shifting ground: renegotiating land rights and rural livelihoods in

‘Shifting ground’: Renegotiating land rights and rurallivelihoods in Sarawak, Malaysiaapv_1446 136..147

Rob Cramb* and Patrick S. Sujang†*School of Agricultural and Food Science, Hartley Teakle Building, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland

4072, Australia.Email: [email protected]

†PSS Resources Sdn Bhd, Kuching, Sarawak, MalaysiaEmail: [email protected]

Abstract: In this paper, we use an actor-oriented perspective to explore the nature and extent ofconflict and negotiation with regard to land use and tenure among the Iban of Sarawak. The Iban areshifting cultivators who have long been involved in smallholder cash crops. We argue that thecomplexity of land-use change and the major shifts in land law and policy in Sarawak in recentdecades, particularly those favouring the rapid expansion of oil palm plantations on both state andcustomary land, have created a situation of indeterminacy that can be exploited to renegotiate landrights and livelihoods. We present a case history of an Iban community that has ‘shifted ground’several times over the past century, both geographically and in its strategic position relative to stateand private sector actors. We show how, under formidable pressure from these actors, this commu-nity has nevertheless renegotiated its access to land and other resources, and opportunisticallydeveloped a diversified livelihood system that has enabled it to survive in rapidly changing politicaland economic conditions. While not necessarily typical, the case sheds light on the limits and modesof negotiability in the context of a strong developmental state.

Keywords: land tenure, oil palm, plantations, smallholders

Introduction

The issue of land rights in Sarawak, Malaysia, isoften presented in simplistic terms as a one-sided struggle between indigenous, subsistence-oriented Dayak communities seeking to defendtheir ancestral lands and the combined forcesof the state and capitalist agribusiness firmsseeking to appropriate these lands for large-scale development, mainly in the form ofoil palm plantations (Majid Cooke, 2002, 2006;Colchester et al., 2007). The reality is oftenmore complex and the room to manoeuvreperhaps greater than at first appears. Dayakswho once relied on extensive shifting cultiva-tion for subsistence are now engaged in themore intensive production of a variety of per-ennial cash crops (including oil palm), as wellas non-farm economic pursuits (Cramb, 2011a).Moreover, as transport infrastructure is devel-

oped, land that was once remote and unattrac-tive now attracts a premium, and individualsand whole communities relocate to be closer tomarkets, jobs and the provision of services,especially health and education. In their view,this potentially frees up their ‘idle’ fallow landsfor large-scale commercial agriculture. Thesecomplex land use and livelihood transforma-tions have major implications for the assertionand legitimisation of land claims and entitle-ments (customary and statutory), creating scopefor both conflict and negotiated institutionalchange.

In this paper, following Long (2001), we usean actor-oriented perspective to explore thenature and extent of conflict and negotiationwith regard to land use and tenure amongthe Iban, who are by far the largest Dayakgroup in Sarawak. An actor-oriented approach‘accords priority to in-depth case studies for

Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Vol. 52, No. 2, August 2011ISSN 1360-7456, pp136–147

© 2011 The AuthorsAsia Pacific Viewpoint © 2011 Victoria University of Wellington

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8373.2011.01446.x

understanding everyday life situations and thedynamic interactions between specific socialactors’, thereby highlighting ‘differential respon-ses to similar structural circumstances’, recogn-ising that ‘all forms of external intervention aremediated and transformed by the social actorsand structures affected’ (Ye et al., 2009: 176).

As Lund (1998) points out, negotiability – theability of actors to alter the terms of their inter-actions regarding access to resources – is char-acteristic of all social arenas to some degree;hence, the crucial research question concernshow and when negotiability leads to significantshifts in the formal and informal structures gov-erning resource use. Likewise, Banerjee andBojsen (2005), in analysing land-use strategies ina resettlement scheme in Sarawak, emphasisethe need to examine both the modes of negotia-bility and the limits to negotiability in a givencontext. Lund (1998) argues that analysis shouldfocus on ‘open moments’ as ‘particularly intenseperiods of rearrangement of the social order’(Lund, 1998: 1). He defines open moments as‘occasions when the social rules and structuresare suddenly challenged and the prerogativesand legitimacy of politico-legal institutionscease to be taken for granted.’ Such moments ofindeterminacy offer a ‘double-edged possibilityof reassertion or erosion of power’ – at multiplescales (Lund, 1998: 2).

Sikor and Lund (2009) further highlight theimportance of exploring two ‘grey zones’. Thefirst is between property and access, that is, thefuzzy area ‘between what people have rights toand what they merely have access to’ at a givenjuncture (Sikor and Lund, 2009: 2). As discu-ssed below, this includes the ambiguity bet-ween statutory rights and customary claims andaccess.The second grey zone is between author-ity and power, that is, ‘successfully and less-successfully legitimised decisions about howresources are distributed in society’ (Sikor andLund, 2009: 2). Thus, laws and policies confer-ring authority over land allocation and develop-ment can be contested by the exercise of variousforms of power.

