TRANSMIGRATION IN INDONESIA - LESSONS FROM ITS ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL IMPACTS

Indonesia's transmigration program to transport people from Java and o ther densely populated islands to largely forested outer islands has h igh environmental, social, and financial costs, while doing little tow ards relieving population pressure on Java. Transmigration has been an important cause of forest loss in Indonesia. World Bank financing pro moted the program directly over the 1976-1989 period and continues to underwrite other settlement models that have supplanted earlier progra ms. The bank projects included creating and strengthening a Ministry o f Transmigration, which also carried out settlements of types other th an those financed as discrete components of bank loans. Some of these indirectly supported activities have had particularly serious human ri ghts consequences. The case of transmigration provides Valuable lesson s for tropical countries and international development agencies such a s the World Bank, and many of these lessons have yet to be learned.