Abstract:Community forestry or social forestry (henceforth referred collectively as SF) programs have become new modes of forest management empowering local managers and hence, allowing integration of diverse local practices and support of local livelihoods. Implementation of these initiatives, however, face multiple challenges. State-prescribed community programs, for example, will remain isolated efforts if changes in the overall economic and social governance frameworks, including the devolution of rights to local users is lacking. Financial sustainability of these measures remains often uncertain and equity issues inherent to groups and communities formed for SF, can be exacerbated. In this article, we pose the question: Whose interests do SF policies serve? The effectiveness of SF would depend on the motivations and aims for a decentralization of forest governance to the community. In order to understand the underlying motivations behind the governments' push for SF, we examine national policies in Vietnam and Indonesia, changes in their policies over time and the shift in discourses influencing how SF has evolved. Vietnam and Indonesia are at different sides of the spectrum in democratic ambitions and forest abundance, and present an intriguing comparison in the recent regional push towards SF in Southeast Asia. We discuss the different interpretations of SF in these two countries and how SF programs are implemented. Our results show that governments, influenced by global discourse, are attempting to regulate SF through formal definitions and regulations. Communities on the other hand, might resist by adopting, adapting or rejecting formal schemes. In this tension, SF, adopted to serve the interest of local people, in practice has not fulfilled its promise.
Deforestation and forest degradation are complex and dynamic processes that vary from place to place. They are driven by multiple causes. Local communities are, to some extent, driving and also affected by some of these processes. Can their knowledge aid and add to place-specific assessment and monitoring of Deforestation and forest Degradation (DD) drivers? Our research was conducted in seven villages across three provinces of Indonesia (Papua, West Kalimantan and Central Java). Household surveys and focus group discussions were used to investigate how local community knowledge of DD drivers contributes to place-specific assessment and monitoring of DD drivers. We analyzed the link between drivers and local livelihoods to see how attempts to address deforestation and forest degradation might affect local communities and how this link might influence their participation in climate change mitigation measures such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) and Measuring, Reporting and Verifying (MRV) activities. We found that local knowledge is fundamental to capturing the variety of drivers particularly in countries like Indonesia where forest and socio-economic conditions are diverse. Better understanding of drivers and their importance for local livelihoods will not only contribute to a more locally appropriate design of REDD+ and monitoring systems but will also foster local participation.
Despite the growing interest in social forestry (SF), how much do we understand the social, economic and environmental outcomes and the conditions that enable SF to perform? In this article, we use a content analysis of literature on existing traditional SF practiced throughout Indonesia. It examines the outcomes of these systems and the conditions that enabled or hindered these outcomes to understand possible causal relations and changing dynamics between these conditions and SF performance. We discuss the gaps in how SF is assessed and understood in the literature to understand the important aspects of traditional SF that are not captured or that are lost when the diverse traditional systems are converted into other land uses. It aims to understand the potential trade-offs in the State’s push for formalizing SF if these aspects continue to be ignored.
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