Punan Adiu is a village in the Malinau District, North Kalimantan Province of Indonesia. As a hunter-gatherer community, the Punan who inhabit the village rely on the forest for food, medicine, water, and much more. After decades of living on the margin of society, where they did not have rights over their territory, the community eventually obtained legal recognition to protect and manage the forest which supports all aspects of their life.
It began in 2012, when the community started participatory mapping and registered their customary land with the government through a social forestry scheme in Indonesia. In 2017, after years of deliberation and negotiation, the Malinau District Government finally granted a decree recognising and protecting the Punan Long Adiu Customary Community. The community now has full rights to protect and manage 17.415 hectares of their customary land (almost equivalent to the size of Washington, D.C., which is 17.700 hectares).
Following Adiu’s achievement, more than a dozen indigenous groups in Malinau have started to identify and register their forest with an eye to obtain legal recognition. This is no mean feat: this massive indigenous movement could potentially protect hundreds, even thousands, of hectares of pristine forest in North Kalimantan.
As a natural sanctuary, the forest has a significant role in protecting biodiversity, food supply, and reducing global emissions. A study by LTS International in 2017 estimated that 55,216 tonnes of carbon emissions reduction per year can be expected if the Adiu community avoids deforestation in their ancestral forest. Through this initiative, the Punan have proved that indigenous communities contribute significantly to tackling climate change.
What Punan Adiu has achieved is an example of how civil society and indigenous communities can come together to challenge power dynamics and influence its equilibrium in our fragile democracy for the good of all mankind. The process takes time, but the result can be transformative.
‘A land reform by leverage, on the other hand, takes time. This is a reform by which peasants, in organisations they have formed and manage, bargain with overlords or governments from strength they have already achieved. […] Only through reforms by leverage does the peasant acquire, in the long run, an equitable distribution of welfare and adequate political representation.’
