Taman Mini Indonesia Indah: A Universe of Delights!

Today I made a journey to Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, also known as BuHartoLand. Taman Mini is a massive theme park on the southern edge of Jakarta that features dozens of pavillions providing displays and performances from Indonesia's various provinces. It's a good place to go to see a lot of really neat things that are closed and/or broken! The complex sprawls over around 100 acres and is something like what you'd expect a post-apocalyptic Epcot Center to look like. Children, if you don't know what the term "post-apocalyptic" means, read or watch Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" and you'll get a pretty good idea of what I'm talking about. Anyway, today's post is dedicated to giving you a "virtual tour" of Taman Mini. Behold my photos of this wondrous place and shiver in awe! There's a lot you can say about this next picture. For example, you might suggest that the weeds growing out of the airplane are symbolic of Garuda's commitment to their posted timetable. But this scene inspired me to com up with a new slogan for Indonesia's largest airline: "Garuda...Any Landing within 5 Kilometers of an Airport is a Good One!" Hopefully an airline executive will happen across this post and decide to adopt this slogan for an international advertising campaign and my days of riding coach will be over. But seriously, anyone that knows me knows I like to poke fun at Indonesia's air carriers. I'm sure they'll get me back some day with some hilariously ironic prank, like flying the plane I happen to be riding straight into Mt. Merapi. Anyway, this plane is situated just outside the transportation museum at Taman Mini. I didn't go in, because as much as I love Indonesia, I kinda felt like a museum dedicated to transportation in this country is like putting the cart before the horse, if you get my meaning. Next on our virtual tour is the lizard museum, pictured to the left. This is another exhibit that didn't actually enter, because I figured there was no way the contents could top the actual building itself. There were pictures on the outside, though. They have all of your standard lizards...Komodo dragons, bit iguanas, chameleons, and so on. I didn't see any that I had never seen/eaten in the past, so I moved on. But the structure is pretty remarkable. This is probably the only building I've ever seen that has scales, as you can see from the closeup. The next stop is the building to the right, which we'll call "Castle Anthrax". I'm not sure which island this type of architecture is characteristic of. Definitely one I haven't visited yet. Wherever it is, though, it must be a mystical, magical, marvelous place. Around Castle Anthrax are all sorts of wonderful rides for the kiddies, and if there had been any there I'm sure they would've had a great time. This is another building I didn't go into because I was sure the lack of air conditioning would wreck the fairy-tale image the park's creators have worked so hard to create. It's pretty neat, though. I asked the people working at the ticket counter if Castle Anthrax has a grail, and they said no. After Castle Anthrax I made my way over to this next exhibit, the "Taman Konservasi Nusantara". I think this structure made a guest appearance in the 1973 classic sci-fi movie "Silent Running", which is about the last remnants of Earth's plant life being shot into space aboard special ships designed to preserve the plants for a future time when they could be brought back to re-green the Earth. The plants in the TKN here are actually being saved for some future time when they can be used to re-green Jakarta! My last stop was riding the cableway across the park back towards the parking lot. This was actually one of the most harrowing experiences of my life, but after making my peace with the Lord and drafting a quick will in my moleskine book I was ready to go. Besides, the gentleman collecting the tickets assured me that they rigorously inspected all the machinery after the last accident. Away I went into the blue yonder, suspended precariously hundreds of feet above the park. Suddenly it seemed as though the whole world (or at least the whole archipelago) came into view! And it did! I looked down to see a scale replica of all the islands of Indonesia in a large pond in the middle of the park! For me this was the most impressive part of the day, and I've included a video below for your pleasure. I apologize for the poor video quality and the lack of sound, but I hope you can get the idea of the view.

The Day I Ate Lassie...

