Introduction

Since 2010, rapid oil palm expansion has threatened biodiversity, the livelihoods of Indigenous Papuans, and the last frontier of intact rainforest in Indonesia. Tanah Papua (Indonesian Papua) lost 220,644 hectares (ha) of forest between 2001 and 2019 (Gaveau et al. 2021). As of 2023, it was still home to 34 million ha, or 42 percent of Indonesia’s remaining forests (MoEF 2024).

The government’s capacity to oversee and manage oil palm companies is limited and has not kept pace with the industry’s massive expansion. Between 2010 and 2022, the land devoted to oil palm in Tanah Papua expanded by an average of approximately 12,727 ha per year (at least 20 percent annually); during the surge between 2010 and 2015, annual growth averaged 28.8 percent (Descals et al. 2024). After peaking in 2015, the annual rate of oil palm expansion slowed to an average of 4.3 percent 
in 2016–22 (Descals et al. 2024). This slowdown likely reflects a combination of factors, including falling global oil palm prices, the growing influence and popularity of conservation and sustainability policies, and struggles by Indigenous people to secure 
formal rights. 

The pace of expansion could accelerate again, however, as of 2023, companies were using just 10 percent of the 2 million ha already granted as concessions in Tanah Papua (Descals et al. 2024; West Papua Food and Estate Crops Agency 2019; Papua Development Planning Agency 2022). The current slowdown offers an opportunity to build momentum to improve governance and halt further deforestation. Oil palm plantations have burdened many Indigenous Papuans with irreversible environmental damage, tenurial conflicts, and threats to their livelihoods (Chao 2022a; Eichhorn 
2022; Acosta and Curt 2019). Many studies find no correlation between oil palm and rural development in Indonesia (Santika et al. 2019). The everyday struggles of Indigenous Papuans have prompted them to take collective action, often supported by the local government, to hold companies accountable for violating laws. 

Although a few cases have been won, many lawsuits have been stymied in court. Oil palm companies have countered allegations against them with convincing legal claims and won cases. Moreover, even if one permit is revoked, companies still have other active permits, which they use to continue operations. Even when licenses are revoked, the revocations are often overturned because of insufficient evidence presented by communities and failure to notify companies beforehand. Indeed, without systematic regulatory steps and solid evidence, revocations have rarely stood. 

For affected Indigenous communities, license review offers an opportunity to present a solid case of violations, renegotiate with companies, and avoid having to take legal action. Systematic steps and accessible data platforms are being developed to enable collaborative and legitimate action by governments and communities. They make license revocation more feasible and effective and improve oil palm governance. 

Systematic license reviews have been used to hold oil palm companies accountable. Recent evaluations by the subnational authorities in West Papua and the new provinces resulted in the government revoking oil palm licenses covering hundreds of thousands of hectares, and additional revocations are planned.

Critical gap in the process and methodology of license review remain, however. License review steps have been developed and conducted behind closed doors. The lack of procedural clarity makes it difficult to consolidate corporate records, evaluate oil palm compliance, analyze potential legal violations, and coordinate with multiple authorities. Even subnational authorities have been constrained by their limited grasp of review processes and regulations, the dearth of oil palm company data, insufficient resources for monitoring compliance, and the inability to systematically document violations for license revocation. Indigenous communities’ limited understanding of the regulatory system also makes revocation difficult. 

The region now stands at a crossroads. In 2022, Indonesia split the former Papua Province into four new provinces: Central Papua, Highland Papua, Papua Province, and the South Papua Provinces. This action adds another layer of challenges to the oil palm license review process. As the new governments adapt and grapple with their limited institutional capacity, they could face pressure from agribusiness to weaken the review processes, potentially leading to their legalizing noncompliant concessions and jeopardizing forest preservation. The new provinces can learn from the former Papua Provinces about the violations and the review process, then take immediate action based on complete oil palm license datasets. Data-driven evaluations can help fill this institutional capacity gap. 
 

Key Findings

  • Fragmented authority complicates license review procedures. Conflicting regulations and overlapping authorities in Indonesia’s decentralized legal system make it difficult to conduct license reviews, hindering evaluation and revocation (Nasir et al. 2024). Fragmented authority over different license types means that revocation by one agency can be undermined if other licenses remain valid. For example, the regent in South Sorong, Southwest Papua lost a lawsuit brought by three oil palm companies because the court ruled that the revocation process had been illegitimate.
  • Effective license revocation requires a systematic approach that involves all relevant authorities. Revoking all related permits ensures that agribusiness ventures cannot manage land without licenses. Strengthening enforcement of regulations and permits will improve oil palm governance in Papua and prevent land conflicts caused by overlapping claims. 
  • Data transparency and validity are fundamental. The limited oil palm data in Papua (and Indonesia in general) hinders effective license review. To fill the gap, we rigorously collected and consolidated oil palm data directly from local authorities in Papua and cross-referenced them against official databases. We compiled data on permits, digitized records, standardized formats, and conducted field visits to verify plantation activity. Through this process, we highlighted and validated the legality of the license statuses of 55 oil palm companies. Robustness and clarity in oil palm license data will enable the authorities to oversee compliance and inform decisions with solid evidence. 
  • Comprehensive legal and spatial analysis is critical to crafting rigorous recommendations for improving oil palm governance. A comprehensive 
    license review framework, developed in collaboration between WRI Indonesia and the subnational authorities, integrates legal and spatial analysis to evaluate oil palm plantation compliance. Tailored to Papua’s context through its Special Autonomy Law, the framework includes 6 legal and 10 spatial indicators; aerial surveys verified the findings. Application of this framework revealed two key lessons. First, the combined legal-spatial approach is effective for cross-validating findings and identifying inconsistencies in regulations. Second, rigorous validation of all initial findings with multiple government authorities is critical, in order to address political sensitivities. It helps ensure that the evidence is robust enough to support specific sanctions and recommendtions for improving oil palm governance.
  • Recommendations for the 55 companies studied were categorized based on the severity of their violations. Supported by the evaluation’s findings, the Papua government recommended the full revocation of 33 licenses whose permits had expired. It required 22 other to undertake corrective actions, including reducing concession sizes, to resolve permit inconsistencies. 
  • A crucial step in this process is the mandatory stakeholder hearing, at which authorities present evidence to the company before imposing sanctions. This procedure is essential for ensuring the solid legal standing of the government’s decision and preventing companies from successfully challenging revocations on due process grounds. The approach is key to effectively reforming oil palm governance in Papua.Post-revocation land redistribution remains challenging and uncertain but offers an opportunity to restore Indigenous Papuans’ land rights and livelihood. Post-revocation pathways remain unclear. An appropriate approach would be for government to restore land rights to Indigenous Papuans and ensure business compliance by oil palm plantations. Land could be returned to Indigenous communities through various legal mechanisms or allocated as state assets for new investors or national projects. The first option could involve reinstating customary forests, allowing many Indigenous communities to reclaim land rights, establish territorial sovereignty, and improve their well-being. To do so, subnational governments need an effective post￾revocation land redistribution policy, implemented through regulations and spatial planning.