Study puts a figure to hidden cost of community-company conflict in palm oil industry

JAKARTA — It took Yando Zakaria, an Indonesian anthropologist, four hours to convince the embattled Suku Anak Dalam tribe to get involved in his study last year on the cost of social conflicts in the palm oil industry. The study was commissioned by the Indonesia Business Council for Sustainable Development (IBCSD), and aimed to calculate the costs of social conflicts incurred by local communities as a result of the palm oil industry’s expansion. The indigenous Suku Anak Dalam community would have provided a textbook example of this complex issue: it’s been fighting for its land rights in Jambi province against the palm oil company PT Asiatic Persada for more than three decades now. But it rejected Yando’s request at first, telling him to go home. “I’ve been a researcher for 35 years, but that was the first time I was told to go home,” Yando said on the sidelines of a recent presentation of his study in Jakarta. “They told me that if my study didn’t help them, then it’s better for me to go home.” The Suku Anak Dalam’s rejection, which they eventually reversed, made him realize how the tribe had suffered so much to the point that they became hostile toward outsiders. The tribespeople have long been subjected to intimidation and discrimination to force them off their ancestral land, coveted for oil palm plantations. In 2014, a member of the tribe was killed and five others were injured during a clash with Asiatic Persada’s security forces. Repeated mediation…

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