InstitutionClaim Cited
Malaysia's FELDA joined public land, long-term credit, housing, technical management, settlement services, processing infrastructure, and commodity marketing into a route from rural landlessness to smallholder ownership. It raised many settler families' incomes and built new communities, while centralized crop choices, plantation expansion, ethnic distribution, debt, ecological conversion, and restrictive inheritance bounded whose autonomy the model produced.
What must a public land-settlement institution coordinate so that a plot becomes a durable livelihood rather than an isolated transfer of acreage?
Organizational CaseClaim Cited
Indonesia's concession system divided peat landscapes among forestry, pulpwood, oil-palm, conservation, village, and administrative authorities while drainage changed the hydrology shared among them. The system coordinated commodity investment and export but made recurrent fire, haze, carbon release, land conflict, and restoration into cross-boundary problems. Post-2015 reforms began governing peat hydrological units, yet enforcement, tenure, concession transparency, and continuity after the restoration agency's 2024 closure remain unresolved.
How can property and permit boundaries govern a landscape whose water, fire, smoke, and carbon do not respect them?