We argue that the complexity of land-usechange and the major shifts in land law andpolicy in Sarawak, particularly during the past10–15 years, have created a situation of indeter-minacy in which the stakes have dramaticallyrisen for all the actors involved (Majid Cooke,

2002; Cramb, 2011b). That is, the social arenain which Iban land rights are being renegoti-ated displays critical ‘open moments’ and ‘greyzones’ in which different modes of negotiationhave been employed to change the structuresgoverning land resources. To explore how this isworking out at the local level, we present a casestudy of an Iban community that has ‘shiftedground’ several times over the past century, bothgeographically and (more recently) in its strate-gic position relative to state and private sectoractors. We show how, under formidable pressurefrom these actors, this community has renegoti-ated its access to land and other resources,and opportunistically (or to use Walker’s (2009)apposite term, ‘experimentally’) developed adiversified livelihood system that has enabledit to survive in rapidly changing political andeconomic conditions.

The critical events in this localised story ofagrarian change illustrate the major shifts inpolicy towards upland farmers in Sarawak thathave received critical attention in recent yearsfrom scholars and activists – the licensing ofextensive upland areas for logging, the narrow-ing official view of customary tenure, the wide-spread expropriation of customary land forprivate oil palm estates, official ambivalencetowards the emergence of smallholder oil palm,and the use of joint-venture arrangements tobring officially recognised customary land intothe commercial sphere (Hong, 1987; MajidCooke, 2002, 2006; Ngidang, 2002; Cramb,2011b).

However, the case study is not presented astypical or representative of the situation of Ibanand other communities faced with these oftenoverwhelming interventions. In fact, the out-comes in this case were ‘not too bad’.1 Loggingdid not have a major impact on livelihoods or theenvironment; the threat of losing customary landto private development was largely averted;smallholder oil palm was supported and flour-ished; and a joint-venture arrangement wascautiously pursued in such a way as to safeguardthe community’s interests. As Yin (2009) pointsout, a case can be selected precisely because ofits special or extreme attributes in order toincrease understanding of critical processes andthresholds. This case study can thus help tohighlight the critical junctures that enable pot-entially negative interventions in land use and

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livelihoods to be renegotiated. What elementswere present in the ‘open moments’ encoun-tered in this case that enabled the ‘grey zones’between property and access and betweenauthority and power to be favourably exploited?To what degree can these elements be replicatedin other contexts?

The paper begins with an historical accountof how the case-study community came tooccupy and utilise its land, consistent with cus-tomary Iban modes of migration and settlement.It then describes a significant challenge to thelegitimacy of this land-use claim in the form ofa state lease to a large oil palm company andthe negotiated compromise that eventuated. Thenext section explains the serendipitous emer-gence of smallholder oil palm as a profitablelivelihood option for the land so retained. Thepenultimate section describes the on-goingprocess of negotiation for a large-scale joint-venture project on that portion of the commu-nity’s lands where customary claims have beenlegitimised but which is now regarded as ‘idle’.The final section draws some conclusionsfor the larger process of agrarian change inSoutheast Asia.

Migration and settlement

The Iban are well known in the anthropologicaland historical literature for their mobility, asso-ciated with the practice of pioneer shiftingcultivation (Freeman, 1970; Pringle, 1970). Itis important to emphasise that this mobilityrepresented an expansion of occupied andcultivated land as some groups hived off andstruck out for new territory – not the abandon-ment of degraded land due to prodigal land use(Cramb, 2007). From their original homeland inthe Kapuas basin in what is now IndonesianBorneo, Iban migrants began to filter across thelow range between the Kapuas and the Luparbasins into what is now the Malaysian state ofSarawak, perhaps as early as the sixteenthcentury (Fig. 1). Some groups moved westwardwhile the predominant movement was north-erly, from the Lupar and its tributaries (includingthe Lemanak, see below) into the Saribas andKrian.

From early in the nineteenth century, partly toescape the newly imposed regime of RajahJames Brooke and his successors, Iban had

begun to cross into the vast Rejang basin incentral Sarawak, though the heartland (menoalama) in the Lupar and Saribas continued tobe occupied and cultivated on a rotational orforest-fallow basis.This north-easterly move con-tinued incrementally throughout the nineteenthand twentieth centuries, but now with varyingdegrees of state control (both prohibition andencouragement) by the Brooke regime (1841–1941) and the post-war British colonial gov-ernment (1946–1963) (Freeman, 1970; Pringle,1970). Iban movement has continued since theformation of Malaysia in 1963, but mainly inthe form of organised resettlement schemes dueto internal and external security threats and theBatang Ai Hydroelectricity Project (Ngidang,1996).

