Maintaining Leuweung Titipan: Banana & Cassava Chips Processing Business Group of the Kasepuhan Cirompang Indigenous Community and Participatory Mapping of the Kasepuhan Cicarucub Traditional Area

The Kasepuhan Cirompang and Cicarucub Indigenous Communities are two indigenous communities that are geographically located around the Mount Halimun-Salak National Park Area. Administratively, both are located in the Sobang and Cibeber Districts, Lebak Regency, Banten. The existence of these two Kasepuhan has been recognized by the Lebak Regency Government through Lebak Regency Regional Regulation Number 8 of 2015 concerning the Recognition, Protection, and Empowerment of the Kasepuhan Indigenous Legal Community.

Kasepuhan Cirompang has also obtained through the Decree of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry in 2019, with an area of ​​306 hectares. Meanwhile, Kasepuhan Cicarucub has not received recognition of customary forest rights. 

Currently, the Kasepuhan Cirompang Indigenous Community is more focused on managing its customary areas and increasing the capacity of its community members, especially Indigenous Women who are members of the PEREMPUAN organization. AMAN. Indigenous Women in Cirompang took the initiative to build a collective economic enterprise by utilizing products from the indigenous region, such as the production of banana and cassava chips. 

Under the auspices of the Indigenous Peoples Business Group (KUMA), the main focus is to improve the credibility and legality of the business, including improving product packaging, innovating various flavors of chips, and taking care of the business license for the Business Identification Number (NIB) and the trademark "Dapur Ambu". This step is important to simplify other licensing processes, such as location permits and environmental permits.

With the support of Direct Funding from Nusantara Fund, Indigenous Women here are greatly helped to develop the processing of chips. In addition, many students from all over the University in Indonesia are learning and sharing how to process chips with various flavors. This is a joy for us to continue the process to be better and independent and progress. "

—Ajat, Program Manager–

Meanwhile, Kasepuhan Cicarucub is struggling to gain recognition of its customary territory from the government, amidst the threat of gold mining expansion that is destroying customary territory. The community began conducting participatory mapping of customary territory in May 2024, as an initial step, indigenous youth in Kasepuhan Cicarucub were trained to conduct participatory mapping. As a result, the area of ​​customary territory that has been mapped is 70.581 hectares. 

To obtain recognition of customary territory from the Regional Government, Kasepuhan Cicarucub is currently compiling the necessary data and requirements, including a map of the outer boundaries of the customary territory, a map of customary forests, and a profile of the Indigenous Community that includes the history of the community's origins. Advocacy efforts are also ongoing, considering that some customary forest areas have been damaged due to the increasing expansion of private gold mining activities.

For both Kasepuhan Cirompang and Kasepuhan Cicarucub, customary forests are leuweung itipan—areas that must be protected and must not be damaged. Although the approaches taken by these two kasepuhan are different—Cirompang with economic strengthening based on customary territory management, while Cicarucub with advocacy and mapping efforts—their goal remains the same: to maintain and protect the sustainability of customary territories.