PUBLICATIONS

Presidential Regulation No. 86 of 2018 on Agrarian Reform, issued in September 2018, provides the legal foundation for one of President Joko Widodo’s flagship programs. It aims to reduce land inequality, resolve agrarian conflicts, and strengthen food security, targeting 12.7 million hectares for social forestry and 9 million hectares for land legalization and redistribution. The regulation sets out implementation mechanisms, dispute resolution processes, and an institutional framework involving a National Agrarian Reform Team and task forces at the national and subnational levels.

While the regulation allows limited civil society participation, particularly through provincial and district task forces, agrarian reform is defined mainly through asset reform and access reform. Although environmental considerations are acknowledged, explicit environmental safeguards are absent, and critics note the lack of clear recognition of indigenous peoples as formal beneficiaries of the reform.