Opening the Door to Community Forest Access and Management in Indonesia

In Indonesia’s West Kalimantan Province, the people of Padang Tikar village manage 76,000 hectares of mangrove forests. Their agroforestry-based businesses and honey bees earn monthly profits for them of about IDR 325 million (US$ 22,000) – an example of how legal access to forest use provides significant benefits to rural people. This story, recounted in Tosca Santoso’s 2019 book Five Forests, One Story, describes one of many way communities can thrive when given legal access to manage forests sustainably.

Agriculture and forestry contribute significantly to Indonesia’s economic growth. However, many people who depend on forests and rural lands for agricultural livelihoods, including many indigenous communities, are poorer than the national average. Among village households in or at the forest fringe, 1.7 million of 9.2 million are classified as low income, according to Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MoEF) data from 2017. Historically, forest land provided by the government in the past was unequally distributed between the private sector and communities, resulting in limited access for village households, land tenure conflict, social injustice and poverty.

Indonesia sought to address that in 2015. In an effort to ensure the availability of land and forest areas to local and indigenous communities and to achieve social justice in the use of forest areas and resources, the government launched a social forestry program, one of the economic equality policies enacted by President Joko Widodo.

“The regulations have mandated the social forestry program to be an integrated forest management system, implemented mainly by the forest farmers group and indigenous communities, with the goals to reduce poverty, improve community welfare and protect forests from degradation and land conversion,” said Bambang Supriyanto, Director General for Social Forestry and Environmental Partnership, Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MoEF). “One key aspect to remember is that, we can’t stop at distributing access to forest use. Once the permits and the access are provided, we need to empower and strengthen the capacity of these communities to manage forests sustainably. By doing so, we can achieve social forestry’s honorable purpose, to ensure these accesses lead to ecological, economic and social benefits.”

Communities Play a Pivotal Role

The World Bank supports the government of Indonesia’s target to improve communities’ access to forest land use and strengthen community management in selected priority areas allocated for social forestry through the Strengthening of Social Forestry (SSF) Project, with US$ 14.3 million funding from the Global Environment Facility. This program facilitates legal access to and promotes the sustainable management of 300,000 hectares of forests by communities in 11 forest management units in six districts across West Sumatra, Lampung, West Nusa Tenggara, and North Maluku. By 2025, the program is expected to benefit approximately 150,000 beneficiaries (30 percent of whom are women), reduce 9.2 million tons of CO2 emissions, and enhance forest cover by rehabilitating degraded forests that are important for biodiversity conservation. The program is being led by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry with support from other key ministries, including National Development Planning, Finance, Home Affairs, Villages, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, the  Coordinating Ministry for Maritime Affairs and Investment, and representatives from academia, national banks, and civil society organizations.

While accelerating the issuance of social forestry licenses and strengthening the supportive policy and regulatory frameworks remain important, supporting communities to sustainably use and manage the forest area and resources after receiving the permits is key to the program's success. Once land rights are given, the program will facilitate technical assistance to communities, village forest institutions, and forest farmers groups in the formulation of sustainable forest management plans.

These plans include understanding land zoning of different uses (e.g., for protection and cultivation) and developing or strengthening sustainable livelihood models in the communities, starting from production, harvest, processing, and marketing, to promotion of relevant, sustainable products and services through effective business chains and digital markets.