Optimising Community-Based Forest Management Policy in Indonesia: a Critical Review

Community-based forest management (CBFM) is a popular concept in many countries, covering over 400 million hectares worldwide. In Indonesia, CBFM is viewed as an important component of the forestry sector with the government's goal to establish 5.6 million hectares of CBFM by 2011 (twice the area of industrial plantation forests). The Indonesian government is pursuing CBFM as a strategy to reduce deforestation of tropical forests, to alleviate poverty in rural communities, and to contribute timber supplies to the processing industry.There has been a belief that CBFM can lead to a physical and socio-economic transformation at the local level. However, in practice, especially in Indonesia, this claim appears problematic because in over 35 years since it has been officially introduced it does not appear to have contributed significantly to address the problems of deforestation and rural poverty.Despite the government's ambitious goal for CBFM, there are several challenges, for instance the entrenched poverty of many rural communities and inconsistent and unsupportive policies of CBFM at the national, provincial, and local government. This paper is intended to explore, discusses, and criticize the implementation of CBFM policies in various countries and in particular in Indonesia. This paper also aims to explore its challenges in the future development in Indonesia

Communicating REDD+ Issues at Local Level: Creating Latent and Manifest Conflict

”Carbon offsetting”in forestry-related projects is widely regarded as the ideal solution to the three challenges of the 21st Century: climate change, biodiversity conservation andsocio-economic development. At the same time, there is scepticism about the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) proposal particularly because of the weak governance and institutional capacities in many developing countries, which could jeopardize the delivery of benefits at the local level. One major problem is that most people have little knowledge on the causes and consequences of the climate change. This is partly because the information is largely scattered among scientific journals, and obscured by jargon and sophisticated mathematical models. Consequently, REDD+ is beyond thereach of manyof the people affected by REDD+. This paper examines the efforts and the capacity of the local governments and other development agents in explaining the REDD + issues and its impacts on the local people, especially customary communities. The research shows that lack of policy communication and promotion, as well as consultations with the affected groups arethe main contributing factors to latent and manifest conflicts. In turn, this conflicth as proven that NGOs, district governments and scientists have not been successful intermediaries. Thus, in the future policy communication on REDD+ should beaimed at improved network formation (i.e. between farmer groups with business partners and NGOs and other related actors), learning, negotiation and relationship building (i.e. between members of farmer groups, not only withtheir leaders within the farmer groups but also with governmental and business sectors). Policy communication should also create a new configuration of support and services in form of advocacy, empowerment and management skills and technical skills for conserving their natural resources, for adaptation to climate change and building more equitable governance and transparency at local level

Growth and profitability of smallholder sengon and teak plantations in the Pati district, Indonesia

Despite the ambitious target to establish 12.7 million ha of social forestry across Indonesia and various government support for smallholder private forests, implementation has been slow and financial returns for smallholders from timber production have been variable. For most smallholders, any motivation to plant trees competes with their interest in planting short term food or cash crops to support their family's livelihood. Moreover, lack of market knowledge and monetary need often sees smallholders sell their trees at below market prices, rather than at the optimum time for financial returns. Also, a limited understanding of silvicultural options to improve log quality further undermines the financial returns from timber production for smallholders. There are few studies from Indonesia that provide sufficient detail to be able to replicate the financial analysis and benchmark the results against key input variables (e.g., unit costs of production, timber yields by product and log size class, discount rate). Another deficiency is the lack of empirical data on the growth performance of existing smallholder plantations in Indonesia. This article reports on research to fill these knowledge gaps by using inventory data from smallholder plantations in Pati (Central Java) together with other data to develop silvicultural systems that were used to assess the profitability for smallholders of growing sengon (Paraserianthes falcataria) and teak (Tectona grandis) for timber. The results indicated that growing sengon on a 6-year rotation was profitable with an estimated net present value (NPV) of USD 1015 ha−1 (Rp 14,218,000 ha−1) at a real discount rate of 8, with an internal rate of return (IRR) of 20. Growing teak on a 20-year rotation was also profitable with an NPV of USD 2815 ha−1 at a real discount rate of 8, and an IRR of 15. Although the NPV for teak was nearly three times that for sengon, in the long term (i.e., over perpetual rotations), the returns from sengon and teak were closer. Our results support the view that the best opportunity for enhancing smallholder returns from forestry lies in improving the common approach to silviculture, particularly the lack of effective pruning and thinning, to realise the financial potential of timber production

Understanding rural life - assessing the social dimensions when encouraging land-use changes in rural areas

Meshed with the bio-physical and economic dimensions of rural land-use is a social dimension. Understanding the social and economic dimension of rural communities is critical if agencies are to develop effective policies and programs to improve natural resource outcomes. In this paper, we draw on research of the Boorowa community, located in the south-west slopes of New South Wales, to help understand how social changes in rural communities are impacting natural resource management in the Boorowa district. This included: *Identifying the catalysts for changing land-use in the Boorowa catchment, *Presenting an effective and efficient methodology for assessing the social and economic impacts of changes in land use at the catchment scale, *Identifying feasible and socially-acceptable pathways to achieve change in landuse to manage dryland salinity. The research process involved assessing data availability for construction of social and landholder profiles, conducting workshops with different community groups to explore their long-term goals and concerns about salinity, and developing indicators of social processes and progress that Catchment Management Authorities might be able to use in their decision-making processes