From ecological to political buffer zone: ethnic politics and forest encroachment in Upland Central Sulawesi

Abstract

This paper discusses inter-ethnic relations and patterns of land-use and landownership, and how ethnicity is defined, used to grant preference, and to allocate socio-economic resources, by analysing two forest-margin villages in Sulawesi.

The heavy influx of migrants has altered the proportion of local people to migrants in Sintuwu and Watumaeta, villages located on the eastern border of Lore Lindu National Park. In 2001, there were over one-third households of Bugis — the largest group of ethnic migrants. Social distance, inability to adapt and unwillingness to integrate (Charras 1993, Human Rights Watch 1998) were indicated by house-clustering of the ethnic groups.

As most agricultural land inside the village has been sold to migrants, mainly to Bugis, the locals have been transformed from landlords to landless, while the migrants became landlords. In a land-based economy, land scarcity leads to declining socio-economic security. Social destabilization occurs as ethnic frictions result from this shift in resource control.

To gain back their economic power and socio-economic security, locals adopted a strategy of land expansion into ecological buffer zone areas. By outsiders, particularly the State, this is viewed as an encroachment into the national park forest, while to locals this is an attempt to re-secure their economic base. Locals justified their actions by disputing the park boundaries. Subsequently their “illegal” actions were accepted and formalized when they received usufruct rights in the form of SKPL (Letter of Land Utilization) issued by the village head and KKM (Community Conservation Agreement), as was made by the Village Council with Lore Lindu National Park administrators.

Land expansion is also an attempt to re-stabilize relationship between locals and migrants in the face of ethnic conflict. The economic buffer zone has become a socio-political buffer that prevents local tensions from becoming open conflicts. In the absence of ethnic politics at national level, this local innovation in ethnic politics is a means to neutralize destabilization of interethnic relations. Such innovation, however, cannot go on endlessly, for once formalized the locals’ new economic space will most likely be taken over by the migrants, leading to a vicious circle of forest margin destabilization.

The implication of this is the need for a land-use modeling that accounts for social constraints of inter-ethnic relations and land-use systems. Encroachment is not only perceived as an economic action, but also as a political action, as forest has not only economic value, but is also an arena of ethno-political action. Disregarding this reality can trigger, and at times has triggered, ethnic conflicts.