Kick-off Meeting Marine Tenure Initiative: Strengthening Tenure Rights, Advocating Collective Work in the Region

Makassar – The Indigenous Territory Registration Agency (BRWA), Working Group ICCAs Indonesia (WGII), and Jaring Nusa held the Kick-off Meeting of the Marine Tenure Initiative Program which took place on Saturday (27/04/2024).

This event was attended by the program implementing agencies, namely PD AMAN Lease, LMMA Indonesia, LPSDN, Blue Forest, and Japesda. It was also attended by Jaring Nusa member organizations, namely WALHI South Sulawesi and the Indonesian Marine Conservation Foundation (YKL).

Kasmita Widodo, Head of BRWA, in his speech explained that the Marine Tenure Initiative Program is a collective effort to promote tenure certainty and assurance in coastal and small island areas. According to him, so far, the focus on tenure security issues has been dominated by land areas.

"I realize we are still land-biased. Hopefully, with this process, the recognition experience in terrestrial areas can be a learning point to strengthen the data base in coastal areas."

Unlike the context on land, the coastal management regime in Indonesia has not fully recognized the marine tenure perspective and tends to prioritize management and utilization approaches of the sea as open access areas through licensing schemes. This makes it increasingly difficult for communities to manage and make decisions about their living space.

In the long term, it will impact the massive destructive activities that can reduce the function of coastal and marine ecosystems. For example, until November 2021, WALHI recorded that 2,919,870.93 hectares of coastal areas were controlled by 1,405 Mining Business Permits (IUP) and in the sea 687,999 hectares and 324 IUPs.

"In the last two years, we have been trying to make the data on coastal and small island areas visible, so we can calculate how much area is managed by the community. And what the tenure situation and sustainable tenure are," explained Kasmita Widodo. According to him, the availability and visibility of data on indigenous territories and community-managed spaces in coastal and small island areas are strengths to promote the recognition of coastal communities and their rights.

Based on the Indigenous Territory registration data at BRWA, currently about 5.6 million hectares of indigenous territories in coastal and island areas have been registered out of a total of 25.1 million hectares of indigenous territory registration.

Of the registered area, only 562,320 hectares covering 11 communities have been recognized through regional regulations or regional head decisions in coastal and marine areas.

"Through this process (MTI program), BRWA, WGII, and Jaring Nusa will facilitate what has been done. So it is not an initiative starting from 'zero'. How this project can project a shared agenda," he explained.

Strengthening Tenure Rights

Trini Pratiwi, Technical Team Asia Community Relation Advisor Marine Tenure Initiative explained that the Marine Tenure Initiative is a funding facility aimed at assisting work processes at the grassroots level and creating more best practices in the context of promoting tenure recognition in marine, coastal, and small island spaces.

Furthermore, Trini explained that the Marine Tenure Initiative program in Indonesia will be piloted for the first time for 1.5 years and in this phase, BRWA along with WGII is one of the two MTI partners in Indonesia. MTI is committed to continuing the program by involving more NGO partners and communities in the future.

"This pilot project is hoped to help us continuously improve the funding mechanism. We continue to provide open opportunities for incoming ideas," she said.

Asmar Exwar, the dynamist of Jaring Nusa, revealed that this initiative is very good for supporting agrarian reform in coastal and small island areas, where it will prioritize the aspect of tenure security within it, encompassing coastal areas including marine spaces.

"The initiatives that have been carried out by CSOs together with communities need to be enhanced so that in the future they can give birth to protection and recognition schemes for indigenous communities or community-managed areas in coastal, marine, and small island areas," he said.

Meanwhile, Cindy Julianty, from the WGII secretariat, explained that the goal of the Marine Tenure Initiative is to strengthen tenure rights, governance, and traditional knowledge.

"We are trying to synergize agendas in the regions to produce policies related to coastal, marine, and small island issues that can be utilized," she said.

She also emphasized that advocacy work done in assisted areas is able to protect their areas and manage them wisely and sustainably.

"What needs to be considered from the advocacy work is whether the scheme can prevent land grabbing processes, land use conversion for commercial purposes, for other interests that cause the loss of community tenure rights and reduce the function of community land," she explained.

WGII has registered 120 Community Managed Conservation Areas (AKKM or ICCA) with a total area of 467,667 hectares (iccas.or.id), with the potential estimate of ICCA reaching 4.2 million hectares. This practice is carried out to ensure the sustainability of ecosystems and food security for the indigenous communities themselves.

"The work of the Marine Tenure Initiative is expected to advocate collective work in the regions," Cindy explained.

In addition to the Kick-off Meeting, capacity building was also conducted in the context of implementing the Marine Tenure Initiative program in Indonesia. This activity took place from April 27 to 29, 2024.

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