In Seram, Central Maluku, land is supposed to be untransferable. There are several schemes of land ownership, ranging from clan land, house land, to village land (von Benda-Beckmann and von Benda-Beckmann 1994), but ultimately land belongs to indigenous communities and cannot be acquired by outsiders under any circumstances. Indigenous people refer to this as their adat, the way of life they carry out and perpetuate from the past. Such a restriction seems to be what both green activism and green market discourses aspire to achieve to stave off modern ecological devastation (Fairhead, Leach, and Scoones 2012)\u2014that we should leave the management of lands to their traditional inhabitants, whose existence is harmonious with nature. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The problem is not only are these schemes shaped by the Dutch colonial policy to control rural population, obligatory labour, and trading (von Benda-Beckmann and von Benda-Beckmann 1994; Knaap 1991) but also that transactions of land ownership are quite common to the point that an informal land market has developed. The indigenous people sell or share their lands with settlers, as the settlers need to access the land and grow crops for their livelihoods. They may approach the settlers or be approached by them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n