WASHINGTON D.C., July 19, 2018 – As many as 4.3 million individual and communal, public and private, land users will benefit from a new US$200 million program to support the Government of Indonesia’s robust agrarian reform. The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors, has approved the Program to Accelerate Agrarian Reform, also known as One Map Program, which will help land users obtain clarity and security of tenure and access to land and natural resources.
The program will accelerate the government’s agrarian efforts through participatory mapping, electronic land information services, and systematic and complete land registration. It will also promote the synchronization of spatial planning and decision-making across government agencies and beyond and help Indonesia meet its reduction targets of greenhouse gas emissions, two-thirds of which come from land use conversion.
“The support being provided by the World Bank will modernize our land administration system and services through the advancement of electronic Land Information System. The World Bank supports the agrarian reform program, and one its important goals is to map the regions or settlements or boundaries in Indonesia," said Sofyan A. Djalil, Minister of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning/Head of National Land Agency.
There are about 126 million fields in the country, where currently 51 million are certified. Through the Systematic and Complete Land Registration, which started in 2017, the government’s target is to register every single land parcel in Indonesia by 2025.
Fragmented and incomplete land information system hinders management and governance of land and natural resources in Indonesia. The One Map Program will allow the development of a one single map concept to manage all of the country’s land, significantly reducing these challenges.
“Agrarian reform is an important cornerstone in a country’s development. It brings clarity to land-use, access rights and licenses, ultimately helping reduce poverty rates and income gaps,” said Rodrigo A. Chaves, World Bank Country Director for Indonesia and Timor-Leste. “Indonesia is currently on track as it aims to certify and register every plot of in the country by 2025. We are extremely proud to be partners in this endeavor.”
However, several key challenges remain. The lack of consistent and field verified geospatial data at high resolution has resulted in overlapping claims, tenure uncertainty and weak land governance. The overall lack of clarity makes it difficult to enforce laws and regulations designed to sustainably manage land resources. Global experience encourages a unified system to register all lands and rights including state lands.
Target areas for the project will be provinces that are a priority for the government’s agrarian reform, also provinces prone to forest fires, driven mainly by land use conflicts. In Sumatra the provinces are Riau, Jambi and South Sumatra, while in Kalimantan they are East, Central, West and South Kalimantan provinces.
The World Bank’s support to Indonesia’s agrarian sector is a vital component of the World Bank Group’s Country Partnership Framework for Indonesia, which focuses on government priorities for transformational development impact. Global Affairs of Canada and the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade supported the preparation of this Project.
