Progress toward increasing the role local people play in forest lands management in Indonesia

This paper reviews current governmental and non-governmental efforts in Indonesia to increase the role local people officially play in the management of natural resources inside the seventy percent of Indonesia defined by the government as State Forest Zone. It provides a broad brush description of the dichotomy between local natural resource management systems and the government regulatory framework that favors industrial forestry management. It then goes into greater depth on the characteristics of some of the many indigenous agroforestry systems found in Indonesia and describes a successful effort to gain formal government incorporation of one these systems into the state regulatory framework. There are essentially two approaches in Indonesia to increasing the forest management role of local people. The first centers on “raising the participation of local communities in the management of forest lands”. This is current government policy and programs to achieve this are being implemented by the Department of Forestry. The second, promoted by local communities, university researchers and NGOs, centers on policy change that shifts the emphasis to Department of Forestry recognition that existing community-based natural resource management systems are the most effective starting point and that land and resource access rights of local people must be secured if community-based forestry is to broadly develop in Indonesia. The Government priority of increasing participation is based upon two important assumptions. The first is that local people are the primary cause of forest degradation or full forest conversion to agriculture. Therefore, any attempt to work with farmers must center on imposing a new land-use system. The second assumption is that these people have no rights to be on state land at all, whether or not their ancestors had been on the land long before the existence of the Indonesian state. As a result, in some areas of Indonesia, the government’s approach to dealing with people living in the forest zone continues to be intimidation and eviction. Yet, a subtle although still incomplete shift in the government’s approach is taking place. The Department of Forestry policy no longer treats local people in the forest zone as liabilities alone. They are now seen as liabilities that must and can become assets in government efforts to increase timber production and rehabilitate degraded forest lands

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