The government has extended the mandate of the Customary Forest Task Force until 2029. It is not an answer to the root problem.
ACCELERATING the recognition of customary forests cannot simply be achieved by creating a task force and prolonging its mandate. This issue requires the government to muster the courage to confront the underlying problems: the task force's lack of effective authority, fragmented regulations, and clashing economic and political interests that hinder progress.
In fact, the performance of the Task Force for Accelerating Customary Forest Status Recognition has reflected neither acceleration nor the urgency implied in its name. Since its establishment on March 27, 2025, until the end of its initial term, the Task Force only managed to designate 34,443 hectares of customary forest. This is a mere fraction of the government's ambitious target of recognizing 1.4 million hectares, an objective announced at the Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil.
The government’s decision to extend the task force’s mandate until 2029 was made without clear and transparent evaluations of its previous results. The government now leans heavily on strategy based on annual targets, including the plan to recognize 47 customary forests covering 261,583 hectares in 2026. On paper, these figures may look progressive. In practice, however, it does not address the deep-rooted structural obstacles that have consistently slowed the recognition process.
The first obstacle lies in the task force's institutional design. Per its current form, the task force has primarily functioned more as a forum for coordination. It has yet to demonstrate the effective authority necessary to ensure consistent, synchronized efforts across ministries and local governments.
The second obstacle is regulatory complexity, which makes the recognition process multi-layered and prone to delays. The process of recognizing a customary forest involves multiple legal steps: formal recognition of indigenous communities through regional legislation, defining forest territories and boundaries, and releasing land from areas designated as state forests. Each stage operates under a different legal framework. When one is entangled, the entire process can grind to a halt.
This challenge is magnified by a third obstacle: the uneven capacity and political will of the regional governments. Some provinces or regencies lack the necessary legal instruments, while others are confronted with a dilemma of whether to recognize indigenous rights or prioritize economies based on land exploitation.
To complicate matters further, there are overlapping claims to lands. Approximately 64.9 percent of the lands proposed to be recognized as customary forests overlap with conservation areas or commercial forestry permits. In practice, authorities often give priority to areas with the least amount of conflict, even though it limits the scale of customary forest recognition.
Bureaucratic approaches to indigenous communities introduce yet another hurdle. Social structures — such as the nagari in Minangkabau or the marga in Batak society — are not always easily translated into standardized, uniform legal forms. Proposed regulatory changes that impose stricter recognition requirements could further delay the process, adding more burden to regional governments.
Under these circumstances, the government’s ambitious target of designating millions of hectares of customary forest is at serious risk of remaining unfulfilled. Efforts to offset government budget limitations through donor support or climate finance schemes, if not carefully managed, can inadvertently shift the focus away from the primary purpose of recognition: protecting indigenous community rights and ensuring the forests' sustainability.
Therefore, what is required is not merely extending the mandate of the Customary Forest Task Force. The government must ensure the task force has effective authority, able to streamline the regulatory architecture, and has the courage to confront conflicts of interest that have impeded the recognition of customary forests.
