Community Voices for Sustainable Land Use in Indonesia: Case Studies of Successful Participatory Land Use Planning (PLUP) in Aceh & Riau
Penulis
Rahmad Supriyanto
Maria Dominika
Land use planning in Indonesia remains centralized despite participation mandates. While laws like Government Regulation No. 21/2021 on Spatial Planning emphasize community involvement, local implementation remains weak. Government efforts such as Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) represent a middle ground to introduce bottom-up planning, but a more formal and consistent approach is needed to reflect local priorities in broader spatial frameworks.
Institutionalizing the bottom-up participatory paradigm within spatial and development planning through Participatory Land Use Planning (PLUP) from the village level is urgent. PLUP should be formally integrated into local governance to align spatial planning with local resource potential, strategic issues, and development priorities. This calls for PLUP to be embedded within village-level spatial planning processes and synchronized with district and national spatial and development planning.
Effective PLUP requires multi-stakeholder collaboration across governance levels. Strengthening the link between grassroots initiatives and higher-level mandates from village and district governments to provincial and ministerial bodies is essential. This collaborative approach can reduce land-use disputes in forest and non-forest areas, improve coordination, and support sustainable land governance.
Legal recognition of participatory planning outcomes is critical for long-term impact. Hence, community-based pathways may be legitimized through formal legal instruments, such as mayoral regulations (Perwali), district head regulations (Perbup), or local regulations (Perda). These legal tools will ensure that bottom-up approaches from the village level are officially integrated into spatial and development planning systems at all levels.
