Effects of State Enclosures and Industrial Concessions on Land Cover Change in Indonesia

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2021

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University of Hawaii at Manoa

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Colonial and government land claims and use have long influenced tropical land cover. However, land claim and land control research in the tropics is often not linked geospatially to land cover change and linkages are assumed but not charted. Likewise, recent land cover change analysis, when land cover changes are linked to state enclosures and industrial concessions, often lack complete datasets, or include a narrow definition of land claims. I addressed this gap by incorporating assessments of formal land control regimes into land cover change analysis, exploring 1) how government land claims and associated forest and agricultural concessions shifted formal land control since colonial times 2) how land cover changed through time 3) how large scale shifts in land control inform land cover change over time. These analyses are based in three sites in Indonesia (Nglurup and Nyawangan in East Java or Java Timur, Gersik, Sekida, and Kumba in West Kalimantan or Kalimantan Barat, and Besulutu in Southeast Sulawesi or Sulawesi Tenggara) in Indonesia with different histories of commodity development and corporate and state land acquisition and control. At each site, I digitized maps of historical concessions (e.g., lands leased by oil palm and logging companies) and government land claims and used these maps to understand current and past circumstances of formal land control. I reconstructed histories of land cover change from 1990 to 2018 by classifying Landsat satellite data. Both datasets were then analyzed relationally and comparatively to understand the linkages between historical shifts in formal land control regimes and observed land cover changes over the period 1990-2018. The site in East Java first saw the establishment of agricultural concessions in the early 1800s under the Dutch colonial regime. Ensuing land changes have often reflected changing plantation crops, but land enclosed historically continues to influence land control and cover dynamics today through formal land control boundaries and crop type. In contrast with East Java, the sites in West Kalimantan and Southeast Sulawesi have primarily experienced a growth in concession claims since the 1960s. I found that a significant portion of land converted to oil palm since 1990 has come from agroforest and forest lands in both locations, accompanied by forest regrowth in West Kalimantan and a decline in vegetable cropping and swamp cover in Southeast Sulawesi. These findings illustrate the close relationships between state land enclosures, industrial land concessions, and current trajectories of land cover change, building on studies exploring any of these dynamics in isolation.

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