TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The government has appointed WWF Indonesia as the project management office (PMO) for the establishment of the Joint Secretariat of the Agrarian and Social Forestry Reform. The establishment has been agreed through the signing of a memorandum of understanding by the secretary of Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Lukita Dinarsyah Tuwo today, Oct. 19 in Jakarta.
Lukita said with the cooperation between the Ministry and relevant institutions, the target set in the agrarian reform can be achieved effectively. “The joint secretariat is formed to expedite the agrarian reform,” he said Thursday, October 19.
According to Lukita, the agrarian reform is important as the foundation for economic equality policy programs, to narrow the land ownership gap, alleviate poverty, and create job opportunities. This is the first cooperation between the Ministry and an external party for the PMO appointment.
Lukita revealed that there are two key programs to narrow the gap, namely asset legalizations and assets distribution. “Both programs are aimed at providing accesses to forest land utilization through the social forestry program,” he said.
WWF Indonesia CEO Rizal Malik said the cooperation would help the government to improve governance and realize the social forestry, as well as to preserve forests and biodiversity.
“Indonesia is one of the countries that signed the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG),” Rizal pointed out.
Rizal added, the agrarian reform’s main focus is to legalize and redistribute assets classified as agrarian reform object lands with a total size of 9 million hectares. Of the total size, 4.5 million hectares of the land would be allocated for asset legalizations. The rest of the land would be allocated for asset redistributions.
“The government is also preparing 12.7 million hectares of land through the social forestry program,” he revealed.
Rizal explained that WWF Indonesia would help to establish communications between ministries so that the programs related to the agrarian reform would be realized.
IMAM HAMDI
