Silent Expansion of Oil Palm Plantation: The Tragedy of Access Between Bundle of Right and Power

Abstract

The Expansion of oil palm plantations is often performed on a large scale of the state front stage, carried out through the operation of big capital, supported by licensing documents and using the legal basis of the state law in the form of land cultivation right (hak guna usaha). This phenomenon is an expansion of oil palm plantations which have been understood by the public as a form of open expansion. This research is using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods which have found that there had been an expansion practice in other form, namely the silent expansion. This silent expansion is a form of tragedy of access where actors can establish oil palm plantations without the bundle of rights that are legal, but using a bundle of power behind the failure of state control over state property right. The expansion is done quietly, under-the-table, within a small area, without legal permit documents. In the final section, this paper describes the institutional response to the problem of silent expansion using formal policy instrument approach.

Land Access, Exclusion, and Conflict in the Dynamics of Agrarian Changes in Forest Areas of Napal Putih Village, Tebo District, Sumatra

“…5 of 1967 as a non-forestry plant, and is prohibited from cultivation within forest areas. The high economic value of palm oil in the international market, its ease of cultivation in Indonesia's fertile tropical lands, and the development of the palm oil industry as a rural economic development strategy in Indonesia are factors that drive communities to enter a circuit of palm oil production (Dharmawan et al, 2020;Gatto et al, 2015;Sayer et al, 2012;Yulian et al, 2020). The socio-economic dynamics occurring in the forest areas mentioned above illustrate how access and exclusion operate within the contestation of forest land utilization.…”