I'm going to come right and say it: I ate dog, and I don't mean the "hot" variety. And it was good , too; I don't have any regrets or remorse about it. In fact, it kinda tastes like steak, unless you get ahold of one of the kidneys, which taste, well, like kidney. Last night a friend invited me out for a new culinary experience. Since to me part of being open-minded is being open stomached, I agreed. What followed was a whirlwind tour of several cafes, warungs, and trattorias where our good friend canus familiaris is served ala yummy. The main attraction was a little eatery with the brilliant name of "Scooby Doo". I definitely am not making this up; I wish I was, though. The best I could do on short notice was "The Dog House" and "Chow Puppy". But both of those pail in comparison to the widespread appeal of the little pushcart known widely for the best dog downtown. I mean, who doesn't love Scooby? And here's your chance to become one with him, in a way... Locally Fido Friccasse is known as Jamu or more commonly by the code "B1". Since this is a predominantly Muslim society and the consumption of "unclean" animals like dogs, pigs, and bats is forbidden, codes are used to advertise the product without offended the mores of a certain segment of the population. Pork in Indonesian is "Babi", hence the moniker "B2". I don't know why dog is B1 and pork is B2. And I'll leave you to guess what constitutes B3... While we ate we had the chance to talk a bit with Ratna, the lovely proprietress of this fine establishment. Even though she operates a pushcart, she's always in the same location, and has a pretty solid clientele. She told us that she sells as many as 100 plates of pooch every evening. She gets her dog from a provider in Bantul, a region just outside of town, and one evening's business usually requires around 13 kilograms of meat, or two dogs. She told us that Javanese dogs are preferable to German Shepherds, Dobermans, and other varieties of foreign dogs, because Javanese dogs eat anything, whereas the foreign dogs are generally raised on dog food. Evidently this makes a difference. In Indonesia, there are three main groups that consume dog as food: the Batak, the Minahasa (northern Sulawesi), and the various peoples of the island of Flores. The first of these groups, the Batak, hail from the slopes of the SUPERVOLCANO Toba in the northern part of Sumatra. A few years ago I was lucky enough to visit the Batak homeland around Lake Toba. The Batak are a predominantly Christian people with a rich culture and proud history. They've been in the area for a couple thousand years and have a unique system of familial organization called the marga. And like their Minangkabau neighbors to the south, they have a reputation as fierce warriors but are also known for the high value they place on education. As I was journeying around Lake Toba, the thing that struck me most was the elaborate mausoleums the Batak construct for those that have passed away. The Batak have very elaborate funerary ceremonies in which the body of the departed is placed in a coffin and transported to the cemetery amidst musical accompaniment. During the procession the Batak take steps to ensure the departed can't find his/her way back to the village should he/she somehow rise from the dead. Several years after the initial burial the bones of the departed are exhumed and later interred in a special mausoleum known as a tambak (see the picture to the right). If you ever have the opportunity to spend some time amongst the Batak you should do it, and not just for the dog! But wait a minute, Keith....Did you say "supervolcano"? Indeed I did. It might even be characterized as a "super-duper volcano". Supervolcanoes are sites where magma pools beneath the surface of the earth, but is unable to break through the crust. Pressure builds and builds and builds until finally it is released in an eruption of catastrophic proportions. These eruptions make events like Pinatubo, Krakatoa, and Tambora seem like the mere popping of a balloon. When Toba last erupted around 75,000 years ago, it lofted nearly 3000 cubic kilometers of debris (1) into the atmosphere and blanketed places as far away as India with half-a-foot of ash. According to vulcanologists it was the largest eruption in the past 25 million years. It is thought that the eruption killed most of the people living at that time and created a "genetic bottleneck" for the human race. Lake Toba is in fact a giant caldera, or volcanic crater (2), created when the magma was ejected from beneath the earth surface. Basically it's a big hole. Through the years it gradually filled with water and became a lake. Though it's hard to imagine the scale of the event, you can get an idea of the awesome magnitude of the supervolcano by cruising around Lake Toba. Yellowstone in the US is another example of a supervolcano. I've included a diagram lifted from the internet to the right. Anyway, today we've gone from dogs to Bataks to supervolcanoes. Just another day in the life of your average geographer. If your interested in learning more about supervolcanoes, check the Hawaii state library for documentaries. You'll be amazed...and terrified. (1) Think of a box 18 miles long, 6 miles across, and 6 miles high. Then fill it with ash and rock. That's what Toba did. In comparison, Tambora, another Indonesian volcano which last erupted in 1815, ejected about 100 cubic kilometers of debris, which affected the global climate for a couple of years. Mt. St. Helens, which I alluded to in a previous post, ejected about 1.2 cubic kilometers of debris. (2) Calderas are a conspicuous part of the landscape in Hawai'i as well. Locate a topographical map of Oahu. Look carefully at the Ko'olau and Wainae mountain ranges. Do these look like parts of two separate calderas? What do you think happened to the rest of the caldera?

Understanding Adat in Indonesia 1: What is Adat?

Image from here.   This is one of the
first images that comes up when
you do a google image search of
"adat Indonesia" and is the type of
thing that drives anthropologists
nuts.  More on why in the next
post in the series.  

It's been a long time since I've written anything really substantive in this blog and a lot has changed.  Since my last entry I have finished my PhD in geography, so hooray for me!  Anyway, over the past few months I've been reading and writing a significant amount about local communities and customary systems of social, economic, and political organization in Indonesia (generally referred to in Indonesian as adat), and so I've decided to write a series of blog posts introducing this concept along with some history and a description and analysis about how the role of adat is changing in Indonesia today.  The definition and recognition of adat has become an important and contested topic in Indonesia.  In this post I'll describe the definition and historical emergence of the concept of adat law during the colonial era.  In the next post I'll discuss adat in the post-colonial era, focusing mainly on the effects of Suharto's "New Order" on adat communities.  Then in the following post I'll turn to the role of adat and "indigenous peoples" in the post-authoritarian era.  At the end I promise I'll turn the whole thing towards a discussion of local people, forests, resource management and the environment, but you'll have to bear with me.  

Defining the term...

As I've often pointed out in this blog, Indonesia is a country of stunning diversity.  Many people are aware of the incredible biodiversity of the archipelago, but fewer are familiar with Indonesia's cultural diversity; there are more than 1000 ethnic and subethnic groups from Aceh to Papua and hundreds of languages spoken in between.  These many groups seem to epitomize Indonesia's national motto, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, or "Unity in Diversity".  This multiplicity of peoples stems from the fact that Indonesia is a relatively new creation; it was formed in 1945 when nationalists declared independence from the Dutch, who had, in one form or another, been the dominant colonial presence in the islands since the beginning of the 17th century.  In fact, the idea of Indonesia only emerged in the early 20th century.  Prior to this the only thing really uniting the peoples of the thousands of islands was a history of domination by the Dutch.  There had never been any coherent state that had ruled over all of the islands (though history records a number of kingdoms that were fairly expansive; read about them here and here).  

Map from Wikipedia.

Hence for most of history the conduct of social, political, and economic affairs in most parts of what is now Indonesia was primarily a local endeavor, with individual villages, village federations, and sometimes larger chiefdoms exercising relatively independent sovereignty over governance and social organization.  In other words, politics, economic activity, and culture were more or less local concerns, and thus codes of social organization emerged out of fairly specific geographic circumstances.  As you might expect this circumstances gave rise to a significant amount of geographic variation in terms of the way villages were run, resources managed, and people governed.  The term adat has come to encompass these locally-rooted systems of social organization, but as we shall come to see, hammering down an exact and satisfactory definition, or even translation, for the term is easier said than done.  Let's look at a couple of examples.       

Two of the foremost scholars of Minangkabau adat in West Sumatra not that "adat in Indonesia has become a generic term to indicate an often undifferentiated whole constituted by the morality, customs, and legal institutions of ethnic or territorial groups" (von Benda-Beckmann and von Benda-Beckmann 2011:168).  They also note that before the arrival of outside religions (Islam, Christianity, etc), adat also covered cosmology and cosmogony (and in some places it still does).  This is a really interesting definition for a couple of reasons.  First, they point out that adat encompasses "morality, customs, and legal institutions".  If we compare this to social organization in the US, for example, we can see some important contrasts.  In the US we find very well codified legal institutions, along with clear procedures for operating and changing them.  However, we often think of morality and customs as separate from the law (though many laws are based on moral assumptions), and for many of us our spiritual view of the universe comes from an organized religion, and our morality is rooted in the religious view as well (1).  At the same time, a clear separation between church and state is a fundamental precept of the political and administrative foundation of the United States.  In other words, cosmology and morality are understood by most to be in a separate societal sphere from governance.  But according to this definition of adat, all three of these elements are part of a complex tapestry comprising the social fabric (ha!). 

