This book documents conflicts over control of the sources of life in several parts of East Java through three main sections. The first section highlights agrarian inequality in Ijen, Bondowoso, where plantation workers and farmers have lived for generations without secure land rights and faced conflicts with state-owned plantations and the expansion of geothermal projects.
The second section discusses the water crisis in Batu City. Water, which should belong to everyone, has been turned into a commodity controlled by a handful of people. At the same time, the tourism industry and geothermal projects in Arjuno-Welirang and Songgoriti threaten the springs that are sources of livelihood, identity, and culture for local communities.
The third section portrays the tangle of energy infrastructure in Tapal Kuda, Gunung Pandan, and Gunung Wilis. From colonial plantations and PLTU to biomass co-firing and geothermal projects, extractivism keeps changing its face while preserving the same pattern: dispossession of living spaces and the displacement of communities.
Taken as a whole, this book poses one fundamental question: who has the right to control the sources of life? Land, water, forests, and energy have become arenas of contestation between the state and corporations, on the one hand, and communities whose livelihoods and culture depend on these territories, on the other.