SPKS says forest-area enforcement must go beyond spatial maps, with the government urged to verify land tenure history, farmers, plot boundaries and legal status to prevent smallholders from being wrongly targeted.
PALMOILMAGAZINE, JAKARTA — The Indonesian government is being urged to go beyond administrative measures in addressing oil palm plantations located within forest areas, with a stronger focus on verifying land ownership, cultivation history, and the legal status of individual plots.
Marselinus Andri, Head of Advocacy at the Oil Palm Farmers Union (SPKS), said such verification is essential to ensure that government enforcement measures do not mistakenly target smallholders who have long depended on their plantations for their livelihoods.
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Andri made the remarks during a pre-conference webinar ahead of the Second National Conference on Smallholder Plantations, attended by PalmOilMagazine, on Friday (Sept. 4, 2026).
He said enforcement measures carried out by the Task Force for the Control of Forest Areas (Satgas PKH) have yet to fully address fundamental questions over who owns or controls the land, how the land was acquired, and what legal certainty is available to farmers who have been cultivating the plantations.
According to Andri, spatial mapping is an important starting point but should not be used as the sole basis for determining the status of community oil palm plantations.
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“The process is based only on spatial maps, followed by further processes that will be carried out,” Andri said.
Land Tenure History Must Be Verified
SPKS is calling on the government to examine the actual conditions of individual plantations, given that smallholders have different histories of land tenure.
Some plantations have been managed by families for generations, while others originated from land transactions.
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Andri cited SPKS investigations in several areas that found significant differences in land tenure histories. In Kapuas Hulu, for example, the organization identified around 259 plots covering approximately 485 hectares. In Sanggau, around 1,251 plots of land cultivated by oil palm farmers have also been affected by the Satgas PKH’s enforcement measures.
He therefore stressed that national data on plantations subject to enforcement should not be treated as though all plots share the same characteristics.
Andri also referred to publicly available data indicating around 4.1 million hectares of land under the enforcement process. However, he said verification of the entire area has yet to be completed.
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This makes identifying the farmers involved and understanding the characteristics of their land tenure increasingly important, he added.
Forest-Area Mapping Should Not Be the Final Answer
Andri said the issue of oil palm plantations inside forest areas cannot be resolved simply by determining whether a plot falls inside or outside a designated forest area based on spatial maps.
The government must also answer several fundamental questions: Who are the farmers? How long have they controlled the land? What is the history of that control? And are the plantations operated commercially or primarily to meet household livelihood needs?
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Such identification is necessary to ensure that the implementation of Constitutional Court rulings intended to protect communities living in forest areas does not instead result in policies that miss their intended targets.
Data Transparency Is Critical
SPKS is also urging the government to make enforcement data publicly accessible and transparent.
The data, it said, should contain more than aggregate figures on the total area affected. It should also identify the relevant landholders, individual plots, polygons and the legal status of each area.
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“The 4.1 million hectares figure doesn’t clearly show where the land is, who the subjects are, where the plots are, the polygons, or what their status is,” Andri said.
Greater transparency would allow communities to understand the basis for government action while providing an opportunity to raise objections and seek resolution if errors are identified.
SPKS ultimately wants forest-area enforcement to move toward a process that provides legal certainty for farmers. Verification, classification, legal-status determination and mechanisms for resolving disputes should form an integral part of the policy process rather than enforcement stopping at field-level actions.
With such an approach, the government would be better positioned to distinguish between different land-tenure circumstances and ensure that enforcement measures target activities that genuinely fall within the scope of law enforcement, while protecting the rights and livelihoods of farmers who have depended on oil palm plantations for years. (P2)