Other concepts of adat include Tyson's (2010:1), who explains that "adat is a fluid, contingent concept encompassing a wide range of customs and traditions unique to each of Indonesia's major ethnic groups".  In a seminal collection Henley and Davidson (2007:3) write that adat "is a complex of rights and obligations which ties together three things--history, land, and law-- in a way that appears rather specific to Indonesia".  From this definition adat seems to resemble a sort of social contract or compact, which is a familiar concept to anyone that's taken a class in the history of Western political thought.  The Lockean "social contract" is a cornerstone of our socio-political organization in the US and many other places that have modeled their constitutions and legal systems on those of the US.  However the striking thing here is that the social compact is rooted in very specific local contexts; its terms of reference are downward rather than upward.  In other words, the social contract exist between members of a community rather than a nation, which to me suggests different relationships and obligations between people.   

So we can see that there are different definitions of what adat actually is.  We also often come across the term masyarakat adat, which is sometimes translated as "indigenous people", but which I prefer to translate as "customary communities" (or better still, "adat communities").  This term refers to groups of people that have adat systems, but it too is a fairly contentious concept.  But for a definition of masyarakat adat I'll refer to AMAN, the Indonesian Alliance of Adat Communities (Aliansi Masyarakat Adat Nusantara), an important and influential non-governmental organization (NGO) in Indonesia: "a group of people who, based on ancestral origin, live in a specific geographic area, have a distinct value and sociocultural system, sovereignty over their land and natural resources and control and take care of their survival by means of customary laws and institutions".  

Lastly we have a more legal definition of another term, hukum adat ("adat law"), which also appears frequently.  This definition comes from Supomo, whom we'll learn more about below: "Adat law is a non-statutory law which is mainly customary law and, for a small part, Muslim law.  It also includes case law, viz. decisions of the judge containing legal principles in the milieu in which he delivers judgment.  Adat law is deeply rooted in traditional culture.  It is a living law because it expresses the actual feeling for the law of the people.  In accordance with its very nature, adat law is permanently growing and developing like life itself" (Supomo 1953: 218-9). 

Hmmm.  Lots of different definitions referring to different things.  You can probably understand why this is such a contentious issue.  In the next section we'll look at how the colonial government used the concept of adat.   

The Construction of Adat...

"What was termed customary law could therefore not be considered timeless, precolonial local law, and despite the assertion of an unbroken continuity, actors have actualized, invented, or reinvented 'traditional' legal forms..."  von Benda-Beckmann and von Benda-Beckmann, 2011:169.    

Today most people in Indonesia have a fairly definite mental image of what the term adat refers to and can describe a number of perceived characteristics of masyarakat adat.  Many would probably even tell you that adat is a unique and distinctive characteristic of Indonesia, and that the existence of many variations of adat are part of the special identity of the expansive archipelago.  Part of this image of adat is that it is old, predating the Dutch colonial era.  However, the term adat law was first applied in 1893, and it only became a subject of scholarly scrutiny around the turn of the 20th century (Fasseur 2007).  Prior to this the Dutch colonial apparatus exhibited little if any official curiosity about the details of traditional social organization.  Rather, customary legal institutions had utility insofar as they facilitated the colonizer's strategy of indirect rule on the "outer islands", whereby they "fostered mediating institutions, adat chiefs and adat councils, enhancing the position of elites in the process" (Li 2001: 658; see Galizia 1996 for an excellent account of the relationship between Rejang elites and the colonial establishment).  In other words, in exchange for support and preferential treatment from the Dutch colonial apparatus, local leaders served as de facto representatives for the colonizers.   

The Dutch colonial concern for local custom arose out of changing sentiments about the nature of the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized.  Around 1870 the idea that the Dutch had the responsibility to "improve" the lot of the natives of the East Indies became popular, and from this arose what's come to be known as the "Liberal Policy".  For advocates of the Liberal Policy, their native wards needed to be modernized, and the best way to do this was to create the conditions necessary for free markets to operate.  But then around 1900 the colonial zeitgeist changed again as a new monarch was installed.  The new thinking, which gave rise to the "Ethical Policy", held that the natives needed to be civilized and educated in a western mold.  If it sounds terribly condescending and even racist that's because it is, but in the spirit of the times this was a common perception, not just among the Dutch, but for all colonial powers administering overseas possessions, including the United States.  To the colonizers, local custom, and especially local law, was an impediment to the modernization and civilization processes, and so there was a movement within the Dutch parliament and colonial administration to impose a unified law code over the entire colony.  This code would replace any indigenous law, and would theoretically provide a certain and stable legal environment, which was thought to be a prerequisite for investment and economic development.  The movement to pass this unified code gained momentum in the early decades of the 20th century.  

At the same time, local communities and their customs were drawing unprecedented interest from scholars in the Netherlands.  Perhaps the most influential person in the emergence of adat as a recognized category worthy of study was a Dutch scholar named Cornelis van Vollenhoven (1874-1933), who pioneered ethnographic study of local communities in the Netherlands East Indies (NEI) after earning his doctorate and being appointed to the newly-created chair of native law at Leiden University in Holland (2).  Van Vollenhoven was extremely influential as a champion for the recognition of adat as a legitimate form of social organization, supervising numerous dissertations during his three-decade tenure at Leiden, where many colonial administrators as well as future Indonesia nationalists studied law (3).  Van Vollenhoven would eventually classify all adat systems into 19 general adat law areas (adatrechtskringen) based on kinship systems and village organization.  