In the mid-1930s, the Brooke Resident atSimanggang (now Bandar Sri Aman) sponsoredsome Iban communities in the long-settledLemanak River in the southwest of Sarawak tomigrate about 400 km (as the hornbill flies) to thesparsely populated Tinjar River in the north-east,to alleviate population pressure and povertyin the former region (Fig. 1). A group led byheadman (tuai rumah) Rimong, along withRadin, Pagon, and Sujang, took up the offer, keento find a new and more prosperous territory(menoa baru) for their followers. The migrants(orang pindah) formally gave up their land rightsin the Lemanak and were allocated land to thewest of theTinjar River along the north bank of itstributary, Sungai Bok, totalling about 8 km2

(Fig. 2).Kuala Bok (where the Bok joins the Tinjar) was

set by the Brooke Government as the upriverlimit of Iban settlement in the Tinjar. Beyond thispoint the land was reserved for the Penan,Berawan and other pre-existing groups. ThePenan were initially unhappy to lose their landsalong Sungai Bok to the Iban, but some compen-sation was paid for the land and fruit trees, andeventually the Iban and Penan became ritual‘blood brothers’ (Iban: menyadi kempit darah;Penan: pade), entailing a sharing of use rights toland and other resources. Some intermarriagealso occurred over subsequent years. In contrastto the Iban invasions of previous centuries, thiswas a relatively orderly process in which territo-rial boundaries were established and legitimisedby the administrative authority of the Brookestate.

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The new community settled first at Kuala Bokon the north bank of the river, built a temporarylonghouse (dampa) and proceeded to clear theforest for hill rice farming (Fig. 2). An old long-house site (tembawai) exists at this location.From there, they moved to the middle of SungaiSebatang, a tributary of Sungai Bok, and built amore permanent longhouse at a site calledBandong. There was a split in the community atthis time – one group moved away to SungaiTeru, further down the Tinjar, while the other,under their new headman, Radin (the son ofRimong), remained. This house came to be con-sidered unhealthy or ‘hot’ (rumah angat) as anumber of people died, so they moved to theupper part of the river (Ulu Sebatang) and builta new longhouse about a half-hour walk fromthe Bandong site. This house too came to beconsidered angat, prompting a move downriverto a site at Sebatang Ili’.

In the mid-1950s another split emerged inthe community, with one group, led by Pagon,

moving further up the Tinjar to Long Terikan,beyond the stipulated boundary of Iban settle-ment, while Rumah Radin2 remained in SungaiSebatang. Eventually, after several years, RumahPagon was persuaded by the British colon-ial government to move back downriver andreturned to Kuala Bok, the original location.Meanwhile, around 1963, Rumah Radin suf-fered another wave of illness, with many youngboys dying. Radin and some households scat-tered temporarily to farmhouses (langkau) inSungai Alat, a tributary of the Sebatang, whileSujang led a group back to Kuala Bok, mergingwith Pagon’s group. This move was both to getaway from the unhealthy site and to be moreaccessible to the bazaar downriver at LongTeru, which was now becoming more signifi-cant in the longhouse economy. Four or fiveyears later attempts were made to consolidatethe two groups, but Radin’s group refusedand remained in the unfavourable location.In 1970, Rumah Pagon built a substantial

Figure 1. Major rivers of Sarawak showing original location of case-study community along Lemanak River andresettlement site along Tinjar River



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longhouse at Kuala Bok, accommodating 25households (bilek).

By this time, much of the forest in theallocated territory that was accessible by riverhad been brought into the shifting cultivationcycle and thus converted to secondary forest(temuda), subject to customary ownership byindividual households (Cramb, 2007). In addi-tion, rubber smallholdings had been establishedalong Sungai Bok and Sungai Sebatang, somewith the assistance of the colonial government’sRubber Planting Scheme (RPS) in 1966–1967,enabling households to supplement their sub-sistence production with cash income from thesale of rubber sheets at Long Teru.

From 1965, a Japanese logging contractorwas operating a timber concession in the com-

munity’s hinterland to the west but at the timethis did not impact greatly on local livelihoodsand was not seen as a major concern, eventhough the logging took place within the allo-cated longhouse territory. The terrain was notexcessively steep and the logging was selective.

Then, in 1976, the Tinjar Road, linking themajor north–south Miri-Bintulu Road throughBeluru to Long Lapok on the Tinjar (and ulti-mately to Long Lama on the Baram), cut throughthis hinterland (Fig. 2). From this time, indi-vidual households started moving upstream tothe roadside because of the vastly improvedaccess it provided to towns and markets, espe-cially the divisional capital, Miri. Some of thisland had already been cultivated before theroad was built, and some rubber planted with

Figure 2. The Sungai Bok lands showing Tinjar Road, location of leases to Rimbunan Hijau and general location ofproposed joint-venture scheme



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the assistance of the RPS happened to be nearthe road. However, much of the land was selec-tively logged forest that people proceeded toclear for rice farms, including both hill andswamp rice. Permanent farmhouses were builtand pepper gardens established in response tothe boom in pepper prices at that time.

