Below is the synthesis of the online consultation series Rural Voices: Our Climate Struggles for Food & Land held May 2025. The RURAL VOICES SERIES – first launched in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic – is a continuing effort from this year’s commemoration of the March 29 Day of the Landless, which put spotlight on how today’s climate crisis has been exploited to further imperialist plunder of our lands, seas, and resources.
**
In Southeast Asia, particularly in Indonesia and Cambodia, the climate crisis is already transforming daily life —rural communities face the growing threat of losing their land, livelihoods, and culture amid harsher weather and failing crops.
Farmers speak of erratic seasons, rising costs, and the inability to rely on their own harvests. In Cambodia’s rice-growing provinces, farmers can no longer predict when to plant or harvest. In Indonesia, especially in Sulawesi and Java, unpredictable rainfall, floods, and pest outbreaks destroy crops, pushing families into deeper poverty. As food becomes harder to grow, many rural households are forced to depend on overpriced market goods.
But the disasters are not only natural. Government policies actively use climate narratives to justify land grabs and corporate expansion. Projects labeled as conservation, social forestry, or renewable energy often lead to forced evictions and the destruction of traditional farming systems.
In Indonesia, state-backed national parks exclude Indigenous communities in areas like Ujung Kulon in Banten and Lore Lindu in Central Sulawesi, while industrial timber plantations and nickel mining expand under the guise of energy transition. In Cambodia, Economic Land Concessions displace smallholder farmers and Indigenous communities as land is converted into agro-industrial estates.
Meanwhile, fisherfolk are restricted access to traditional fishing zones due to marine conservation expansion and aquaculture investment, such as in the coastal areas of Taka Bonerate and Flores Island where food insecurity is already deepening.
These are called “climate solutions,” yet have a human cost. Families lose their homes and farmlands as these projects take over. Women bear greater burdens managing water and food, especially in remote villages without adequate services. Youth are forced to migrate to cities or across borders. Cultural traditions tied to land and sea are eroding. Pollution from industrial smelters and mining sites, such as those in Kalimantan and Sulawesi, degrade health and the environment.
In the face of this crisis, rural communities continue to resist. They save seeds, promote and practice agroecology, and defend forests and fishing grounds. In provinces like East Nusa Tenggara and Morowali, people organize against national park expansion and mining projects. In Cambodia, rural groups reclaim ancestral lands through traditional communal practices, legal complaints, and protests. They build alliances across sectors within and outside their countries – especially with farmers, fisherfolk, Indigenous Peoples, and advocates – for land rights and food sovereignty.
As participants stressed, solidarity is essential. These are not isolated struggles, but shared ones. By connecting movements across sectors and countries, exchanging knowledge, and amplifying rural voices, they challenge a system that puts people over profit. Their message is clear: climate justice cannot be built on displacement and exploitation. Real solutions must come from the ground – from the people who live with and care for the land and seas.
Rural communities are not passive victims of the climate crisis. They are frontline defenders of food systems, ecosystems, and cultural heritage. Their knowledge, struggles, and solutions are central to any meaningful climate response. Recognizing their role and supporting their resistance is a prerequisite for true and lasting climate justice. ###
Participant organizations: Aliansi Gerakan Reforma Agraria (Indonesia), Gita Pertiwi (Indonesia), Institute for National and Democracy Studies, (Indonesia), Kareso Bulukumba (Indonesia), Ponlok Khmer (Cambodia)
Written by Alyana Zablan, PCFS intern