Van Vollenhoven has been accused of "essentializing" adat, or simplifying and generalizing it.  Perhaps out of ignorance, perhaps because circumstances dictated it, van Vollenhoven created an understandable, legible catalog of adat, boiling it all down to questions of law.  Jaspan (1965:253) notes that "before van Volenhoven and his school began codifying what to Western jurists appeared to be the juridical aspects of native custom, adat law was not a separate and independent entity, but was in most cases intertwined with the history, mythology, and institutional charters...of each ethnic or cultural unit".  Van Vollenhoven's immediate goal was to defeat the draft law that would impose the aforementioned unified legal system on all local communities throughout the NEI in order to protect common property regimes against business interests and the colonial government (Henley and Davidson 2007, Burns 2004).  One of van Vollenhoven's central observations was that a system of community property existed among most adat communities in which an area of land was held in common by all the members of the village unit.  He called this beschikkingsrecht, but now the Minang term hak ulayat is commonly applied.  Members of the community could gather forest products or graze animals depending on the characteristics of the land, but the rules were part of the overall adat framework.  Moreover, one common feature was that land could be opened up for cultivation by members of the community, and as long as the land was under cultivation the person that opened it up had the right of avail.  However, if the land was left idle for a certain period of time (determined by local adat rules), it reverted back to the community.  

Van Vollenhoven was ultimately successful in convincing enough members of the legislature in the Netherlands to vote down the law, and so it was never implemented.  Van Vollenhoven died in 1933, just as the world was entering the deepest depths of the Great Depression.  Then in 1942 the Dutch would be expelled from their colony by the invading Japanese, and even after the Japanese were defeated the Dutch never regained possession of the NEI.  

So...

So we've seen an interesting progression here.  At first, adat was of no interest to anyone outside local communities, but for them it was essentially the rules of life.  Then in the late colonial era, thanks to the efforts of van Vollenhoven and his students, adat is codified and cataloged, but at this point it becomes expressed in terms of law, as a kind of indigenous, local analogue for western law, but incompatible with it.  But if we refer back to the definitions of adat I quoted in the second section of this article, adat seems to be much more than a mere code of laws.  Thus something must have happened between van Vollenhoven's time and the present day, some sort of adat awareness raising, or maybe even a revival!  In the next post we'll continue the story of the lives of adat in Indonesia.  

Notes

(1)  I'm not suggesting here that morality is dependent on the practice of an organized religion, so settle down.

(2) He changed the emphasis of study of this chair from Islamic law to customary law in Indonesia, which would have lasting implications for ethnographic study in Indonesia....for an excellent exegesis see Gibson 2000.

(3)  Supomo, who would go on to write Indonesia's Constitution, was a student of Van Vollenhoven's

References and for further reading

von Benda-Beckmann, Franz, Keebet von Benda-Beckmann.  2011.  Myths and Stereotypes about Adat Law: A Reassessment of Van Vollenhoven in the light of current struggles over adat law in Indonesia.  Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 167: 2-3 pp167-195.

Burns, Peter.  2004.  The Leiden Legacy: Concepts of Law in Indonesia.  Leiden, Netherlands: KITLV Press.  307pp.  

Davidson, Jamie and David Henley.  2007.  The Revival of Tradition in Indonesian Politics: The Deployment of Adat from Colonialism to Indignism.  Abindon, UK: Routledge.  377pp.

Fasseur, C.  2007.  Colonial Dilemma: Van Vollenhoven and the struggle between adat law and Western Law in Indonesia.  Ch 2, pp50-67 in The Revival of Tradition in Indonesian Politics: The Deployment of Adat from Colonialism to Indigenism.  Jamie Davidson and David Henley, editors.  Abindon, UK: Routledge.  377pp.  

Galizia, Michele.  1996.  Village Institutions after the Law no 5/1979 on Village Administration: The Case of Rejang-Lebong in South-Western Sumatra.  Archipel 51:1 pp135-160

Gibson, Thomas.  Islam and the Spirit Cults in New Order Indonesia: Global Flows vs. Local Knowledge.  Indonesia 69, pp41-70

Jaspan, Mervyn. 1965. In Quest of a New Law: The Perplexity of Legal Syncretism in Indonesia.  Comparative Studies in Society and History 7:3 pp252-266.

Li, Tanya Murray.  2001.  Masyarakat Adat, Difference, and the Limits of Recognition in Indonesia's Forest Zone.  Modern Asian Studies 35:3 pp645-76

Supomo, R.  1953.  The Future of Adat Law in the Reconstruction of Indonesia.  pp217-235 in Southeast Asia in the Coming World.  Edited by Philip W. Thayer.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.  306pp.

Tyson, Adam.  2010.  Decentralization and Adat Revivalism in Indonesia: The Politics of Becoming Indigenous.  Abingdon, UK: Routledge.  210pp.  

Upcoming Publications...

As I mentioned a couple of months ago, I've been posting less frequently because I have been focusing on finishing up my dissertation and on writing articles for scholarly journals.  The past few months have been quite productive for me, and I've been fortunate enough to have had several articles accepted through peer-review.  These articles will appear soon in several journals.  Below I've included publication information along with abstracts.  If you are interested in reading any of these articles, please contact me though this blog's email.

Thanks for reading, and I'll be making at least one or two posts later this month on customary law in Indonesia.

1.  Bettinger, Keith Andrew.  IN PRESS.  "Death by 1,000 Cuts: Road Politics at Sumatra's Kerinci Seblat National Park.  Conservation and Society.

Abstract: This paper examines how decentralization reforms have led to an increase in road proposals in the districts around Sumatra's Kerinci Seblat National Park (KSNP). Roads through the park, which is still under the authority of the central government, are illegal, but the newly empowered districts argue that the park's existence is an unfair obstacle to regional economic development, and that the roads would aid in the improvement of the local economies. The article examines Sumatra's extractive economy in a historical context, arguing that past economic patterns have helped to shape the conflicts over access to resources at KSNP. District elites are attempting to maximize their access to and benefits from natural resources using a variety of strategies to push for the construction of roads through the park. Three case studies illustrate discursive and strategic practices utilized by district elites to gain support for roads. These strategies include the discursive construction of a new district geographic identity, the use of formal powers to encourage informal and illegal activities, and the formation of ad-hoc coalitions across scales.

