Social forestry refers to a diverse list of arrangement, including industrial, conventional, and other forestry initiatives modified to enable profit distribution to local communities (Gilmour and Fisher, 1991). Therefore, the most important element in the development of social forestry is the involvement of forest-dependent communities to gain benefit from forest resources. The concept of social forestry – as a way to grant legal access to local communities to utilize forest resources – has been recognized since the 1990s. Before this time, for forest administrators in particular, those living around forest zones were merely perceived as menial labor, having limited contribution to forest management. During the period of 1990-1998, there was a growing awareness that customary communities played an important role in forest resource management.
Based on data in Indonesia, the area of farm forestry in Indonesia covers 1,265,460 hectares (Suryandari and Puspitojati, 2003), and until 2006, community forestry covered a small area of 33,576 hectares (Ditjen Rehabilitasi Lahan dan Perhutanan Sosial, 2006). The coverage area significantly increased in 2015, to which the total area officially designated amounted to 2,1 million hectares. In 2006, the area for National Program for Forest and Land Rehabilitation amounted to 551,739 hectares comprising 618,261 hectares for reforestation, 5,602 hectares for farm forestry, and 4,963 hectares for urban forestry (Ditjen Rehabilitasi Lahan dan Perhutanan Sosial, 2006). These statistics indicate that the government began to make a significant effort in the management supporting the social forestry model. In the period of 2007-2014, the government attempted to issue several regulations providing the opportunity for local people to participate in forest management.
The development of a social forestry model in Indonesia faces continuing challenges. Both forest managers and local communities also continue to point fingers about the extent of their role in the schemes that are being developed, indicating a continued fight for rights to forest resources. During the period of 2000-2007, the Community Forest Program, which was previously aimed to reduce illegal logging, ironically created new conflicts, in some cases exacerbating the problem. Conflicts emerged in several ways, including in the areas of joint management arrangements, licensing issues, procedural inconsistency, and the overall contestation around the responsibility of forest resource provision to and among communities (Suharman, 2004). Problems related to community forest management include the acknowledgement of management access solely to the landowner, technical issues in the application of reforestation objectives, and forest maintenance inconsistencies, as well as challenges involving forest resource exploitation among communities (Sukadaryati, 2006). Between 2007-2014, the phase 1 of social forestry policy also faced issues of growing sentiments making claims to more fundamental agrarian reform (Awang, 2010).
Although much is written about the progress and development of social forestry in Indonesia (Maryudi et al., 2012; Sahide et al., 2018; Fisher et al., 2018).
The shift in forest policy in Indonesia, from large-scale timber-based management to a community-based approach, points to the potential opportunity for engaging with customary communities on their terms in Papua. This timely policy change allows for more adequately improving livelihoods of indigenous communities, especially forest-dependent people. The increasing concern of protecting indigenous people’s rights should also be necessarily concerned with the broader policies on the environment where these people live, as well as the cultural norms and values that shape forest management considerations. The values and norms are in fact shaped by their interactions with the environment (Wanggai, 1999; Berkes et al., 2000; Berkes 2001).
Community-based forest management is believed to be a reasonable policy approach in forest management. The reasons are that this type of management does not only position local communities as actors in forest management but also goes against the common stereotype that the state knows better than forest-dependent people how to manage forests (Awang, 1999). The facts reflect that, in several regions in Indonesia, forest management is enhanced when local community are directly involved in programming initiatives (Awang, 1999). One example is forest management carried out in a natural sanctuary in the Arfak mountains, Papua. The classification of sanctuary areas is based on local knowledge, namely,
The problems of forest management in Indonesia in the last few decades have come from relations between the state and socio-cultural authority, particularly in relation to livelihoods and economic opportunity among customary peoples. Challenges to forest management approaches in Indonesia has triggered new discourses and debates about land rights, particularly after the petition of
As a part of President Joko Widodo’s administration, the “Nawacita” policy document that lays out presidential priorities, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MOEF) has targeted 12.7 million hectares for allocation as social forestry areas. These areas cover a diverse set of categories including customary forests, forestry partnerships, community forestry, village forests, and a variety of other schemes. As a supporting policy, MOEF issued ministerial regulation No. P.32 of 2015 concerning Private Forest and No. P.83 of 2016 concerning Social Forestry.
