Control and Conflict in the Upland

The Case Studies

This monograph attempts to explain why ethnic minorities are gradually losing their stake over forest resources despite recognition by the international community of their rights to their traditional homeland, and why the environment continues to deteriorate despite efforts of the state and ethnic communities to conserve it. It uncovers the basis of persisting conflicts between the state and ingenous peoples within the context of natural resource management through the cases of  the kasepuhan ethnic group in Gunung Halimun National Park in West java, Indonesia ; the manobo in Agusan del Sur province, Southern Philippines;and the Dao community in Hoa Binh Province, Nothern Vietnam. The case studies explore how ideologies of the resource and actors resource management system are applied within the resfective historical, cultural, political, and economic context of the three countries and localities. 

                In chapter 2, Gunawan describes how state conservation efforts have alienated physically, culturally, and ideologically the Kasepuhan ethnic group from mainstream society. He delves into the conflict between the Indonesian state and the kasepuhan stemming from their differing nations and forest management practices.

                In chapter 3, Gatmaytan explores the differences between the philippine state and The manobo ethnic minorities construction of “common property” as a tenure system. Gatmaytan ends his chapter by presenting the political, policy, and legal implications of these differences.

                In chapter 4, To Xuan Phuc illustrates the effect of change in Vietnam’s political order on the country’s resource use and management system. Under the new regime, the state has provided ethnic minorities and other local resource users with new responsibilities and roles in resource management that are intended to promote sustainability of the country’s natural resource.

                The dominant themes emerging from these case studies are culled and analyzed in the final chapter. It reflects upon the triumph of environmental populism, the contradictions wrought by romanticized formulations of indigenous people’s resource practices, the realities of market penetration of hinterlands, and the challenge of balancing the quest for justice and a fair deal for upland ethnic minorities and the need to arrive at appropriate measures to develop and preserve the natural environment.

Conflicts in Resource Use and Management

                Environment conflicts are ubiquitous and involve different actors and processes. At the local level, upland and lowlands farmers engaged in shiftting cultivation actually compete for the same plots of land along mountain slopes, as in the conflicts between the Hmong and the Khamu of the Nam Ngum Watershed in the Lao People’s Democratic  Republic. At the national level, different goverment agencies may contest land boundaries, as in the disagreement between the Forest services and the land Registration Board in the Nusa Tenggara Region of Indonesia. But as national and local economies get integrated in a globalized political and economic order, and as traditional practices of resolving conflicts break down, local level conflicts that involve site specific interactions can turn into national and global conflicts. These conflicts may range from confusion and frustation among members of a community or group, to violent clashes between competing groups.

                Conflicts between the state and ethnic minorities in Southeast Asia began when colonizers from the west extended their territorial control over the region, used its resources for the imperial countries, economic growth , and (directly or indirectly) remove the people from their ancestral land. Compounding these conflicts at present are shifting demographic and economic trends that have hastened the pace of change in the physical and social environment, heightened interest in these resources areas, and hence, intensified conflicts in resources management.           

                As region, Southeast Asia has undergone tremendous political and economic change since the 1960. Markets have emerged in previously sicialist economies. Expanding trade, invesment, and economic activities, as well as the advancement of communications technologies, have integrated the region closely with the wider global system. All these changes have had significant ramifications for the region’s natural resources and ethnic minorities, whose habitats are generally the only resource areas left to be exploited.

                Factors which include structural inequalities inherent in legal definitions of landownership and resource use, regional economic and political elites supporting commercial interests over and above the interest of local groups, longstanding ethnic and cultural differences, and contradictions between the state and ethnic minorities notions and management of the environment. These factors can be disturbed and can resurface as an indirect consequence of development pressures.

                In asserting its authority over the upland resources for reasons of national security, national identity, and national building, the state has alienated local users, especially ethnic minorities, while rationalizing and supporting the extractive activities of large scale enterprises in upland areas using it legal instruments and political machinery. Moreover, the state has established fixed borders around ancestral land which it has classified as public land.

                Confrontations between the state and ethnic minorities have tended to be hostile and violent, with the letter often on the losing end. The state’s strategies of either conserving the resources or utilizing these for economic development have been largely punitive in nature, such that these have fostered antagonistic feelings between them and the ethnic minorities concerned.