Community based forest management has the potential to contribute to
food and livelihoods security, and to contribute to the sustainable management
of forest resources. Where it is able to provide an alternative to forest
clearance, it is also a tool for climate change mitigation. Forest management
which emphasizes sustainability of the forest ecosystem, maintenance of
ecosystem services, and maximizing benefits for local community livelihoods is
often referred to as eco-forestry. The concept of eco-forestry has yet to become
well-established in Indonesia, where efforts to date have focused more narrowly
on securing community rights over forest resources, but the elements of the
eco-forestry approach are strongly aligned with the aspirations of many
communities and civil society organizations working in this area. The
experience of the Papua New Guinea Eco-forestry Forum[1],
and the lessons and manuals produced by Greenpeace on the basis of their
experience in PNG and the Solomon Islands, are highly relevant to Papua as they
refer to similar ecological and cultural settings.
Eventhough most of
eco-forestry efforts in Indonesia was focused on timber extraction but with a
wide forests products it must not been emphasized only on timber. Non timber
forest products such as nutmegs, sago, eager woods and others are the products that
be proposed to developed by the community as part of increase they security in
economic position. Learning from current experiences which we can’t generalize
that timber was the most potential one of cash sources. Clarity of land right and
legal permition that community must be realized to make sure that that community
would derive benefits from their resources.
Experience in PNG, from Greenpeace, and increasingly from elsewhere in
Indonesia, demonstrates that there are three critical enabling conditions which
must be in place for a community to sustainably and effectively manage a forest
area:
- agreement on rights over forest resources and the sharing of benefits from an ecoforestry initiative both within the community concerned, and with neighboring communities
- appropriate rights and licenses issued by the relevant authorities
- a village forest management institution with the technical capacity to plan and implement forest management, and the capacity to manage the business, including marketing and financial aspects.
The current (2012) situation with each of these enabling conditions in Papua is reviewed briefly below:
1. Community
agreement
Definition of customary rights over land has been the focus of
participatory mapping initiatives which have progressed in several parts of
Indonesia, including Papua, in the last decade. An effective mapping process
clarifies the external boundaries of land ownership (shared with neighboring
groups), and the internal boundaries (between families and clans). Whilst not
specifically developed to support ecoforestry, the mapping has been key to
defining the limits of rights and thus to making formal applications for
licenses. The establishment of the Customary Lands Register (nationally), the
issuing of a Papuan Regulation of Indigenous Lands, and the inclusion of mapping
in the draft Papua Spatial Plan mean that the path for securing formal
recognition of mapped territories is increasingly clear. Some mapping approaches (notably by WWF in
Merauke and CI in Mamberamo) have avoided mapping boundaries of land rights,
and have concentrated on mapping locations with economic and cultural
importance for communities. Whilst these maps provide an indication of land
use, they are not adequate for planning forest management. The area of land
mapped to date is a fraction of the total area occupied by indigenous peoples,
especially in Papua. Experience of community mapping in Papua is now adequate
to plan how such interventions can be scaled-up and accelerated, and the
establishment of a mapping learning organization in Jayapura in 2011 is
intended to facilitate this process.
2. Rights and
licenses
Prior to 2008, initiatives in Papua and cross-visits to PNG failed to
kick-start an ecoforestry movement, primarily because civil society groups and
government were struggling with the question of how legal control of forests
and the right to extract timber and non timber forest
products could be secured within
the framework of Indonesian forestry and evironmental laws. Finally, in 2008, Papua province used
its special autonomy status within Indonesia to issue its own law on
sustainable forest management[1].
Implementing regulations for this law were finally issued in 2010, defining a
clear, though tortuous, administrative process through which a community could
secure rights over forest and timber. Ironically, by the time Papua province
issued its regulations, national policies for village forests had also advanced
to the stage of implementing regulations[2],
and by the end of 2011 over 30 such licenses had been issued to communities in
Sumatra and Kalimantan, whilst Papua lagged behind in implementation.
3. Institutional
Capacity
Low standards of formal education, and lack of experience in engaging on
an equal footing with external stakeholders, remains a challenge to community
development initiatives including ecoforestry. In logging concession areas
Papuan villagers have usually been employed as front-line workers, and have
learned the skills of tree-felling and extraction, but not planning and
management of forests. Business skills are typically poorly developed, with
little experience of planning and managing finances and business process, and
most cash income generated from direct sales of unprocessed forest and farm
products, or hand-outs from government and company development schemes.
[1] Papua Special Autonomy
Regulation 21/2008 on Sustainable Forest Management in Papua Province
[2] Forest Minister's decision on
Village Forests 49/2008
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