The government will give amnesty to 3.3 million hectares of illegal and violating oil palm plantations located in forest areas. The Job Creation Law is said to have provided a way to implement this policy.
Government helps with legality
“What are we going to do next? We don’t want to remove it, right? Logically, we have to whitewash it,” said Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment on June 23, 2023.
Luhut said that the land users were expected to pay taxes and comply with the laws that existed after the amnesty.
The Deputy Minister of Finance who is also the Chairperson of the Task Force on Palm Oil Management, Suahasil Nazara, said that the Job Creation Law has actually paved the way for solving the problem of palm oil plantations located in forests so that it can become legal and law-abiding. This is contained in articles 110A and 110B of the regulation.
“Therefore, we will formulate if some of the oil palm plantation areas are in forest areas, we will classify them later, whether the settlement uses article 110 A or article 110 B,” said Suahasil in the same event with Luhut.
The Task Force will later coordinate with the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to identify the land one by one. This aims to determine which article, whether 110 A or 110 B applies to each land.
The settlement of the problem of oil palm land in the forest according to the law is targeted to be completed in early November. Luhut ensured that the government would take firm steps to complete it within the deadline.
Response from WALHI
The Indonesian Forum for the Environment (WALHI), one of the environmental activists, said that the amnesty provided to illegal and violating oil palm plantations is a fast pace of forestry crime forgiveness. WALHI also argued that the policy is full of corporate and political interests.
“This is a transactional space that was deliberately created to bring together the interests of corporations and elites,” Uli Arta Siagian, WALHI National Forest and Garden Campaign Manager.
On the other hand, this mandate has the potential to help legalize areas managed by small-scale oil palm smallholders in forest areas and strengthen state provided incentives for corporations.