In 1985, the whole community of RumahRadin moved to the road but, by mutual agree-ment, split into two longhouses, now calledRumah Musin and Rumah Jemat.Two years later,Rumah Pagon moved from Kuala Bok to the road,also dividing into two longhouses, now calledRumah Gansa and Rumah Ela. Altogether, therewere about 70 households – too many to buildone longhouse.The limited land and the desire tobe close to farming land led to the decision tobuild several smaller longhouses distributedalong the road. In 1995, Rumah Gansa burneddown and was replaced by two shorter long-houses – Rumah Gansa and Rumah Engah.

Thus, the original migrants to Kuala Bok had,through complex processes of demographicand socio-economic change, given rise to fivelonghouse communities distributed along theTinjar Road in the upper reaches of Sungai Bok.However, these five groups still shared accessrights to their original territory (menoa), whichremained undivided (tanah saum). FollowingIban practice, they would first confer with eachother (baum dulu) before any one group couldmake use of the land for farming or other pur-poses. The legitimacy of customary land tenurethus remained unchallenged, whether fromwithin the communities or from the state.

Plantation agriculture and contestedland claims

However, the Sungai Bok lands are on the fron-tier of the dramatic expansion in oil palm cul-tivation that has been occurring in Sarawaksince the 1980s, particularly in north-easternSarawak. With Abdul Taib Mahmud’s accessionto the chief ministership of Sarawak in 1981,official policy towards customary land shiftedsharply towards a presumption of state propri-etorship, mainly to facilitate the alienation ofland for private-sector oil palm development(Cramb, 2011b). The customary ownership ofthe Sungai Bok lands was called into question in1988 when the communities received notice

from the Land and Survey Department that theSibu-based global timber and plantation giant,Rimbunan Hijau (RH), had been given a provi-sional lease to an area of about 5000 ha alongthe western side of the Tinjar Road to plant oilpalm (Fig. 2). The area (shown as Lots 57 and 58in Fig. 2) included land that had been cultivatedfor hill rice and was now secondary forest, aswell as some rubber and pepper gardens. Oneof the Sungai Bok longhouses was also on thewestern side of the road. Moreover, the wholearea lay within the original territory acquiredfrom the Penan and allocated to the settlers atKuala Bok in the 1930s, including forested landthat had never been farmed.3 Nevertheless, theLand and Survey Department’s position wasthat, as the land in question had not been cul-tivated before 1958 (the cut-off date in theSarawak Land Code for acquisition of nativecustomary rights (Porter, 1967)), it was legallyState land, available for alienation to otherparties. It is this narrow official interpretation ofcustomary rights that has been behind many ofthe high-profile conflicts over oil palm develop-ment (Ngidang, 2002; Majid Cooke, 2006;Colchester et al., 2007; Cramb, 2007).

The Bok communities objected to the notice,claiming that they held native customary rightsto land inside the lease area. The basis for theirclaim was that the entire territory had beenallocated to them by the Brooke Governmentwhen they were asked to migrate to the area,including cleared and uncleared land. A morepractical concern was that of the 71 householdsat the time, 25 younger households that hadformed since the move to the roadside wouldhave had no land at all if the lease wasenforced. There was much heated discussion inthe longhouses and in government officesduring 1989, partly informed by younger, edu-cated members of the community, some ofwhom worked in or had links to relevant parts ofthe government bureaucracy.

At a longhouse meeting (aum), it was eventu-ally decided to pursue a compromise with thegovernment and the company. Rather than claimall their original territory, they would make asmaller claim that would encompass most of theland needed by households to maintain theirlivelihoods. There was much argument abouthow far to claim, some wanting to push theboundary further, while others were pessimistic



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that their claim would be accepted. Eventually,there was consensus that they would use alogging track that followed a ridge to the west ofthe road, forming a ‘natural boundary’. Beyondthe ridge was mainly logged old growth forest,though there was also some temuda outside theproposed boundary. The community membersthen went to the ground to clear along the ridge(ngerentis) to mark the boundary, the usual pro-cedure when land was to be formally surveyed.

Following this, a meeting was held in Beluru,the sub-district headquarters, with the SarawakAdministrative Officer in charge of the sub-district, the government-appointed Iban regionalheadman (penghulu), the headmen (tuai rumah)of the Sungai Bok longhouses and a representa-tive of Rimbunan Hijau (formerly a governmentagricultural officer in Miri, known to somemembers of the Bok communities). The proposalto excise the area up to the ridge from the RHlease was accepted, subject to two conditions.First, the communities should plant oil palm onthe land acquired and sell their fruit to the RHmill to be built at Simpang Empat. Second, theyshould support the company to apply for addi-tional State land to the southwest (beyond SungaiBok in the upper Bakong watershed), to replacethe land surrendered. This was agreed. Subse-quently, the Land and Survey Department subdi-vided the original lease area into Lots 57 and 58,as shown in Figure 2, with Lot 57, totalling2800 ha, surrendered by RH due to the existenceof native customary rights claims (though this didnot entail formal recognition of those claims bythe government). In return, Lot 56 was added tothe RH lease (Fig. 2).

