Indonesian ministry resolves land conflict by preparing a new roadmap

The LUCIS method developed at the University of Florida can map potential conflicts that may occur in an area 

According to Rumah.com, Indonesia’s Ministry of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning/National Land Agency (ATR/BPN) continues to implement agrarian reform programs to remove inequality in land ownership and use, as well as accelerate land registration throughout the country.  

However, the implementation of such reform faces obstacles, including many land conflicts and disputes. Surya Tjandra, deputy minister of ATR/BPN, mentioned that one of the several factors that cause these conflicts is the insufficient one map policy.  

“Even between ministries and agencies until now, they still have different perspectives and maps, so this also often causes conflicts. Therefore, we continue to encourage the agrarian reform program and gradually develop a map for all land sectors,” he said. 

Another factor of land disputes and conflicts is the lack of orderly land administration. Surya said that there has been no plotting management or mapping of land parcels in a village, but a complete systematic land registration mechanism (PTSL) should be helpful. 

Limited budget and the number of institutions that process land certificates is an additional component that needs to be resolved immediately, to prevent the domino effect of conflicts.  

The Ministry of ATR/BPN itself has made a model of a conflict resolution strategy developed by Margaret Carr and Paul Zwick from the University of Florida.  

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The model, called the Land-Use Conflict Identification Strategy (LUCIS), is a geospatial information system-based method. It will combine spatial planning with land use knowledge to create a foundation for agrarian reform activities and agrarian conflict resolution.  

“So in the future we will emphasize prevention as well as collaboration or cooperation between institutions when managing conflicts that may occur. This is based on the need to accelerate the settlement of land cases and prevent the occurrence of repeated land cases. We are also preparing a roadmap for handling and resolving land disputes and conflicts with the University of Indonesia (UI),” explained Surya.