2.  Bettinger, Keith Andrew.  IN PRESS.  "The Secret Valley Divided: Administrative Proliferation in Kerinci Valley, Jambi Province, Sumatra, Indonesia".  Journal of Rural Indonesia.

After the fall of president Suharto Indonesia implemented sweeping decentralization reforms with the goal of rebalancing powers and responsibilities between the central government and the regions.  Among the raft of new laws was legislation that allowed for increased proliferation (pemekaran) at the district/municipality and provincial level.  In theory administrative proliferation would increase citizen participation and efficiency in governance.  After 12 years the number of districts in Indonesia has nearly doubled, but there are indications that the performance of new regions is not living up to expectations.  This paper examines one case: the creation of the administrative municipality of Sungai Penuh, which was split off from Kerinci District, Jambi Province, Sumatra, in 2009.  I find that the process of new region creation in Kerinci has been dominated by local elites and has actually decreased unity within the district and has given rise to a movement to further sub-divide the district.  The implementation of pemekaran created new tensions, and very likely will undermine the medium and long-term prospects for development in the region.

3.  Bettinger, Keith Andrew.  ACCEPTED.  "Puncak Andalas: Functional Regions, Territorial Coalitions, and the Unlikely Story of One Would-Be Province".  Indonesia.

This paper examines an under-the-radar campaign to establish a new province on Sumatra from pieces of three existing provinces (Bengkulu, West Sumatra, Jambi).  Previous scholarship has shown that proposals for new provinces in Indonesia generally revolve around identity politics or territorial coalitions.  I describe in this essay the territorial coalition supporting Puncak Andalas province while arguing that there is another important factor: the existence of a coherent formal or functional regional identity.   The proposed Puncak Andalas province differs from other cases in that there is no ethnic or religious marginalization, nor has the area ever been united as a discrete political, cultural, or economic region.  Therefore the territorial coalition must create a regional identity.  Moreover, every other province created since the fall of Suharto, as well as all of the potential provinces currently being deliberated by the Ministry of Home Affairs have been or would be formed from a single "mother province".  Thus the case of Puncak Andalas reveals a novel strategy for provincial formation.  Although this new strategy faces unique challenges, if successful Puncak Andalas province could serve as a template for a flood of new proposals to carve provinces out of hitherto unconnected corners of existing provinces.  This paper describes an incremental long term strategy utilized by local elites to mobilize support for intervening goals, each of which is easier to achieve than the formation of a new province, but each of which makes the goal of provincial formation more realistic.  This chain of events has unwittingly been set in motion by Indonesia's decentralization and democratization reforms.  However, while local elites pursue this strategy to increase their prestige and rent-seeking opportunities, they reify and thus render intractable the marginalization of already peripheral groups through the formation of relatively poor administrative regions.  Now that the moratorium on new districts and provinces has apparently lapsed, initiatives to establish new regions will undoubtedly gain renewed momentum.  This analysis adds to our overall understanding of the processes and politics of new region formation. 

4.  Bettinger, Keith Andrew.  ACCEPTED.  "Political Contestation, Resource Control and Conservation in an Era of Decentralization in and around Indonesia's Kerinci Seblat National Park".  Asia-Pacific Viewpoint.

This paper examines the direct and indirect impacts of Indonesia's decentralization reforms on national park-based conservation using Sumatra's Kerinci Seblat National Park (KSNP) as a case study.  Though in the years immediately following the fall of president Suharto there were significant spikes in illegal logging in parks throughout Indonesia, this uptick was the result of opportunism stemming from the confused nature of decentralization.  Illegal logging has since decreased but now new stresses to parks have emerged.  This paper examines three intersections of decentralized politics at the district level and national park-based conservation.  These three intersections are tied to key laws passed after the fall of Suharto and are manifested in conflicts stemming from administrative proliferation, road construction, and center-periphery struggles over the control of state resources.  This paper ties these legacies of unfinished decentralization to increased levels of encroachment at KSNP.  Fifteen years after the end of Suharto's authoritarian Orde Baru, these intersections represent unanswered questions about the extent of decentralization which threaten to undermine Indonesia's protected areas.  

2020 Vision: Shocking News Regarding Indonesia's Climate Future

Last week one of the most highly-regarded scientific journals in the world, Nature, published an article based on research conducted by my good friends and colleagues in the Department of Geography at the University of Hawai'i.  The study, which uses projections from dozens of climate models to predict dates for the onset of "climate departure", is particularly noteworthy for Indonesia, because it projects the archipelago will experience climate departure sooner than any other place on the planet.  The date for Jakarta is 2029, and it's even early for Manokwari in Papua, which is projected to experience "climate departure".  In this post I'll discuss the study and what its findings mean for Indonesia.

First of all, it's important to understand what is meant by the term "climate departure".  The researchers used historical temperature data from all over the world to create a special kind of digital map that shows trends in temperature for the past 150 years.  On their map of the world they created a grid with more than 800 cells, each with maximum and minimum temperatures.  Next they used projections on future climate generated by very sophisticated computer climate models.  These are the same models that are used by  the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in their periodic reports that summarize current knowledge and research on the effects of anthropogenic global warming and climate change.

Courtesy of Abby Frazier and Mora et al.  

Next the team used the maximum temperature from the last 150 years as a baseline.  Then they looked at the projections of future climate change and compared them against the historical maximum.  As you can see from the example graph for Hawai'i, the average temperature is increasing and will continue to increase into the future.  The research team noted the year in which the projected average temperature increased permanently beyond the historical maximum as the year for permanent "climate departure".  In other words, after the year 2020, the coldest year in Manokwari will be hotter than the hottest year ever recorded.  As shocking as the study's findings are, they are all the more frightening for Indonesia because that country will experience permanent climate departure sooner than virtually every other location on the planet.  In general the study indicates that places in the tropics will experience climate departure sooner than places outside the tropics.

