The land weighed on Mateus Bhui as he sifted the Rendubutowe soil through his fingers into a traditional container.
“To our ancestors: please don’t be angry,” Mateus said, repeating the lament as he clasped another handful of earth. “I never wanted to sell this land.”
Mateus leads the Woe Dhiri Ke’o, one of several Indigenous communities in Rendubutowe, a rugged upland of Indonesia’s Flores Island, traversed by generations of farmers, herders and weavers.
Soon, however, Matheus’s home will be the site of a 1.4 trillion rupiah (US$88 million) reservoir, which is needed to provide water for the population of the wider Nagekeo district.
A decade ago, Indonesia’s public works ministry drew up a blueprint for a network of seven dams to help quench the thirst afflicting much of East Nusa Tenggara province during its punishing dry season.
“East Nusa Tenggara is in dire need of reservoirs to cope with the water shortage faced by humans, animals and plants,” the ministry reported in 2015.
A recent review in the journal Water Supply of 100 academic studies published from 2000-2023 concluded that “climate change possesses serious threats on Indonesia’s water resources in the future unless it is anticipated and tackled properly.”
The Lambo Dam was designated a national priority infrastructure project and will stand at 48 meters (157 feet) high, creating a reservoir holding 51.73 million cubic meters (13.67 billion gallons) of water across 500 hectares (1,240 acres) of land. Construction by an Indonesian state-owned firm began in 2021. The water will be used to irrigate 6,240 hectares (15,420 acres) of farmland, mostly rice fields.
The water stress experienced by the wider population means Mateus stands to lose his home and the 5 hectares (12 acres) he planted with cashew, teak and coconut trees.
“We didn’t give it up,” Matheus said. “We were forced.”
“
With the construction of this reservoir, all the farmers’ land has been taken. It’s cut livelihoods.
Yohanes Jawa, village head, Ulupulu
The dammed, united
Approximately 1.5 per cent of the global population is defined as forcibly displaced, which is double the number of a decade ago, according to UNHCR, the United Nations’ refugee agency.
Around the world, conflict and natural disasters account for most forcible displacement, which is overwhelmingly borne in low- and middle-income countries.
However, an increasing number of remote communities and Indigenous peoples are enduring displacement to make way for infrastructure, like Flores Island’s Lambo Dam.
“This land is vital for us Indigenous people, but the government is carrying out the development on grounds of national interests,” Mateus said. “What about our lives?”
Years of delays have hampered construction of the Lambo Dam here in Nagekeo district, in part because of resistance from Indigenous people like Kristina Ito and Maria Magdalena Ngole.
Kristina, a mother of four, farms around 6 hectares (15 acres) of rice, cashews and candlenuts, a staple commonly used in cooking as a thickener. The cashew harvest alone can bring in up to 3 million rupiah a week, nearly US$200.
“If I’m going to be evicted like this, where will I live?” Kristina asked.
A large share of women like Kristina have taken risks to defend their traditional territory against the project. People here still recall Bibiana Doe and Anggela Mersiana Mau passing out during clashes with security forces during demonstrations at the construction site in 2016, which Mongabay reported on at the time.
“We formed a human chain and they just shoved us,” said Bibiana, recounting the events of June 7, 2016. “It was like we weren’t human.”
In 2021, around two dozen women were detained at the Nagekeo district police station. One of them, Hermina Mawa, said she saw police in plainclothes entrapping demonstrators by pretending to be journalists.
“The government says it’s idle land, but for us it isn’t idle land,” Hermina said. “Because our buffalo roam and feed here.”
Andrey Valentino, the recently installed police chief of Nagekeo district, said there had been no further clashes with residents and that officers under his command would prioritise mediation to resolve disputes.
Indonesia’s national commission on gender-based violence, known as Komnas Perempuan, pointed to a dissonance between government planning priorities and people affected on the ground.
Andy Yentriyani, chair of Komnas Perempuan and a veteran women’s rights activist in Indonesia, said the impetus to increase water capacity in the region was clear, but that compensation arrangements were far from fair for the community.
Government remedies often lacked sensitivity to the complex needs of a communities ill-prepared for such momentous change to their lives and sense of identity, she said.
Women and girls account for more than half of people forcibly displaced around the world, which can spark new harms such as gender-based violence, research shows.
“There should be a disaster-mitigation and conflict-mitigation procedure that better represents anticipation of ongoing conflicts and gender-based impacts on women,” Andy told Mongabay Indonesia.
Sacrificial Lambo
Yeremias Lele, the elected head of Rendubutowe village, said government efforts to relocate the population away from the Lambo Dam site lacked both clarity and urgency.
“They often say that those affected will be relocated, but they don’t specify a location,” Yeremias told Mongabay Indonesia.
Lukas Mere, a senior civil servant in the Nagekeo administration, told Mongabay Indonesia that “if residents want to stay in Nagekeo, then the Nagekeo government will look for a location for resettlement.”
The head of nearby Ulupulu village, Yohanes B. Jawa, said inconsistent compensation awards had sparked division in his community, where dozens of the 172 separate plots affected by the construction had yet to be settled.
“With the construction of this reservoir, all the farmers’ land has been taken,” Yohanes said. “It’s cut livelihoods.”
A common point of contention between officials and communities affected by development is the determination of fair value of land purchased under eminent domain.
Yeremias said he hadn’t been consulted about compensation and that current assets and future income were not taken into account in calculating land value. He said the government was paying just 30,500 rupiah per square meter, slightly less than US$2, or about 18 cents per square foot.
Yohanis Fredrik Malelak, head of the Nagakeo land agency, said his office had determined prices according to the law, and that affected residents could always file a complaint within 14 days.
He added that the surveying process had been fraught and left incomplete due to local opposition on the ground, particularly around the community’s cemeteries.
“The graves couldn’t be measured because of the demonstrations,” Yohanis said, adding that this explained why many crops, plants and homes were not reflected in the amount paid to the community.
Protesting their removal from the site has proved costly for the Rendubutowe villagers: Yohanis said the time for surveying allowed by prevailing regulations had elapsed, and that the community would have to take the land agency to court to force a review of the decision.
“We weren’t able to work for almost a year because we were still resolving these social issues,” said Yohanes Pabi, an official at the public works ministry, which oversees the dam construction.
Melya Findi Astuti, a spokesperson at Kemitraan, a Jakarta-based NGO that advocates for governance reform, said the land was paramount not only to Indigenous communities’ livelihood, but fundamental to their sense of identity.
“It’s all related to their living space,” Melya said. “When that is taken away, can they even be called Indigenous?”
Mateus continued to run the soil through his hand as he communed with his ancestors, appearing to seek forgiveness. He said he worries the ceremonial sites kept sacred by the generations before him will all soon be submerged by development.
“We ask the central government to think about us, the Indigenous people, so that our culture is not lost,” Mateus said. “Because our culture is what follows from our ancestors.”
This story was published with permission from Mongabay.com.
