Ecological Agrarian Reform and Customary Land Conflicts in the Climate Crisis: A Comparative Legal Study of Indonesia, Kenya, and South Africa

Safrin Salam (Faculty of Law, Universitas Muhammadiyah Buton)
Nurhijah (Islamic Economic Law Study Program, Al-Shaykh Abdul Wahid College of Law)
Muhammad Ramadan Kiro (Faculty of Law, Halu Oleo University, Kendari)
Nuragifah (Faculty of Law, Hasanuddin University)
Izu Cynthia Chukwufumnanya (Department of Public Law, University of Delta)

Indonesia Law Reform Journal (ILREJ)
Vol. 6 No. 2 (2026): July 2026

This article explores ecological agrarian reform as a normative legal framework for responding to such conflicts by bringing together the principles of agrarian justice, environmental protection, and the rights of indigenous peoples. The study adopts a normative legal research methodology, drawing on statutory, comparative, case-based, and conceptual approaches. Indonesia is examined alongside selected African jurisdictions namely Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, and Tanzania with particular attention to the regulation of customary land tenure, communal land governance, and mechanisms for community participation. The legal analysis considers, among other materials, Article 18B clause (2) and Article 28H of the 1945 Constitution of Indonesia, Constitutional Court Decision No. 35/PUU-X/2012 on customary forests, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), Kenya’s Constitution of 2010 and Community Land Act 2016, and significant indigenous land rights cases, including the Endorois and Ogiek cases. The analysis demonstrates that customary land disputes are shaped by several interconnected factors, including competing claims over land, extractive development activities, inadequate institutional recognition of customary tenure, and insufficient opportunities for meaningful community participation. The comparison further shows that, although Indonesia constitutionally recognizes the rights of indigenous peoples, the implementation of those rights remains dependent on fragmented administrative and legal procedures. By contrast, Kenya and South Africa have established more explicit institutional arrangements for the governance of communal land. Against this background, the study advances ecological agrarian reform as a normative framework that incorporates the recognition of customary territories, ecological restoration, meaningful Free, Prior, and Informed Consent and the reassessment of environmentally destructive concessions. Such an approach could strengthen the legal basis for advancing agrarian justice, environmental protection, and climate resilience, while its effectiveness in practice remains subject to further empirical investigation. Ecological agrarian reform may serve as a comprehensive approach for reorienting land governance toward rights-based and sustainable development.