The Indonesian government’s crackdown on illegal forest use deepens land inequality by disproportionately impacting indigenous communities and smallholders while overlooking large corporations, according to civil society groups quoted by Mongabay.
Under a regulation issued in January, President Prabowo Subianto set up a task force to crack down on illegal activities inside forest areas, such as oil palm cultivation and mining, the 30 July report said.
Indonesia is the world’s leading palm oil producer and illegal oil palm plantations in the country occupy a total of 3.37M ha of forests – an area larger than Belgium – and account for a significant portion of the country’s palm oil output, according to the report.
Since its launch in February 2025, the task force had reclaimed 2M ha of land and handed over nearly half to state-owned plantation company Agrinas Palma Nusantara, Mongabay wrote.
The task force was aiming to take over a total of 3M ha of land by August, which would be retained as palm oil or other crop plantations, or reforested, Defence Minister Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin, who heads the task force, was quoted as saying in a 9 July Reuters report.
The move potentially creates what could be the world’s largest state-owned palm oil company by land area, and risks replacing private land monopolies with a state-owned one, according to critics quoted in the Mongabay report.
Critics have said the regulation makes no distinction between large-scale corporate activities and those of local communities, including indigenous groups.
As a result, the crackdown had displaced indigenous and local communities, while shielding large corporations, and transferred land to Agrinas without due process, according to an analysis by the country’s largest environmental non-governmental organisation (NGO) Walhi.
For example, in Aceh province, on the northern tip of the island of Sumatra, the task force had seized 15,000ha of land in three districts.
Most of it had been planted with crops like durian and candlenut by local communities, said Afifuddin Acal, the head of advocacy and campaigns at Walhi’s Aceh chapter.
However, no action had been taken against major companies operating in the same province, despite the fact 3% of all licensed oil palm concessions in Aceh reportedly overlapped with forest areas, making them subject to seizure by the task force, Afifuddin added.
There were also concerns the crackdown was targeting smallholders, Mongabay wrote.
Activists have called for a new forestry law to address outdated legislation, protect Indigenous land rights, mandate ecological restoration and close legal loopholes that allow corporate offenders to avoid accountability, the report said.
The new law should recognise and protect indigenous and local communities with historical ties to the forest, as well as distinguish between corporate violations and smallholder land use, said Difa Shafira, head of forestry and land governance at the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL).