Note the historical maximum temperature.  

For Indonesia global warming is nothing new.  The country has been dealing with the effects of climate change for years now.  These effects include later onset of monsoon rains, which are crucial for agriculture.  Changes in seasonal cycles hit farmers hard because it makes it difficult for them to know when to plant their crops.  Moreover, if the rainy season gets shorter, which has happened in many places throughout Indonesia, rain gets concentrated over a shorter period of time, which means more floods.  Moreover, rainfall has become much more variable, and so unexpected droughts have become a common occurrence.  The permanent climate departure indicated by the UH study means that these periodic perturbations will the new normal.  In addition, yields of important staple crops will decrease.  A 2011 study conducted by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines indicates that every one-degree increase in minimum temperatures decreases rice yields by 10%.  Rice is the single most important food for the vast majority of Indonesians, and so lower yields will increase prices.  Other global warming-related changes will include stronger and more frequent El Nino events, which exacerbate during or flooding trends.  Warmer temperatures are also expected to lead to increased malaria and dengue fever.  And all of these impacts will fall disproportionately on the poor.

This is a big deal in Indonesia, where according to World Bank figures 43% of the population, or more than 100 million people, live on less than US$2 per day.  A significant portion of the population (the exact percentage varies significantly from province to province) earns their living from agriculture.  Thus lower yields and higher prices affect agricultural workers in two ways: first they are able to grow less, and second it costs more to buy food.  This overall inflation of food prices threatens to undermine the impressive progress Indonesia has made fighting poverty over the decades.

Global warming is also affecting fishing, both at the artisanal and industrial scales.  As a 17,000 island archipelago, fishing has traditionally been very important in Indonesia and many people make their living from the sea.  However, studies (For example, see Cheung et al 2010 in the references) have shown that the effects of global warming have been felt in tropical fisheries, and patterns of displacement and decreased productivity will continue into the future, paralleling increased global average temperatures.  One study suggests that catch potential will increase by as much as 40% in the Indonesian exclusive economic zone (EEZ).  Many fish and invertebrate species have a tendency to shift their distributions in response to climate change, and generally they move towards higher latitudes, away from the equator.

The situation is dire for Planet Earth, but even more so for tropical countries like Indonesia.  However, there might be a silver lining for the expansive island state.  Due to annual forest burning and deforestation, Indonesia is the world's third largest emitter of greenhouse gasses.  While this fact is astonishing, it means that Indonesia can exercise some control over its climate fate.  By reducing emissions from burning and deforestation Indonesia could buy critical time that could be used for planning, adaptation, and amelioration.  In the most optimistic scenarios Indonesia could become a pioneer and leader on the world stage in developing innovative and creative ways to reduce emissions and prepare for what is to come.  As they say it's always better to act than react, and in the case of Indonesia it's all the more urgent, not only for the sake of the poor that will be hardest hit by climate change, but for the future of the country in general.  Not only will Indonesia experience climate departure sooner that countries outside the tropics, but it will also experience the onset of permanent climate change before its neighbors in the Southeast Asian region.  This means the potential loss of competitive advantage and influence, which in the long run could hinder Indonesia's economic development ambitions.

The climate story is complex and multifaceted.  The effects of climate change will be felt in Indonesia in many ways, too numerous to explain in this post.  However, the UH study shows us all we really need to know: climate change is coming, and soon.

Map courtesy of Mora et al.  

Special thanks and congratulations to the team at UH for an eye-opening research project.

References and For Further Reading

Cheung, William W.L., Vicky W. Y. Lam, Jorge L. Sarmiento, Kelly Kearney, Reg Watson, Dirk Zeller, Daniel Pauly.  2010.  Large-Scale Redistribution of maximum fisheries catch potential in the global ocean under climate change.  Global Change Biology 16:1 pp24-35.

Mora, Camilo, Abby Frazier, Ryan Longman, Rachel Dacks, Maya Walton, Eric Tong, Joseph Sanchez, Lauren Kaiser, Yuko Stender, James Anderson, Christine Ambrosino, Iria Fernandez-Silva, Louise Guiseffi, and Thomas Giambelluca.  2013.  The Projected timing of Climate Departure from Recent Variability.  Nature 502: 183-187.

Geografika Nusantara Reaches 100,000 Hits...

Wow yesterday this blog reached the 100,000 hits milestone, which is pretty neat.  I started this blog in 2010 at the suggestion of an elementary school principal who thought it might be neat for young students to be able to learn first hand about Indonesia.  For the first few months of this blog's existence, I was writing from that perspective.  Then, as I got deeper into my fieldwork, the blog evolved to become a place where I could discuss current events in Indonesia, describe life in that country, sometimes vent my frustrations from being in the field, and try out new ideas.

I haven't been posting much over the past year because I'm home from the field and am concentrating on teaching, writing my dissertation, and submitting articles to peer-reviewed journals.  But today makes me realize that this is just important; the 100,000 hits milestone makes me realize that this blog has become a useful resource for those working on Indonesia-related topics, or for people with an interest in that fascinating country.  So I'll resolve to write more here....there are a couple of current issues related to forests and national parks that are currently unfolding in Indonesia that I'd like to discuss.

So thanks to everyone that has read this blog.  I hope you've enjoyed it, and I hope it will continue to be of use to you in the future!

Indonesia Extends its Moratorium on "Deforestation"

Photo from Jakarta Globe.  Used without permission.  

Two years ago Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) signed Presidential Instruction (Inpres) 10/2011, which imposed a moratorium on the issuance of new licenses for converting primary forests and peatlands into other uses, including oil palm plantations.  Yesterday (May 15, 2013), SBY signed an extension of the moratorium which would keep it in place in its current form for an additional two years.  The original moratorium was put in place in May of 2011 as part of an agreement between the governments of Indonesia and Norway whereby the latter would provide US$1 billion to help reduce deforestation.  In return the Indonesian government would take steps to establish a nationwide conservation strategy aimed at reducing carbon emissions.  The deal was part of a commitment on the part of SBY that Indonesia, currently the #3 emitter of greenhouse gasses, would voluntarily reduce its emissions by 26% by 2020.  In this post I'll apply the tools of geography and political ecology to explain the obstacles which would need to be overcome to make the moratorium an effective policy tool.