Some community members were not happywith this outcome, particularly those withtemuda beyond the negotiated boundary. Someclaimed that those in favour of the new boundaryhad sold land to RH. Others were suspiciousabout the planting of oil palm, fearing it wouldsomehow enable the government to take backthe land. Indeed, the legal status of the surren-dered Lot 57 gave some cause for concern. Acommunity member who worked in the Landand Survey Department indicated in an anno-tated map that having been surrendered to theState, Lot 57 was now registered as State land,meaning that in principle, anyone could applyfor it in the future; it did not have the status ofNative Customary Land. However, now that the

land had been excised from a lease to the pow-erful RH company, and as described below,was subsequently extensively planted with oilpalm by the longhouse residents and others, itseemed unlikely that another company would beallocated the land. Nevertheless, the status ofthis crucial stretch of land exemplifies the ‘greyzones’ referred to by Sikor and Lund (2009), inwhich property and access coexist in uneasyambiguity.

The emergence of smallholder oil palm

In 1989–1990, the Department of Agricultureprovided oil palm seedlings to the landholdersunder its Oil Palm Subsidy Scheme (since dis-continued, largely because of a policy biasin favour of large-scale development (Cramb,2011b)). All those with temuda along the roadplanted oil palm, though in a half-hearted way,mainly to reinforce their now-tenuous claim tothe land. Prices were also relatively low at thetime. Hence, there was no maintenance of thecrop; in some cases, the young palms were evencut to harvest the edible pith or ‘cabbage’ (upa).Palms took three to five years to bear fruit, whichis slow by commercial standards. Then in themid-1990s the Sarawak Oil Palm mill wasapproached to see if they would buy the fruit (theRH mill was not yet operational). One longhousemember bought a truck and offered MYR 50 perton to transport the fresh fruit bunches (FFB) tothe mill. He was paid immediately by the milland in turn immediately paid the owners. Theincentive of cash in the hand encouraged themto clear, maintain and fertilise their oil palmplots, resulting in increased yields and profits.

Since then, there has been renewed interest inplanting. The soils are quite productive, receiv-ing annual depositions of fertile silt during flashflooding. Better planting material has beenobtained from the Department of Agriculture’snursery at Kabuloh. Higher prices in the late1990s led to further increase in profits. Althoughharvesting ceased with the price downturn in2001 (falling to MYR 80 per ton of FFB), when theprice rose to MYR 120 per ton in 2003–2004,profitable harvesting resumed and new plantingcontinued. The cost of planting was reduced bycultivating hill rice and other crops between theoil palm for the first two years, which also mini-mised weeding requirements without impacting



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on yield. Tuai Rumah Gansa, son of Pagon, oneof the Kuala Bok pioneers, had 12 ha in produc-tion. He employed longhouse people in rotationand Indonesian plantation workers on Sundays(their day off). There were now several truckowners willing to transport FFB to the RH mill atMYR 50 per ton.The fruit was classed as Grade Cbut the producers were paid directly into theirbank accounts in Miri.

Other longhouses along the road from Beluruto Long Lapok (especially the Sungai Laonggroup in Ulu Bakong) began planting in the1990s as well. Holdings were mostly around2 ha. In addition, some longhouses entered intonew contractual arrangements with Miri-basedinvestors. In one case (Sungai Temam), the com-munity established a joint venture with a well-connected developer, with 80% of profits to theinvestor and 20% to the landholders. Thisarrangement was opposed by the Deputy ChiefMinister, who was promoting the government’sNew Concept (Konsep Baru) of large-scale jointventures (Sarawak, 1997; see below). However,the Member of Parliament for Baram (brother-in-law of the developer) supported the proposaland it went ahead. In another case, land wasleased to a local Malaysian Chinese investor atMYR 0.20 per palm per month (about MYR350 per ha per year). These emerging practiceswere outside official policy, reflecting Sikor andLund’s (2009) second type of ‘grey zone’ –between authority and power. As discussedbelow, these local-level precedents have pro-vided an ‘open moment’ for negotiating policychange.

The focus on oil palm in the Bok communitiesand elsewhere has meant that other farmingactivities have fallen by the way. Few peoplecultivate pepper, once the mainstay of the long-house economy, given the high labour require-ment, the escalating cost of fertiliser, and the fallin price. Rubber prices have improved since2002 but the established rubber gardens aremostly too far from the road, having been plan-ted along the rivers when the longhouses did nothave road access. Hence, rubber tapping haslargely ceased. Rice is still cultivated on a smallscale on nearby swampy land, using fertiliser andherbicide to improve the yield and the return tolabour – the fallow vegetation is sprayed and leftto decay, the rice is transplanted, and little furtheris done until harvest. These trends have been

reinforced by the out-migration of young people,many of whom have moved to Miri to work,buying low-cost housing with the help of theirparents and the profits from oil palm. Conse-quently, the labour available for farming activi-ties is increasingly limited.

