Abstract: The Wabula indigenous people of Buton Regency, Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, practice a traditional system of agriculture called shifting cultivation. Even though such a method is usually deemed to cause deforestation, if it is carried out using customary law, it can bring benefits to the sustainability of the ecosystem and the conservation of soil. This paper aims to study legal pluralism’s dynamics in the shifting cultivation practice as well as the role of customary law in sustainably managing natural resources. This research employed the socio-legal approach and analyzed how the state law and indigenous law interact. Results indicate that the Wabula indigenous people have their own customary law on the usage of land to maintain the balance of the ecology, encompassing the principles of kaombo, omo, and pangkolo. Even so, the relationship between the state law and the customary law is still imbalanced, hampering such customary agricultural activities. Therefore, the state must formulate regional regulations that protect the traditional shifting cultivation practice by using the Wabula customary community’s laws as a reference. This is to guarantee the legal certainty of land preservation management rights using the shifting cultivation method.

Keywords: Environmental Conservation, Indigenous Agroecology, Indonesia, Legal Pluralism, Indigenous People, Shifting Cultivation

Pages: 449-467