Marginalisation of Adat Communities: Intersectionality of Land Grabbing, Human Rights, Climate Adaptation, and Human Mobility in Indonesia

This chapter seeks to examine issues concerning the Adat community, a community whose very existence is based on a strong link between indigenous knowledge and the environment. It will also examine the community’s role in climate change mitigation and adaptation. The chapter addresses the problem of marginalisation of indigenous people through the intersectionality of land grabbing, fulfilment of human rights, climate adaptation, and human mobility. It uses an indigenous—local knowledge—human rights-based approach to understand the knowledge, traditions, and dynamics of the rights of indigenous people. The chapter uses the case of the Sikep and Rendu communities in Indonesia and shows that their lives as farmers doing traditional farming are very much a part of conservation efforts. And that their marginalisation because of the expansion of industries, specifically, the cement industry and various dam projects, has resulted in land grabbing and consequently, migration. In addition, the fragmentation of law and policy creates multiple vulnerabilities due to the absence of specific laws concerning the rights of indigenous people, limited legal recognition, bureaucratic-administrative nature of land registration, and the lack of meaningful participation by the indigenous people in environmental and climate policy.