 Has the Moratorium Been Effective?

The idea behind the moratorium is that it would give planners and policymakers time to develop better mechanisms of forest governance.  Thus the presidential instruction was directed at the heads of three ministries, five cabinet-level offices, and all of the nation's governors and district heads, since they all have a role in the granting of forest concessions.  One of the most important things to recognize about the inpres though is that it is not a legislative document; rather it is more of a strategy blueprint or set of guidelines to be followed.  Consequently there were questions as to the effectiveness of the inpres as well as its interpretation at the various levels of government.  Moreover, observers also raised questions as to how much land was actually protected by the new document.  Different estimates were released by different government offices, varying by as much as 50%.  Analysis by the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), an influential think tank, showed that a significant portion of the land covered by the map contained in the inpres was already protected in national parks and other conservation areas, and so the moratorium extended protection to a mere 22.5 million hectares of forest, rather than the 72 million claimed by the Ministry of Forestry (Murdiyarso et al 2012).  Most observers noted that the failure to include secondary forests and forests that had been logged already constituted a significant weakness, since these areas constitute more than 50% of the nation's total land area and are highly susceptible to conversion to other uses, included oil palm or fiber plantations.  

Additionally, a number of exceptions in the moratorium undermine its overall effectiveness.

From Murdiyarso et al (see references).  Used without permission.

The first exception covers applications for concessions that had already been approved by the Ministry of Forestry.  Secondly, land deemed strategically important for national projects such as geothermal and petroleum development is exempted.  These exceptions (along with a couple of others) created a significant amount of "wiggle room" and left the provisions of the moratorium open to interpretation on a number of levels. And much like the original moratorium, the current extension has drawn fire from critics.  Some of the most vociferous opposition to extending the moratorium has come from Indonesia's palm oil growers.  A major trade group, the Association of Indonesian Palm Oil Producers (GAPSI) argued that the moratorium was bad for the economy because it prevents the expansion of oil palm cultivation, which, according to the trade groups, creates jobs and brings foreign exchange.

"We firmly reject any proposal to extend this moratorium because we stand to lose more than we gain from it", said Topan, a spokesperson for GAPSI (1).

Challenges at Every Level...

To really understand why the moratorium likely won't be as effective as conservationists would hope we have to examine the actors, institutions, and processes operating at various scales.  This is a topic I've discussed in this blog in the past as well.  At the risk of oversimplification, scale refers not only to the physical location of actors and institutions, but also to the scope and extent of their power and influence (2), especially as it relates to other scales.  In this analysis I'll be discussing the global, national, regional, and individual scales as they relate to this moratorium.  These scales aren't merely nested units; they interact with one another and influence once another.  And just because one "level" might seem to be "higher" than another (e.g. the global and the regional), this does not mean that it has more influence.  It is also important to understand that these scales are not monolithic; i.e. at each scale there are lots of different interests and viewpoints, and sometimes these differing perspectives come into conflict with one another.  For example, planners and policy makers in Indonesia want to take advantage of its resource wealth to improve the lives of the nation's people.  I have described in this blog various aspects of this resource wealth, which includes mineral and petroleum deposits as well as rich volcanic soils, and so one of the easiest pathways to material improvement, at least in the short run, is through exploitation of these resources.  But at the same time there are national-scale "actors" interested in sustainable development and ensuring that the environment is not degraded and that ecosystem services are not compromised for future generations.  There is also a significant amount of corruption at the national level.  Thus we can easily see how there might be conflict in the public policy sphere at the national level.

At the global scale can think about this in terms of the wider world economy.  In the past Indonesia has used its competitive advantage in cheap labor to advance its industrial sector, but most manufacturing employment is limited to the island of Java.  The population density on Java extremely high and there is little room for agricultural expansion, and most land is fairly intensively used.  This is not the case on most of Indonesia's "outer islands", though.  Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Papua are all much less densely populated and have far greater land, which is seen as a potential resource.  Moreover, the economies of these areas are mainly based on agricultural activity.  To illustrate this I've selected four provinces on Sumatra (3) and three from Java and listed the percentage of labor employed in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors in the table below (4).  As you can see, a far greater percentage of the labor force is employed in manufacturing in the Java provinces, and much more people are employed in agriculture on Sumatra.  Not only that, but the populations of Central and West Java dwarf the populations of the Sumatran provinces, and so in terms of absolute numbers there are way more employed in manufacturing on Java.

	Agriculture	Manufacturing
Bengkulu	63.27	3.46
West Sumatra	39.3	7.39
South Sumatra	57.12	4.53
Jambi	57.95	2.57
Central Java	34	19.1
West Java	21	20.5
Banten	13.9	25.2

This is important because it illustrates diverging economic development trajectories.  Java is densely populated, heavily urban, and because land is all but used up the manufacturing and service sectors are the engines of economic growth.  Sumatra, like Kalimantan, Papua, and several other large outer islands, is rich in natural resources and still has a significant amount of land that has not been cultivated.  Thus the exploitation of natural resources as well as agricultural expansion figures prominently in economic development planning, and district and provincial governments very actively court domestic and international investors that can help extract, process, and market resources.  Unfortunately, though, much of the aforementioned land is forested, and many resource deposits (including large amounts of coal and gold) are located in national parks and other protected areas.  So there is significant pressure to convert land from forests to plantations.  Moreover, most of the commodities that are the engines of growth on the outer islands (palm oil, rubber, coal) are not for domestic consumption; rather they are produced for export, and so the dynamics of the international marketplace come into play.  For example, the Bukit Barisan mountains, which run practically the full length of the island of Sumatra, are filled with coal.  In recent years there has been a coal mining boom on the island driven in part by demand from China, which is rapidly expanding its electricity generating capacity mainly through the construction of coal-burning powerplants.  China is also driving rising demand for rubber, since the population is so large and incomes are rising.  More and more people want to buy cars, and cars need tires, which require rubber.  Lastly there is huge global demand for palm oil, which is a key ingredient in thousands of food and hygiene products.  Cheap palm oil allows for the production of cheap food and cosmetics, which are the stock and trade of "big box" chains like Walmart, Tesco, and Carrefour, which are expanding their global reach and thus driving demand.

