the administration and rule of law to regulate what companies do. Recent demand-side deforestation legislation is taking the same legality-based approach.

• Public and private aid agencies need to target long term governance reform to combat corruption and clientelism by supporting civil society, boosting transparency and encouraging electoral reforms.