The recognition that the land along the road,though part of the original territory, was legallyState land, combined with the increasing com-mercialisation of agriculture and the trend tooff-farm employment, led to a decline of custom-ary community control over the allocation anduse of land. One Iban-Chinese shopkeeper fromLong Teru unilaterally cleared about 40 ha oflogged-over land within the Sungai Bok territoryand planted oil palm on his own account.No-one in the community openly objected asno-one’s secondary forest (temuda) was affec-ted. It was now generally accepted that this wasState land, even though it was within the tradi-tional territorial boundary. Other enterprising(or opportunistic) young men from within thecommunity (but with various outside businessinterests) have also cleared this logged-over Stateland for oil palm without any decision by theheadman (tuai rumah) or longhouse meeting(aum). Some have also cleared or bought landoutside the territorial boundary. Effectively thereis now an informal individual market for landalong the road. There is some grumbling amongthe elders (tuai) about these developments butno action taken; they have a sense of inevitabi-lity about the loss of community control. Thecustoms (adat) with respect to individual andcommon rights to farms (umai), secondary forest(temuda), graveyards (pendam), old longhousesites and fruit groves (tembawai), are still gener-ally upheld, but the ‘grey zone’ along the roadis clearly witnessing a shift from customaryauthority to unregulated market power.

The joint-venture proposal

In 2006, following the success of their road-based smallholdings, the Sungai Bok communi-ties joined with others in the Bakong-Tinjarregion to propose a large-scale joint-venture oilpalm scheme on their officially recognised cus-tomary land (Fig. 2). The proposal, submitted tothe Ministry of Land Development under thegovernment’s New Concept (Konsep Baru) pro-gramme, involved a total of 26 longhouse



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communities with 537 households occupyingsix adjoining territories (pemakai menoa). NewConcept or joint-venture schemes, initiated in1995, involve customary landholders transfer-ring their rights to designated plots (typicallytotalling around 4 ha per household) to theLand Custody and Development Authority(LCDA), which then forms a joint-venture com-pany with a private investor. Ninety per cent ofthe paid-up capital is contributed by the inves-tor (of which 60% constitutes the investor’sequity and 30% the landholders’ equity) and10% by LCDA, with most of the funds for plan-tation development being borrowed. Dividendsare distributed according to the equity shares asfollows: 60% to the investor, 30% to the land-holders and 10% to LCDA (Sarawak, 1997;Majid Cooke, 2002; Ngidang, 2002).

The reasoning of those Iban advocating theBakong-Bok joint-venture proposal was thatmost of the legally recognised customary landrights were established along the Tinjar andBakong rivers and their tributaries at a time whenthere was no road. Now that their longhousesand oil palm smallholdings were establishedalong the road (technically on State land), theiroriginal farming land was remote from centresof settlement and economic activity, only acces-sible by canoe or by walking along forest pathsfor up to 3 hours. Hence, much of this landwas no longer cultivated and considered ‘idle’(nadai diguna).4 Even though there were estab-lished rubber groves within this land, the rubbertrees were no longer tapped. A joint-ventureproject was seen as a way to earn income fromthe land.

The project was also anticipated to provide anumber of benefits unrelated to income from oilpalm. The project would consolidate and vali-date their territorial claims. Moreover, withineach territory, it would provide an opportunityto sort out the location and area of individualholdings, most of which were now under sec-ondary forest. In particular, those no longerresiding or working in the longhouse had rightsby inheritance to as many as 10 or 12 parcels ofland, but could not say exactly where thoseplots were located, let alone use them for pro-ductive purposes. The customary land that hadonce been intimately known through regularusage by everyone in the community had itselfbecome a ‘grey zone’. Converting these hold-

ings into shares in an oil palm company (thoughless attractive than receiving titles) wouldensure that ownership of this asset was secureand inheritable by urban-based children. For afew longhouses away from the Tinjar Road (notpart of the Sungai Bok cluster), the developmentof their land would be the only way to obtainroad access to the longhouse itself.

The application was lodged with the Ministryof Land Development in March 2006. In August,the officer of the Ministry responsible for north-ern Sarawak came to the area for a longhousedialogue, during which there was heated discus-sion. The proposal was approved by the StateNative Customary Rights (NCR) Land Develop-mentTaskforce in October. It was then sent to thepowerful Ministry of Resource Planning (a port-folio held by the Chief Minister) for confirmation.This required the Department of Land and Surveyto determine the boundary of the legally recog-nised customary land based on aerial photogra-phy from the 1950s (to conform to the 1958cut-off date in the Land Code). This process tooktwo years, during which the communities pro-ceeded to sort out individual land claims on theground. This involved households cutting surveylines (ngerentis) to indicate agreed boundaries ofindividual plots.

There were some disputes in this process,particularly in regard to individuals who hadmoved out of the longhouse territory but rem-ained within the district. According to Iban cus-tomary law (adat), such people have ‘migrated’(pindah) and thereby handed back their cultiva-tion rights over secondary forest (temuda) to thelonghouse community. However, some indi-viduals continued to press claims to their originaltemuda and crops. This problem of ‘overlappingclaims’ has plagued some other joint-ventureschemes, notably Sungai Tengang in Sri AmanDivision, where claimants have harvested fruitfrom disputed land and been arrested for theft;this dispute has been taken to court.

