Abstract
This analysis suggests important considerations for assessing social impacts of large-scale pulpwood production in Indonesia, emphasizing the extremely limited conditions under which pulp plantations may complement, rather than threaten, livelihoods of existing communities in their vicinity. Pulpwood plantations are expanding rapidly in Indonesia to feed major new pulp mills. Though officially developed on “unproductive forest lands”, pulpwood monocultures are commonly established at the expense of natural forests and indigenous agroforestry systems in Sumatra and Kalimantan. Based on a South Sumatra case study, this article analyzes how pulpwood plantations may be combined with more traditional land uses to improve livelihoods for local populations, considering the potential for “complementary” labor opportunities. This analysis is built on two assumptions: (1) village smallholder activities represent a first choice for village-based workers and smallholders, with relatively high financial returns per hectare; and (2) seasonal variations in labor requirements for village-based livelihoods open opportunities for complementary labor and land uses such as industrial plantations. Applying our model to a Sumatra case study highlights an upper limit to “complementary labor” for industrial timber plantation land use at a ratio of 5:1 (no more than 5 ha of pulpwood to each 1 ha remaining in intensified local agriculture and agroforestry). Other conditions required to minimize risks for local livelihoods include: flexible timing of company operations; priority to local employment; cautious determination of plantation sites; more transparent government licensing of plantation concessions and pulp mills recognizing local and customary land and resource rights.
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Notes
Focus on existing communities rather than new settlement and in-migration, whether planned to support plantation expansion or “spontaneous” is a central feature of this study’s approach, and a key methodological and political emphasis. This distinction is crucial in light of historic links between large-scale plantation development and state-sponsored transmigration and resettlement programs in Indonesia’s Outer Islands, and more recent privatized variants.
The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) supported field work for this case study.
In much of Sumatra, Kalimantan, and other islands where village territories have been established through histories of claims based on shifting cultivation, villages traditionally control extensive areas under customary law, but formal rights to village territory as well as titleable private or communal property registered by government authorities are usually less extensive.
Plantations’ flexibility in scheduling operations varies depending on topography, local climate, and infrastructure. In principle, after initial plantation establishment pulpwood plantation labor can be staggered throughout the year. Small-diameter pulpwood can be felled year-around, leaving logs onsite to dry before transport. This model may be refined for more or less flexible timing of plantation operations.
MHP’s managers report already trying to plan tree planting and early maintenance around constraints in local labor availability to avoid the beginning of the dry season—a busy season for village farming and agroforestry—and acknowledging local labor constraints in dealings with village representatives and labor contractors. While timber felling and transport are difficult in steep areas during the rainy season, gaining flexibility in timing field operations with repeated short rotations is an incentive for companies to invest in road improvements.
According to official data from Tanjung Agung, within the village territory in 2005 there were 350 ha of irrigated rice fields, 1,500 ha of shifting cultivation plots, and 1,650 ha of rubber, coffee, and durian gardens. With 1,189 households, this results in mean agricultural/agroforestry land use of 2.94 ha/household.
We avoid the term “underemployment” to describe these times, which are rarely equivalent to inactivity. When village adults are not tending rice fields, rubber or coffee gardens, there is still plenty of other work, including unpaid childcare, housework (cooking, home repairs, gathering fuel and water), gardening for household consumption or sale, craft production, or selling goods in towns and markets.
Other labor related considerations are also important, but this study does not address them in a formal model. These include labor contracting relationships, types of labor payments, effects of a local non-household labor market for smallholder production, and links between labor and resource tenure. A more serious limitation is that it does not formally model a broader regional labor system, or inter-regional migration for plantation employment.
The term “displaced” used here refers to effects on people and their livelihoods whether plantations expand within concession areas on land nominally controlled by the Ministry of Forestry, on contracted agricultural land (even land with official title certificates), or on land subject to tenure disputes.
The extent of such enclaves or riparian strips varies widely, as artifacts of changing forestry and land policies.
These include West Kalimantan’s Finnantara Intiga since the early 1990s. While Finnish joint venture partner Stora-Enso guaranteed community agreements, it remains unclear whether current Indonesian parent company Sinar Mas will abide by those agreements.
In Tanjung Agung, senior author calculated that in extreme cases local contractors could generate up to 25% profits on their investments in just 2 months time for a “package” of operations (from land clearing to fertilizing).These unusually high profits might be made possible by asymmetrical information between MHP and the contractor regarding actual labor needs in the field, and might not be sustainable.
See Pirard and Irland (2007) for a study on the political power and fiber supply practices of the main pulp and paper groups in Indonesia.
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Pirard, R., Mayer, J. Complementary labor opportunities in Indonesian pulpwood plantations with implications for land use. Agroforest Syst 76, 499–511 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10457-008-9141-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10457-008-9141-6