The sustainability of forest resource management in Papua depends heavily on how customary rights are recognized and accommodated in planning, implementation, and evaluation processes. Social forestry, as a policy, is therefore instrumental to ensuring that forest resource management is beneficial and sustainable for customary communities throughout the region. Customary land recognition is one potential opportunity for
There are 3 reasons why the implementation of customary forest schemes in Papua are a challenge to implement. First is a lack of collaborative efforts of multidisciplinary teams in addressing the matter. Second is the insufficient understanding of the problem among policy makers. And third, is the reluctance among bureaucrats for power sharing arrangements with customary communities.
The author was involved in some activities providing assistance and advocacy in the area of forestry policy in Tanah Papua. From my experiences being actively involved in such policymaking discussions, I believe that there is a lack of commitment to collaborative efforts in forest management. Government bureaucrats in charge of forest-related administration, academics, and social activists do not really engage in a productive exchange of ideas or concepts. Consequently, social forestry policy in Tanah Papua is not well adopted and difficult to implement due to the challenges in accessing the field sites. Another serious challenge is the strong domination of the central government as part of their overwhelming focus on normative policies. State-made policies often do not take local knowledge into account, even though local experiences are shaped by generations of sustainable traditional practices on managing forest resources. Therefore, the notion of special autonomy as it has been conferred to
Given this background on social forestry and special autonomy in
This leads to my second point about the rationale for rejecting this claim. The refusal of the central government, in which MOEF rejected such claims is baseless given that government policy of
Referring to the identification of sites listed in
To further contextualize social forestry reforms in
The policies of establishing Tambrauw as a conservation district and West Papua, a conservation province, shape discourses on the necessary services given to, and provided by customary communities under the scheme of natural resource management. It means that the government at the district and central levels should ensure that customary communities gain access to natural resources for their well-being, and that such assurances to be able to thrive from natural resources is ensured through local-based practices in conservation zones (McNeely and Mainka, 2009). The perceived dichotomy between conservation-economy has long been an area of conflict in the history of conservation area management. Social forestry provides a viable opportunity to bridge these concepts and underlying priorities. Becoming a conservation district or conservation province, as a policy, is made locally, for the benefit of local people. In other words, such policies actually have not had a clear legal umbrella from the national level. However, the local government, therefore needs to translate the conservation policy so that it will bring real benefits to the local people. This presents a foundation for matching with the discursive ideas being promoted nationally through policies on social forestry.
The remaining challenge faced by a guiding policy as a conservation province or district however, still face the more challenging task of developing implementation arrangements in the form of policies, plans, and programs on the ground. The establishment of customary forests, village forests, or other social forestry schemes provide a real example for how implementation units in a conservation district and province can operationalize activities on the ground. Based on the Indicative Map of Social Forestry Area of the West Papua province, the Tambrauw District has allocated 12,403 hectares for social forestry. Working in partnership with non-governmental organizations, the local government has mapped out the customary areas and ethnic/tribal groups across these areas. There remain 3 tribal groups (Basakof, Tafi, and Wabia) who are in the process of gaining their ownership status over customary forests. Meanwhile, other social forestry schemes are in the identification process and undergoing mapping initiatives. Customary forests and other social forestry schemes in Tambrauw district will become precedent-setting examples of how a conservation district implements its conservation policies on the ground by recognizing the importance of working with local communities (Fatem, 2018). Social forestry schemes then become a strategic arena for collaboration, coordination and consultation among various parties.
The critical questions going forward therefore are as follows: to what extent will the social forestry scheme in Papua be designed by the central government? In what ways will social forestry schemes be implemented? And furthermore, how will success be determined in its implementation?