ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the ways in which access for settlers and local peasants to the forest is mediated: through the state in form of private property, as in the transmigration programme of the 1980s; through local traditional regulations of the forest as commons; and through new forms of patronage, which turn all types of forestland into an open-access resource. It shows how the conflicts have played out in several different regions in the province of Jambi, and how in all these cases, commons are being replaced directly, by private property, or indirectly, via an open-access phase. In view of their vanishing habitat, the indigenous community claimed the right to convert the protected forest into plantations themselves and received permission from the district government to cultivate their own oil palm plantations on the margins of the Bukit Duabelas National Park. Ecosystem restoration concessions have only been introduced as forest management institutions in Indonesia.
