ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 investigates the politics of the scale of forest and land tenure governance as the dynamic context of REDD+ implementation and agrarian conflicts in Indonesia. REDD+ and conservation initiatives are not implemented in a social and political vacuum. The chapter shows how different political regimes, re- and decentralization have facilitated the construction of sometimes competing and contradictory political scales governing access to land and forests. Recently, village governments supported by customary authorities were able to establish village scales of land and forest tenure regulation and to expand village and customary territories, overlapping with the state forest territory and with national scales of regulations. Allied with customary authorities, village governments control land, challenge the integrity of the state forest territory, and are able to resist centralized control of forest and land resources.
