Analisis Kebijakan Pengelolaan Hutan Rakyat Untuk Mendorong Fungsi Lindung

Community forest that privately owned at Kuningan Regency, West Java Province, have showed forest cover improvement at average of 5.86% during 2003 –2009. The main factor which contributes to this improvement was economic motivation of owners as a response to growing market of timber originated from community forest. This forest potentially serves as protected area outside state forest in land use plan of Kuningan district. Due to its characteristic as common-pool resources in the context of its protection function, privately owned community forest requires certain institutional arrangement to enable sustainable forest management resulting sustainable benefit for public. The aim of this study is to assess policy framework and its implementation designed to promote sustainable community forest development. The framework for implementation analysis was applied in this research with emphasis on the policy variable. The result showed that existing policy framework is weak to support sustainable management of community forest. They were characterized by unclear formulation of concepts in policy documents, inappropriate causal theory, unbalance financial resource allocation, very much detail and almost rigid in technical guidelines thereby hindering the achievement of policy objectives

Is sustainability certification for biochar the answer to environmental risks?

Biochar has the potential to make a major contribution to the mitigation of climate change, and enhancement of plant production. However, in order for biochar to fulfill this promise, the industry and regulating bodies must take steps to manage potential environmental threats and address negative perceptions. The potential threats to the sustainability of biochar systems, at each stage of the biochar life cycle, were reviewed. We propose that a sustainability framework for biochar could be adapted from existing frameworks developed for bioenergy. Sustainable land use policies, combined with effective regulation of biochar production facilities and incentives for efficient utilization of energy, and improved knowledge of biochar impacts on ecosystem health and productivity could provide a strong framework for the development of a robust sustainable biochar industry. Sustainability certification could be introduced to provide confidence to consumers that sustainable practices have been employed along the production chain, particularly where biochar is traded internationally