Jokowi’s Sustainable Community-Based Forest Management

Ideas for communitybased forest management (CBFM) have emerged since the 1970s, but movements to support this, mainly by NGOs, began in 1995. After a long journey of struggle to convince various parties, finally the ideas have fallen in fertile soil under the current government. 

The Environment and Forestry Ministry will distribute 12.7 million hectares to indigenous peoples (IP). To support this, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo will establish a task force to protect the rights of indigenous people and preserve their customary lands and actively participate in the ratification of 

the draft of the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Acknowledgment and Protection Bill (The Jakarta Post, Aug. 1, 2015). It is hoped that the program will run smoothly as planned. 

The next important question is, however, what the people will do with their new rights and authorities, how they will use these to create better lives for themselves in a lasting way, and what this means for forests and ecosystems under their control. 

This probably means a lot of additional efforts beyond the already complicated land issues — in the worst scenario they will cash out the land for short-term income gain. Its generating purposes will be not much different from past concessionaires’ doings and that will be disappointing to all.

Strategy to Side with Indigenous People

To deal with rampant land disputes involving indigenous communities, the Environment and Forestry Ministry has set a target of redistributing 12.7 million hectares of social forests (2015-2019), in which the majority (6.8 million ha) would be taken from concession forests — totaling 30 million ha, which is composed of industrial forest permits (HTI) of around 10 million ha and natural production forest concessions (HPH) of around 12 million ha — in the form of partnership forests, Hutan Kemitraan (HK). 

The remaining 5.9 million ha will come from open-access production forests with no existing permits (unmanaged production forest) in the form of village forests or Hutan Desa (HD), community forests or Hutan Kemasyarakatan (HKM) and customary forests or Hutan Adat (HD).

The President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo administration has put great emphasis on overcoming long and unequal control over state forest areas for the better management of space for local communities; however, evil is always in its implementation. 

This is mainly because of indeterminate entitlements to land, the lack of a comprehensive land registry and related geospatial information, lack of formal methods to protect and recognize customary rights to land, unclear state forest boundaries and a lack of government facilitators dealing with dispute resolution at the field level.