People from Komodo village sell wooden statues of Komodo dragons as souvenirs in Loh Liang as a tourist boat passes by in the background. Photo by Project M/Alex Sastro
The recent release of Dragon for Sale as a free-to-watch documentary on YouTube has brought public attention to the plight of the Ata Modo, the indigenous people of Komodo island, and their quest for spatial justice amid an onslaught of state-led tourism gentrification.
The movie, directed by Indonesian investigative journalist and documentary maker Dandhy Dwi Laksono and jointly produced by Ekspedisi Indonesia Baru, Sunspirit, and Sahabat Flores, depicts how indigenous communities on the island have fought against the government and private businesses that seek to turn it into a profit-making premium global tourism destination.
The basic premise of the documentary is that the government’s strategy to develop tourism in Labuan Bajo, concentrated on Komodo island, has created spatial injustice for the Ata Modo.
‘No human rights, only animal rights’
In 2020, East Nusa Tenggara governor Viktor Laiskodat made a controversial statement that shocked the Ata Modo and environmentalists. He said Komodo island was named as such because it was only for Komodo dragons, and not humans: “there will be no human rights there, only animal rights.”
For the islanders, his statement brought back memories of the traumatic expulsions that took place when the park was first established in 1980. For conservationists, it is emblematic of the government’s ‘fortress’ conservation model.
This is based on the paradigm that nature should be preserved as pristinely as possible and so human activities should be restricted. Fortress conservation has long been criticised for neglecting local communities in the name of natural conservation, especially after the IUCN’s Vth World Parks Congress in 2003, which recognised indigenous peoples’ traditional territorial stewardship of nature.
To make matters worse, the Indonesian government tends to pick and choose when applying the model. Fortress conservation on Komodo island apparently applies to the Ata Modo but not to investors.
The ongoing infrastructure drive in Labuan Bajo is proof of that.
Selling Komodo to the world
Labuan Bajo’s scenic land and seascapes, along with the exotic Komodo lizards, are major attractions for holidaymakers. Efforts to internationalise the park have been under way since UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site in 1991. However, it was not until the ’10 New Bali’ mega tourism project launched by President Jokowi in 2016 that the government intensively promoted Labuan Bajo as ‘super premium tourism’. In 2022, the regency hosted the 1st TWG G20 Summit and, in 2023, the 42nd ASEAN Summit, both intended to boost the regency’s international profile.
The region has welcomed more foreign tourists since then. In 2001, it recorded only 12,342 international and 1,272 domestic tourists. In 2023, the figures skyrocketed, with 184,096 international and 116,392 domestic visitors. The government collected AUD 3.9 million from ticket sales alone.
President Jokowi has now accelerated infrastructure development in and around the park, issuing a set of regulations aimed at producing new spaces to ensure land is available for these purposes. One of them is Presidential Decree No. 18 of 2020 on the Medium-term National Development Plan 2020-2024, which focuses on 5 super priority destinations to speed up land use and title conversion for tourism-related infrastructure.
In the same vein, the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry has created new zones for tourism within the park zone via land concessions. A case in point is the AUD 7 million Jurassic Park project on Rinca Island, which has drawn protests from conservationists and UNESCO.
Spatial injustice for the Ata Modo
The Ata Modo have clearly become victims of spatial injustice. Spatial justice, as formulated by Özge Yaka, is more than just a matter of redistribution, recognition, and representation. To quote Edward Soja,“ … the idea of justice, however it might be defined, has a consequential geography.” It implies that (in)justice is always embedded in spatiality, while space itself is also socially constructed. In this sense, the Komodo National Park should serve as ‘lived space’ for not just planners, governments, conservationists and investors but also the Ata Modo.
Instead, the current conservation regime controls human activities within the park and limits islanders’ access to land, causing the Ata Modo to lose their traditional territory, which has been generationally passed down to residents of Komodo village, an enclave located on the south coast of the park entrance. This is known as ambient exclusion in which the state claims territories under the pretext of ‘common good’ or ‘nature preservation’. It also exemplifies the denial of indigenous knowledge and the Ata Modo’s ancient role as stewards of Komodo Island.
The Komodo Collaborative Management Initiative, a failed 2005 project of the World Bank and the Nature Conservancy, demonstrated that private-public conservation management without active participation and co-ownership from the local community can only further marginalise the Ata Modo. Since the park’s establishment, they have had to change their livelihoods from peasantry to fishing and, most recently, finding work in tourism.
This begs the question: will the Ata Modo, the traditional inhabitants of Komodo island, ever have any say in the aggressive conservation and tourism development policies that so directly threaten their way of life?
