Ulrich Löffler, (1996):
Land Tenure Developments in Indonesia

6.2 Transformation of Rural Land to Urban Land

The need for land for non-agricultural purposes is starkly growing with increasing urbanization and industrialization. The following uses for this scarce land compete with each other:

• Residential areas and shopping centers [FN 211]
• Industrial parks [FN 212]
• Environmental and water protection areas
• Mining areas
• Recreational areas
• Agriculture and forestry
• Infrastructure (roads, dams)

The agrarian census from 1993 shows that the land used for agriculture has been reduced from 6.4 million to around 5.5 million hectares in the last ten years. Particularly painful for agriculture in this case is the high percentage of highly productive sawah which has been taken out of agricultural production in this period of time.[FN 213] All in all, the amount of the reduction was more than 400,000 hectares within the period 1983 - 1992. This is equal to an average loss of more than 40,000 hectares / year (or around 1.4 % / year) and an estimated loss of more than 500.000 tons of rice per year.[FN 214]

This loss (of land) for agriculture cannot be compensated for on Java considering the lack of land reserves.[FN 215] Since the self-supply of rice is important for political stability amongst other things, rice planting programs and the expensive construction of irrigation systems are carried out on the outer islands (BIMAS u. INSUS, or SUPRA-INSUS, 1987).[FN 216] Due to estimations of the WORLD BANK it requires US-$ 2,000 - 3,000 to create one hectare of new irrigated land. [FN 217]

How quickly the transformation is taking place can be seen for example in the time period from 1969 to 1985 when 1.2 million ha in Java were brought under irrigation through the erection of new irrigation facilities. At the end of the 80s, 25 % of the land had already been converted to non-agricultural uses.[FN 218]

This means that if sawah land must be converted when it cannot be avoided, then one should try to make sure that it is less productive sawah land which is taken. In practice, however, it looks as though it is precisely the extremely productive land which has a very good infrastructure and is very accessible, so that the most productive sawah land is frequently used in particular by brokers and developers.

Urbanization and industrialization also endanger agricultural areas through the pollution from households and businesses. Added to this is the pollution from farming. As a result, strongly polluted water can no longer be used for irrigating agricultural areas in certain parts of Indonesia. There are, however, no reliable figures for the extent of the loss of valuable farming land, or its restricted use. In the future, a conflict of use concerning drinking water vs. water for irrigation might come to the fore.

The need for recreational areas and sports fields in Indonesia is continuing to grow with the increase in the middle and upper classes. Golf, for instance, presents an intensive utilization of land, needing as a rule several hundred hectares per course. There are already more than 90 golf courses with increasing tendency. Most of them are in the directly reachable vicinity of the urban fringes on Java.