Custom,
Capitalism and Conflict: Agricultural Development on Customary Land in
Sarawak, Malaysia Customary land tenure in Sarawak, Malaysia, involves a mix of private and common property rights administered by local communities within extensive territorial domains. Though the state has always claimed ultimate ownership of customary land, the system of community-based, customary tenure has been allowed in the past to function more or less autonomously. This has fostered a diversified and reasonably productive rural economy based on upland rice, rubber, and pepper. Since 1981 the Sarawak Government has sought to promote large-scale plantation development throughout the state, particularly for oil palm and Acacia mangium, implemented by public land development agencies and private plantation companies. This has involved legislative and policy changes to attenuate customary rights to land, in particular by undermining the notion of the community territorial domain, and to allocate private property rights to capitalist firms in the form of long-term provisional leases. The result has been an increase in the area of private oil palm plantations from 4,000 ha in 1980 to 275,000 ha in 2000. However, 40% of this area was subject to claims by customary landholders, many of whom had initiated protests, blockades, and legal proceedings. In 2001 the High Court ruled in favour of one such community, arguing that the customary rights to its territorial domain had not been extinguished by the issuing of a lease to a plantation company. This landmark decision calls into question the attempt to attenuate customary land rights and points to the need for more collaborative institutional arrangements for the development of customary land. Rob
Cramb
is Reader in Agricultural & Resource Economics at the University of
Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. His research focuses on the institutional
arrangements affecting agricultural development and natural resource management
in marginal upland areas of Southeast Asia. He is currently working on
a monograph (Land, Longhouse and Livelihood: Rural Transformation in the
Uplands of Sarawak) and an evaluation of the role of social capital and
collective action in the adoption of conservation farming in the Philippines. |