Implikasi Biaya dan Manfaat Pelaksanaan Svlk terhadap Sektor Perkayuan Skala Kecil

Pada tahun 2009, Pemerintah Indonesia menetapkan kewajiban pemenuhan standar SVLK (Sistem Verifikasi Legalitas Kayu) atas produk kayu bagi USAha perkayuan untuk menjamin legalitas penuh produk kayu. Ketentuan tersebut dimaksudkan untuk menghapuskan keraguan terhadap legalitas kayu Indonesia yang diperdagangkan di pasar Internasional. SVLK juga dirancang sebagai dasar kesepakatan sukarela (VPA) antara Uni Eropa dengan Indonesia. Pada September 2013, VPA ditandatangi dan SVLK secara resmi menjadi landasan perdagangan produk kayu bagi kedua belah pihak. Namun dalam pelaksanaanya, terdapat masalah serius. Bagi pelaku USAha di sektor perkayuan skala besar, memenuhi ketentuan standar SLVK mungkin tidak menjadi masalah, namun bagi pelaku USAha di sektor perkayuan skala kecil, banyak pertanyaan muncul terkait kemampuannya mengadopsi standar tersebut. Studi ini bertujuan untuk mengkaji implementasi SVLK dan implikasi biaya dan manfaatnya terhadap sektor perkayuan skala kecil. Sebagai studi kasus, data biaya dan manfaat diperoleh melalui wawancara dan observasi lapangan. Hasil studi menyimpulkan pelaksanaan SVLK menimbulkan tambahan biaya yang signifikan bagi sektor perkayuan skala kecil, namun sektor perkayuan skala kecil tidak memperoleh manfaat, baik dalam hal akses pasar maupun premium harga. Hasil studi merekomendasikan Kementerian Kehutanan dan instansi lain terkait perlu menyederhanakan ketentuan-ketentuan SVLK dan mengantisipasi potensi penurunan daya saing ekspor sektor perkayuan skala kecil akibat tambahan biaya SVLK

Illegal forest activities in Berau and Kutai Timur: impacts, driving forces and remedies

International audienc

Integrating place-specific livelihood and equity outcomes into global assessments of bioenergy deployment

__Abstract__ Integrated assessment models suggest that the large-scale deployment of bioenergy could contribute to ambitious climate change mitigation efforts. However, such a shift would intensify the global competition for land, with possible consequences for 1.5 billion smallholder livelihoods that these models do not consider. Maintaining and enhancing robust livelihoods upon bioenergy deployment is an equally important sustainability goal that warrants greater attention. The social implications of biofuel production are complex, varied and place-specific, difficult to model, operationalize and quantify. However, a rapidly developing body of social science literature is advancing the understanding of these interactions. In this letter we link human geography research on the interaction between biofuel crops and livelihoods in developing countries to integrated assessments on biofuels. We review case-study research focused on first-generation biofuel crops to demonstrate that food, income, land and other assets such as health are key livelihood dimensions that can be impacted by such crops and we highlight how place-specific and global dynamics influence both aggregate and distributional outcomes across these livelihood dimensions. We argue that place-specific production models and land tenure regimes mediate livelihood outcomes, which are also in turn affected by global and regional markets and their resulting equilibrium dynamics. The place-specific perspective suggests that distributional consequences are a crucial complement to aggregate outcomes; this has not been given enough weight in comprehensive assessments to date. By narrowing the gap between place-specific case studies and global models, our discussion offers a route towards integrating livelihood and equity considerations into scenarios of future bioenergy deployment, thus contributing to a key challenge in sustainability sciences

Policies, Political-Economy, and Swidden in Southeast Asia

For centuries swidden was an important farming practice found across the girth of Southeast Asia. Today, however, these systems are changing and sometimes disappearing at a pace never before experienced. In order to explain the demise or transitioning of swidden we need to understand the rapid and massive changes that have and are occurring in the political and economic environment in which these farmers operate. Swidden farming has always been characterized by change, but since the onset of modern independent nation states, governments and markets in Southeast Asia have transformed the terms of swiddeners’ everyday lives to a degree that is significantly different from that ever experienced before. In this paper we identified six factors that have contributed to the demise or transformation of swidden systems, and support these arguments with examples from China (Xishuangbanna), Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. These trends include classifying swiddeners as ethnic minorities within nation-states, dividing the landscape into forest and permanent agriculture, expansion of forest departments and the rise of conservation, resettlement, privatization and commoditization of land and land-based production, and expansion of market infrastructure and the promotion of industrial agriculture. In addition we note a growing trend toward a transition from rural to urban livelihoods and expanding urban-labor markets

Trade-offs between multifunctionality and profit in tropical smallholder landscapes

Land-use transitions can enhance the livelihoods of smallholder farmers but potential economic-ecological trade-offs remain poorly understood. Here, we present an interdisciplinary study of the environmental, social and economic consequences of land-use transitions in a tropical smallholder landscape on Sumatra, Indonesia. We find widespread biodiversity-profit trade-offs resulting from land-use transitions from forest and agroforestry systems to rubber and oil palm monocultures, for 26,894 aboveground and belowground species and whole-ecosystem multidiversity. Despite variation between ecosystem functions, profit gains come at the expense of ecosystem multifunctionality, indicating far-reaching ecosystem deterioration. We identify landscape compositions that can mitigate trade-offs under optimal land-use allocation but also show that intensive monocultures always lead to higher profits. These findings suggest that, to reduce losses in biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, changes in economic incentive structures through well-designed policies are urgently needed