PALMOILMAGAZINE, JAKARTA — The government’s decision in September to temporarily suspend customary land-burning practices under local-wisdom provisions during an extreme El Niño-induced dry season has brought a long-standing and sensitive issue into sharper focus.
The Indonesian National Police said on September 7 that traditional land burning under local-wisdom provisions would be temporarily suspended because prolonged drought and extreme El Niño conditions could significantly increase the risk of fires spreading.
The policy inevitably touches the broader debate over the recognition of Indigenous and customary communities and their traditional rights. Yet the current environmental situation also demands that the issue be examined without treating either tradition or modern regulation as beyond question.
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A Flawed Assumption
The pace of deforestation and the threat of forest and land fires are increasingly intersecting with population growth and climate change. Against this backdrop, public debate can sometimes fall into a simplistic assumption: that customary law and local wisdom are inherently sacred and therefore should not be questioned, modified or replaced.
That assumption deserves closer scrutiny.
Local wisdom is not necessarily a fixed body of practices that must remain unchanged regardless of circumstances. Traditional practices emerged in particular environmental, demographic and social conditions. When those conditions change, the practices themselves may also need to adapt.
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The issue becomes particularly important when land clearing through fire is involved.
Indonesia’s environmental framework has long distinguished between the general prohibition on land clearing by burning and the limited recognition of local wisdom in certain circumstances. In August 2026, the Ministry of Environment/BPLH issued Circular Letter No. 16 of 2026 calling for a ban on land clearing by burning amid the strong El Niño conditions that had persisted since July.
This raises a straightforward policy question: should a practice remain protected simply because it is traditional when the environmental conditions that once made it manageable have fundamentally changed?
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Fire does not distinguish between customary territory and surrounding settlements once it escapes control. Smoke likewise does not respect administrative or customary boundaries.
That reality should encourage a broader reassessment of customary rights, communal land rights and the practices associated with customary law.
Protecting culture and customary communities is an important constitutional principle. Article 18B(2) of the 1945 Constitution recognizes and respects customary-law communities and their traditional rights, provided they remain in existence and are consistent with societal development and the principles of the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia, as regulated by law.
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But constitutional recognition should not be interpreted as freezing every traditional practice in time.
There is therefore a case for de-sacralizing and de-dogmatizing local wisdom. This does not mean abandoning customary culture. Rather, it means distinguishing between cultural and spiritual values that deserve protection and technical practices that should remain open to scientific evaluation.
Local wisdom is better understood as a form of human adaptation to particular circumstances, rather than as an immutable doctrine.
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A land-clearing technique that may have carried manageable risks when rainfall patterns were more predictable, populations were smaller and surrounding vegetation conditions were different can carry substantially greater risks under prolonged drought and extreme climate variability.
This is where both academics and policymakers need to be willing to make distinctions: preserve the cultural values that contribute positively to ecological stewardship while reconsidering traditional practices whose environmental risks have become unacceptable.
Practices that are no longer appropriate do not necessarily need to be erased from cultural history. They can be documented and preserved as part of a community’s heritage without necessarily being applied in the same form today.
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The Legal Framework
This reassessment should also be accompanied by a review of the legal framework governing customary practices.
Parliament and the government need to ensure that regulations concerning customary communities, land rights and environmental protection are coherent and mutually consistent. This includes alignment with Indonesia’s Environmental Protection and Management Law, while avoiding fragmented sectoral rules that could create conflicting obligations.
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The broader legal literature also treats customary law as dynamic rather than frozen. The concept of living law, for example, recognizes that law can develop alongside changes in society.
Indonesia’s constitutional framework itself places conditions on the recognition of customary communities and their traditional rights. Article 18B(2) requires that such communities remain alive and that their rights be consistent with societal development and the principles of the Republic.
That constitutional language is important.
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Recognition of customary rights is therefore not necessarily equivalent to unconditional recognition of every practice historically associated with those communities.
The same principle can be applied to communal or ulayat rights. Academic work by Prof. Maria S.W. Sumardjono has emphasized the need to harmonize the various legal regimes governing land, natural resources and customary rights. Her work describes Indonesian agrarian law as an area where state law and customary norms interact, sometimes producing overlapping or inconsistent regulations.
More recently, Sumardjono has continued to participate in national discussions on customary land rights and agrarian reform, including discussions in the DPR in September 2026 concerning possible restitution mechanisms for customary communities.
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This illustrates an important distinction: protecting customary rights and reviewing particular customary practices are not necessarily contradictory objectives.
Where a traditional practice creates substantial risks to public health or environmental safety, the regulatory response should focus on the specific practice and its measurable impacts rather than treating customary communities themselves as the problem.
The principle often expressed through the Latin maxim Salus Populi Suprema Lex Esto — the safety or welfare of the people as the highest law — can provide one useful lens for this discussion. The principle is used in Indonesian legal discourse, although its precise legal status and application should not be confused with a statutory rule.
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Adaptation
Global warming, population growth, modernization and changing economic needs require societies to continuously adapt.
Adaptation does not mean rejecting tradition. It means examining which values remain relevant and beneficial and which practices need to change in response to new circumstances and evidence.
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This is why customary law and traditional local wisdom should be open to de-sacralization and rational reassessment.
The objective should not be to replace local wisdom with a purely state-driven model. Instead, Indonesia needs to develop a new generation of local wisdom that combines cultural knowledge, community experience and contemporary environmental science.
The resulting practices should benefit not only the communities that developed them but also the wider public and the environment.
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For that reason, the debate triggered by the government’s temporary suspension of customary burning practices should not disappear as another short-lived policy controversy.
It offers an opportunity for Indonesia to address a more fundamental question: how can the country protect cultural heritage while ensuring that traditional practices remain compatible with environmental science, changing climate conditions and public safety?
Respect for culture is not necessarily measured by preserving every practice unchanged. It can also be demonstrated by having the courage to distinguish between heritage that should be maintained and practices whose application needs to be reconsidered.
This applies not only to land clearing by fire, but also to customary rules and traditional practices concerning land rights, natural-resource management and other areas that intersect with Indonesia’s modern legal system.
The challenge is therefore not to choose between tradition and modernity.
It is to allow tradition to evolve without losing its cultural meaning — while ensuring that the protection of customary rights remains compatible with the wider responsibility to protect people, ecosystems and future generations. (*)
By Edi Suhardi / Sustainability Analyst