In the period since the 2006 approval, many ofthe applicants became concerned about theproposed joint venture, having heard aboutthe 12 000 ha Kanowit Oil Palm Project, wherelandholders had blockaded the estate in protestover not receiving any dividends more than adecade after planting began. There was grow-ing disquiet in the longhouses and an emerg-ing reluctance to participate, despite initially



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supporting the application. Nevertheless, finalofficial approval for the Bakong-Bok joint-venture development was given in December2008. A total area of about 23 000 ha wasapproved, of which 7913 ha was identified asNative Customary Land belonging to the appli-cant communities.5 Perhaps half this area wouldnot be available for planting, being alreadyestablished with rubber. The remaining land,some of which had been cleared for farming inthe 1970s, was deemed to be State land.This wasalso to be included in the development, but theprofits would not be part of the joint venture.Thiswas a relatively new arrangement that provided astrong guarantee to the investor that the projectwould be profitable, even without full participa-tion from the customary landholders.

In response to the worsening problems withthe Kanowit Oil Palm Project and other joint-venture schemes, in 2009, the State Taskforceapproved some changes to the joint-ventureagreements, including the payment of an adv-ance dividend to landholders of MYR 150 per haper year from Year 1, and the inclusion of a(non-voting) landholder representative on theboard of each joint-venture company (previouslythe board was formed by two to three membersappointed by the investor and one appointed byLCDA, notionally acting for the landholders).The Bakong-Bok participants were pushing forfurther changes. Some younger households inthese communities owned no land, either closeto the road or in the proposed scheme; they hadto rent or borrow land from others in the com-munity, or consider leaving. Hence, there was apush from community leaders for these landlesshouseholds to be allocated 4 ha of the desig-nated State land in the joint-venture scheme sothey could be included as shareholders. In addi-tion, they were asking for shares in the palm oilmill to be built as part of the scheme. Up to now,there has been no landholder equity in palmoil mills, whether in joint-venture schemes ormanaged smallholder schemes such as those ofthe Sarawak Land Consolidation and Rehabilita-tion Authority, yet it is recognised that this is avery profitable activity in the palm oil supplychain.

In 2009, the LCDA developed the joint-venture agreement with the approved developer,Cipta Sawit Sdn Bhd, a newly formed (May 2006)subsidiary of a successful Bintulu-based char-

coal producer and exporter. The joint-ventureagreement was finally signed by representativesof LCDA and the developer at Beluru (the sub-district headquarters) on 30 March 2010, in thepresence of the Minister for Land Developmentand the local State Assemblyman (both Iban),who ‘urged locals to support the project’.6 Fol-lowing this signing, LCDA officers began thelong process of seeking the formal agreement ofindividual landholders. Only plots of land forwhich a trust deed has been signed by the land-holder, conveying the rights to the land to LCDAas trustee for a 60-year period, can be includedin the project. However, the misgivings over theproject, which had been brewing for severalyears (based on the ongoing problems atKanowit), the desire to modify the terms of theagreement to obtain a share of the designatedstate land and the dispute over the demarcationbetween state and customary land, had madeindividuals reluctant to sign. As of March 2011,this reluctance was still evident and the investorhad not commenced any field work.

Conclusion

This case study demonstrates a number ofaspects of contemporary agrarian change thathave relevance elsewhere in the uplands ofSoutheast Asia. The first has to do with flexibility.The Iban communities in this study have ‘shiftedground’ in multiple senses over the past 80 years– from their origins in the Iban heartland to thefrontier of Iban settlement in northern Sarawak,from the river to the roadside, from subsistenceagriculture based on shifting cultivation toperennial cash crops and now they are on theverge of shifting from smallholders to sharehold-ers. They have not been tied to culturally defined(and externally reinforced) notions of ‘traditionalagriculture’, nor to official depictions of ‘peoplefrom the interior’ struggling with an ‘outdatedeconomy’ and needing to be brought into the‘mainstream of modernisation’ (Cramb, 2011b).Rather, they have continually sought to adapt, asindividuals and communities, to new constraintsand opportunities. Thus, while Majid Cooke(2006) is correct to argue that earlier policiesbased on the assumption that forest-fallow landwas ‘idle land’ were in ‘fundamental error’, theclear perception of Iban landholders in whatmight be called the ‘post-swidden era’ (Cramb



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et al., 2009) is that much of their land is indeed‘idle’, in the straightforward sense of not cur-rently used for agricultural production, whethercultivated or fallowed. Hence, they are seekingnew ways to harness government programmesand private capital to get a commercial returnfrom this land.