Expanding agricultural production on the outer islands is part of a coordinated, national strategy for economic growth.  For example, in 2009 the central government introduced a plan to expand agricultural production in an effort not only to enhance food security domestically but also to increase exports.  The commodities included in the plan included corn, sugar, soybeans, rice, palm oil, tea, coffee, cocoa, tuna, and shrimp.  Several of these I've discussed previously in this blog; these are tree crops that are generally grown on large plantations on Sumatra.  The plan involved significant increases in land given over to oil palm cultivation.  More recently the heavily-publicized Master Plan for Acceleration and Expansion of Indonesian Economic Development (MP3EI), which lays out Indonesia's economic development strategy for the next quarter-century, places tree crops such as palm oil and rubber at the center of Sumatra's role in the future (intensive rubber development is indicated in areas shaded orange in the map, whereas palm oil is shaded green).

This national strategy is consistent with the interests of regional (provincial and district) leaders throughout the country as well.  As I've mentioned in previous posts, Indonesia embarked upon ambitious decentralization and democratization reforms following the fall of longtime strongman ruler Suharto in 1998.  District and provincial governments gained a great deal of power and autonomy, whereas previously they had essentially been part of a top-down, centrally-directed authoritarian system.  On the outer island regional leaders inherited two things from the previous regime: a history of overreliance on primary sector activity and relatively underdeveloped infrastructure (when compared to Java).  Thus the obvious way forward from the perspective of regional governments, is through extensification of plantation crops like rubber and palm oil and the expansion of mining activities.  The way the current system is set up, district and provincial governments get to keep a high percentage (80%) of taxes and other revenues generated from these types of activities, which provides funds for "economic development".  Although many regional governments seek to expand their manufacturing sectors, they lack the experience and expertise to develop policies to encourage growth in the industrial sector.  Moreover they are often at a disadvantage not only to other countries like China, but also to other islands (Java) within Indonesia.

Lastly, when we look at the "individual" scale we can learn a lot as well.  Individuals make land use decisions, and they vote for their leaders, and so the aspirations of individuals are important in regional (and national) elections and hence policy.  In rural Sumatra virtually everyone is in favor of oil palm expansion, even many conservationists.  They see it as a way to lift people out of poverty and improve standards of living.  If oil palm plantations are operated on the basis of equity, where local farmers and the larger plantation company have fair shares in the profits, it is argued that returns on oil palms are far greater than any other land use.  This is borne out by Feintrenie et al (2010; see references), who conducted research spanning more than a decade in several villages in the vicinity of Sumatra's Kerinci Seblat National Park.  They show farmers are very much in favor of oil palm expansion, and even when there are conflicts with oil palm companies, local farmers still prefer oil palm to other crops.  They point to two main reasons: 1) high profitability and return on investment  and 2) ease of management and less labor when compared to other crops.  These researchers also argue that oil palm has increased economic development and has brought new economic opportunities.

In the End....

So when we think about the moratorium in the grand scheme of things, we can see that there are big hurdles to success.  In the short run, at least, virtually no one in Indonesia benefits from the moratorium, and there are very strong actors and interests arrayed against it.  Thus even if the lobbying efforts of industry groups have failed to prevent the extension of the moratorium, its content and coverage has been watered down to the point where it likely will have no effect on broader currents in the agricultural sector, because these are driven by larger macroeconomic trends.  And since the moratorium is seen as contrary to the interests of regional governments and individual farmers, enforcement ad compliance is not likely to be a high priority at these levels.  But what I hope is clear from this post is that it's not greed or careless disregard for the environment and atmosphere on the part of farmers that leads to the failure and ineffectiveness of initiatives like the moratorium.  It's rather in the way the world works as actors, institutions, interests, and economic currents operating at various scales come together to drive deforestation.

Notes

(1)  Quoted in Jakarta Globe "Palm Oil Planters..."

(2)  There is a very rich and sometimes frustratingly esoteric literature on scale in geography.  Geographers now tend to accept that scale is "socially constructed", which means that scales are not pre-existing containers of human activity, but rather grow and evolve over time.  Thus the influence of a particular scale may change.  

(3)  These are the four provinces that surround Kerinci Seblat National Park, where I did my PhD fieldwork.

(4)  All of the data in this table are taken from statistical yearbooks published annually by the provinces.  The data here is from the 2012 yearbooks, with the exception of Bengkulu province, which comes from the 2010 yearbook.

References and For Further Reading

Austin, Kemen, Stuart Sheppard, and Fred Stolle.  2012.  "Indonesia's Moratorium on New Forest Concessions: Key Findings and Next Steps".  WRI Working Paper.  World Resources Institute, Washington DC.  Available online here.

Feintrenie, Laurene, Wan Kian Chong, and Patrice Levang.  2010.  "Why do Farmers Prefer Oil Palm?  Lessons Learnt from Bungo District, Indonesia".  Small-Scale Forestry 9, pp379-396.

Indonesia Pledges to 'Feed the World'.  Erwida Maulia, Jakarta Post January 30, 2010.  Available online here.

Murdiyarso, Daniel, Sonya Dewi, Deborah Lawrence, and Frances Seymour.  2012.  "Indonesia's Forest Moratorium: A Stepping Stone to Better Forest Governance?"  Bogor, Indonesia: CIFOR.  Available online here.  

Palm Oil Planters Bid to End Deforestation Moratorium.  Jakarta Globe May 10 2013.  Available online here.