Building Synergies to Develop Community Primary Forests Enterprise in Indonesia

Timber harvesting by Esania Community in Kaimana - West Papua Province. Photo: Mnukwar Papua

March 15^th 2016, one full day workshop and round table discussion in Hotel Orie Jakarta was organized by Samdhana Institute, AMAN and Rainforests Alliance talked about finding the ways to creates community forests enterprise in Indonesia Natural Forests. Taking cases from Messo-Amarica region such as Guatemala, Mexico and Peru where indigenous community have moving on sustainable, legal and benefits management of their forests resources. The meeting has brought together NGO, Facilitator, community forestry right holders, keys forestry officers and one representative from private sector. They presented three scheme of Indonesia forests management with their progress and challenges. These three schemes are: (1) customary community based timber management in Papua, (2) private forests management - cases from Lampung and (3) village forests- a social forestry program in Riau. Highlighting the importance of community participation in managing their forests resources, mainstreaming business perspective and advocating legal regulation are the cores issues the discussion had.

On his opening speech Abdon Nababan, General Secretary of Indigenous People Archipelago Alliance (AMAN) says that this is remain the big home works for us to show the cases where customary community raise and organize them self to managing their natural forests. He then emphasized that self-reviving means all the projects are getting approval and legal certification not because of money from charity donors but from the money they get from managing their forests resources. Learning from almost 25 years experiences working on this community forestry issues he noted that there are 4 major issues that we should preparing to make the community forests enterprise are working: (1) clarity of land tenure rights over the forests, (2) how institutional development and arrangement are working properly, (3) how to makes sure the current living forests community products are remain a core priority and attention and (4) capacity of the manager and all community member of the economic body on the ground. With currents change in the forests development pathway which taking social forestry as the national development target he encourages all the facilitator, donors and community to strategically looking at this opportunity to bridge the gaps in natural forests community enterprises. Supported Abdon points, Nonette Royo the director of Samdhana Institute says that current changes in Indonesia politics and policies orientation are the opportunity but also the challenges to us. So having a collaboration work to sharing knowledge, skill and resources are the steps we have to counting soon.

Complexity challenges and problems of the community forests enterprises in Indonesia are varying in each region. The participant and resources person pointed out them as follow:

• Papua is now having a problem in the legal approval of their norms, standard, criteria and indication of customary community based forests management. As addition the limited capacity of the community in understanding the robust technical and business requirement in the CFE and social problem to clarifying and social consolidation among community have put the huge challenges for all forestry actor in the island to make the schemes is working properly. 
• Sumatera, Sulawesi, Papua and Kalimantan with their social forestry program such as Village Forests, Community Plantation Forests and Community Forestry are facing the problem in local government commitment and supports from the preparation to the implementation of the scheme. The conflicts of claim and interest on huge money driven development are another issues they been fighting for. Technical capacity and social issues are also emerged together with a markets for forests products they produce from these legal social forestry program.

• Private forests management. The example from South Konawe in Sulawesi, Kulon Progo in Central Java and GMWT in Lampung have shown that bringing community into real business room is another challenges after a licenses. Institutional arrangement and strong capital to compete with current big business power. They emphasized that working on timber/ forestry business is beyond having a sustainable certificate. Many ghost riders across the long chain of timbers transport and supply are influencing the amount of benefits they received

Despite their complexity of challenges and problems it is acknowledging that demand in timber from community concession are increasing. In Lampung, about 70% of total timber been supplied in the town are harvested from community concession. With it legal problem the un-planned logging in the Biak Island has contribute to 90% of timber needs in the city. These facts have previously confirmed in the 2006 report by Dudung Darusman (Forests Economic Professor in IPB) that the contribution of community forests industry are enormous high in the total timber supply in the country. Where about 39,4million m³ on 1,5 million ha are records as the potency of community timber industry.

Globally there are increasing number of community managed their forests resources. And it mostly successfully maintaining the functions, ensuring the benefit flows and has successfully reducing poverty lines. Indonesia government are also now aware that make forests valuable for the people are by giving them rights and access to manages it. The long history of big logging concession capture the forests resources has left the negative impact from high deforestation and degradation to social conflict in the community. 12,7 million ha for social forestry for example are part of the shift steps to balancing the allocation to community controlled and managed forests resources. Wiratno – the director of social forestry area preparation at the Ministry of Environment and Forestry on his presentation highlighted the current concern on pushing high allocation to community. PIAPS (social forestry indicative maps) are then developed to sets up national optimistic targets for community forestry. Funding, technical capacity and legal support are parts of the efforts the government is consistently will do in the presidential periods. He added there are many challenges needs to be answered to achieve those targets particularly with the increasing demand on non-forestry investment plan such as oil palm and mining that more often influenced policy makers not to support the development of social forestry program in their regions.

Cases from Latin America where local communities in country like Mexixo and Guatemalla have successfully manage their natural forests provides a good learning sites for Indigenous communities in Indonesia. In the Maya Biosphere Reserve of Guatemala, for example, nine community concessions co-manage more than 400,000 hectares of highly commercially valuable forest. Development of enterprises among these concessions has resulted in timber and non-timber forest product sales of around $10 million annually, generating thousands of jobs and financing investment in local infrastructure and social development. Significantly, over the last 15 years, deforestation rates in concessions have been significantly lower than in adjacent “core zone” protected forest says Ben Hodgdon – from Rain Forests Alliance. He underlying the challenges been facing in Indonesia are also same with what they have in latin America. Having a community consensus and consolidation to works together within good institutional arrangement are the keys in community forests enterprises.

Connecting resources and facilitator across the archipelago to supports emerge initiative at the community to take control over their forests are an important step to take. Focusing on create one good models on primary forests should be emphasized now. Learning from other country experiences with the same cases are to fulfill the gaps we don’t have in Indonesia. Bani Susilo as a representative of private sector in Papua noted that in cases like Papua, the challenge is to make sure that in the beginning of 2 – 3 years, community forests enterprises program are survives and could do good business arrangement even though they only reach local markets.

Timber measurement by the community in Esania - Kaimana West Papua. Photo: Mnukwar-Papua