From forests to carbon trade: How AMAN as a policy entrepreneur advocates indigenous rights in Indonesia

This study examines the role of AMAN as an Indigenous organization in Indonesia in advocating for Indigenous rights within Indonesia’s forestry carbon trade policy framework. Through the concept of policy entrepreneur, it analyses AMAN’s advocacy efforts in selected strategies: Gathering Evidence, Creating and Working with the Coalition, and Using Multiple Venues. This study also attempts to understand which factors affect the result of policy advocacy by a policy entrepreneur like AMAN. Using semi-structured interviews and document analysis as the methodology for gathering data, this study reveals that AMAN’s strategy in gathering legal and spatial evidence provided an empirical basis for its policy goals, such as canceling the forestry carbon trade policy and enacting the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Bill along with Regional Regulations related to Indigenous Peoples’ Rights. AMAN’s coalition-building efforts also amplified its stance against the policy and highlighted Indigenous communities’ vulnerabilities toward the policy. To advance policy changes, AMAN utilized multiple venues: the Supreme Court to file a judicial review in canceling the forestry carbon trade policy, engaging national executive and parliament branches to enact the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Bill, and supporting legal analysis to its members as a basis for local legislation as well as supporting its members/particular candidates in regional elections to get seats both in the regional executive and parliament branches in order to influence the regional regulations regarding Indigenous Peoples’ rights. Despite some successful efforts in enacting regional regulations through its strategies, AMAN’s national-level objectives encountered challenges due to limited political support in the parliament branch that has elite oligarchic-driven decision-making characteristics alongside the domination of businesspeople as parliamentarians made political constraints to the passage of the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Bill. Although President Joko Widodo, during his administration, had more power to control the parliament to pass a bill due to his accommodative politics, his developmentalism agenda situated less concern in Indigenous Rights. In addition, AMAN’s challenges in the litigation venue to cancel Presidential Regulation 98/2021 through the Supreme Court were constrained by the closed nature of Indonesia’s judicial system, which hindered AMAN from demonstrating its ability to engage in persuasive advocacy and effectively challenge the regulation. Thus, as outlined by Cohen (2016), supportive policy venues are important prerequisites in enabling successful policy advocacy.