Related is the aspect of complexity. The rapidspread of oil palm in Sarawak, and the focus ofNGOs and the alternative media on instances ofenclosure and exclusion, has created an impres-sion of a monolithic state unilaterally dispos-sessing customary landholders in favour of itscommercial clients. While not downplaying thereality and seriousness of such dispossession(there are over 200 land cases pending in theHigh Court of Sabah and Sarawak, and intimi-dation of land rights activists and advocatesappears to be increasing), the case study showsthat the situation is often more complex thanone of naked dispossession. The literal ‘shiftingground’ over time on the part of Iban commu-nities, the layering of dissonant institutionalarrangements (customary and statutory) and thesharp shifts in government policy (e.g. puttingthe onus of proof of customary ownership ontothe claimants) have created very complex, andhence, often indeterminate land-use and land-tenure situations.

Within these complex, indeterminate cont-exts, there emerges clear evidence of negotiabil-ity, particularly during critical ‘open moments’when the stakes for the actors are raised (thebuilding of the Tinjar Road, the allocation of alease to RH, the surge in profitability of small-holder oil palm, the push by sections of thecommunity for a joint-venture scheme) and inthe emerging ‘grey zones’ between property andaccess (continued access to customary landwas negotiated with powerful state and commer-cial actors despite the lack of statutory proper-ty rights) and between authority and power(various sources of power were mobilised tocounter the state-legitimised authority of outsideactors).

As described above, the major modes of nego-tiation employed have been prolonged delibera-tion, debate, argument and compromise withincommunities, as well as between community,market and state actors, using both customarymodes (notably, the open longhouse meeting(aum)) and the tools of modern government

bureaucracy (letters, maps, reports, meetings inoffices, lobbying).The presence of educated pro-fessional members of the longhouse communi-ties, with networks and expertise in both theprivate and public domains, has enhanced theinterface with bureaucratic modes of negotia-tion. The importance of the strong culturalimpulse within Iban communities for thorough-going debate and deliberation to arrive at clarityand consensus appears to have been seriouslyunderestimated by land development agenciessuch as LCDA, eager to get targets achieved,documents signed and investment flowing(Cramb, 2007; Menua, 2009).

No doubt the state-business alliance inSarawak as a whole is very powerful, and manyIban communities responding to such ‘openmoments’ in emerging ‘grey zones’ have quicklyencountered the limits to negotiability. Never-theless, as the case study indicates, there has infact been some ‘shifting ground’ on the part ofgovernment in response to the agency of land-holders and their representatives. The growinglist of court cases challenging unilateral govern-ment actions, and instances of commerciallycostly local-level resistance (e.g. prolongedblockading of the Kanowit scheme and pro-tracted legal proceedings), have helped to con-vince some within the state apparatus and in theplantation sector that it is in their interests tonegotiate better arrangements with landholders,not just in an ad hoc fashion but structurally. TheSungai Bok communities are actively contribut-ing to these emerging structural changes andhelping to push back the limits to negotiability,not only at the local scale but with state-wideimplications.7

Acknowledgments

The funding for this research was provided by theAustralian Research Council. A previous versionof this paper was presented at the InternationalConference on ‘Revisiting Agrarian Transforma-tions in Southeast Asia: Empirical, Theoreticaland Applied Perspectives’, Research Centre forSustainable Development, Chiang Mai Univer-sity, 13–15 May 2010. We would like to thankDerek Hall, John McCarthy and two anonymousreferees for comments on a previous draft. Noneof them is responsible for the final analysis andconclusions.



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Notes

1 This is a widely-used Australian phrase expressingguarded optimism about one’s current status.

2 Literally, Radin’s house, it being the practice to name alonghouse community after its headman.

3 The area of the original RH lease accounted for morethan half of the territory allocated to the Sungai Bokcommunity in the 1930s.

4 Informants in the Saribas District described such unusedsecondary forest as menoa puang (literally, abandonedland) though, as in the case described here, there wasno intention to give up rights to the land. In fact, in theSaribas too, neighbouring longhouses had groupedtogether to request that their land be developed as an oilpalm estate, but by the Sarawak Land Consolidation andRehabilitation Authority (SALCRA), not as a joint venturewith a private company (Cramb, 2007: 343–344).

5 It subsequently emerged that the aerial photographsused by the Department of Land and Survey to makethis determination were taken in 1951, well before the1 January 1958 cut-off date in the Land Code. Hence,the Bok community feels it has been short changed andis in dispute with the Department.

6 ‘Ministry Mulls New NCR Land Development Model’.The Borneo Post, Thursday 1 April 2010, p. 8.

7 It is significant that at the signing ceremony for theBakong-Bok joint-venture agreement, the Minister forLand Development, James Masing, commented on theneed to change the joint-venture approach to develop-ing oil palm on customary land. He said: ‘The produc-tion is not as good as the potential and it needs a newmodel by the ministry [. . . ] The intention of the NCR[Native Customary Rights] concept was correct but themodus operandi has to be changed.’ He indicated anucleus estate and smallholder model was under con-sideration, with soft loans and infrastructure grants toimprove returns to smallholders (‘Ministry Mulls NewNCR Land Development Model’. The Borneo Post,Thursday 1 April 2010, p. 8).

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shifting ground: renegotiating land rights and rural livelihoods in

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