The relationship between forest conversion and inequality of land ownership, and the factors responsible for increasing the inequality in Sumatran rubber villages, Indonesia

Abstract

In Indonesia, the main factor behind forest clearance has been agricultural expansion, especially that of cash tree crops such as rubber and oil palm. This paper aims to clarify if forest loss due to conversion to rubber makes local people's poverty worse. We examine first, the relationship between the conversion of tropical forests to rubber and inequality of the local people's rubber field holdings and, second, the impact of land acquisition methods and the buying and selling of land on land ownership inequality, based on surveys of 160 randomly selected households in four rubber villages in Jambi Province, Sumatra. Data analyses suggest the following: 1) According to Lorenz curves for the area of rubber fields held by each village, the inequality of the villages' rubber field holdings increased according to the advance of forest conversion to rubber and that it continued to increase even after the forests had been completely converted and disappeared. 2) While forest-clearing was the main method of acquiring land while forests remained, rubber field expansion by purchase and intergenerational transfer increased as forest conversion advanced. 3) In the villages where the forests had disappeared, ownership of the villagers' land has steadily transferred to the rubber collectors through buying and selling and, as a result, land ownership inequality greatly increased such that a few exceptionally large rubber field holders appeared while many villagers became petty farmers.