Managing Forest Conflicts: Perspectives of Indonesia’s Forest Management Unit Directors

Abstract

Recent expansion of the forestry and plantation sectors in Indonesia has intensified agrarian and natural resource conflicts, and created increased awareness of the social, economic and environmental impacts of these disputes. Addressing these disputes is a critical issue in advancing Indonesia’s commitment to sustainable forest management. The Forest Management Units (Kesatuan Pengelolaan Hutan, or KPH), have become the pivotal structural element for managing all state forests at the local level, with responsibility for conventional forest management and policy implementation (establishing management boundaries, conducting forest inventory, and developing forest management plans), as well as the legal mandate to communicate and work with indigenous people and local communities. This paper presents the results of a national survey of all currently functioning KPH units, the first of its kind ever conducted with KPH leadership, to obtain a system-wide perspective of the KPHs’ role, mandate, and capacity for serving as effective intermediaries in managing forest conflicts in Indonesia. The survey results show that the KPHs are still in a very initial stage of development, and are struggling with a complex and rapidly evolving policy and institutional framework. The most common conflicts noted by respondents included forest encroachment, tenure disputes, boundary conflicts, and illegal logging and land clearing. KPH leadership views conflict resolution as among their primary duties and functions, and underscored the importance of more proactive and collaborative approaches for addressing conflict, many seeing themselves as capable facilitators and mediators. Overall, these results juxtapose a generally constructive view by KPH leadership over their role and responsibility in addressing forest management conflicts, with an extremely challenging social, institutional, and political setting. The KPHs can certainly play an important role as local intermediaries, and in some cases, as facilitative mediators in resolving local conflicts, but only with a more concerted effort from central and provincial government authorities to provide greater consistency in policies and regulations, improved policy communication, and a sustained commitment to strengthening the capacity of individual KPHs.

Forest and Society: Initiating a Southeast Asia Journal for Theoretical, Empirical, and Regional Scholarship

“…We hope the backgrounds and audiences of future journal editions also follow the diversity included herein. In the first piece, Fisher et al (2017) describes how the initial stage of Forest Management Units (FMU) in Indonesia are expected to play the role of conflict administrator amidst a complex and rapidly evolving policy and institutional framework. This paper is a timely survey and examination of the contentious policy efforts that seek to address growing tensions of conflict and violence in forestry governance in Indonesia.…”

Analisis Kebijakan Pengelolaan Hutan Pendidikan: Studi Kasus Hutan Pendidikan Bengo-Bengo Universitas Hasanuddin

“…Dokumen formal ini adalah antara lain dalam penelitian ini meliputi kebijakan terkait pengelolaan hutan pendidikan sebagai KHDTK, master plan Hutan Pendidikan Unhas (Fakultas Kehutanan Unhas, 2015), data kondisi umum Hutan Pendidikan Unhas, dokumen tentang program kerja/kegiatan, jumlah anggaran, jumlah sumberdaya manusia (SDM), jejaring kerja, dan dokumen lain yang diperlukan untuk menunjang penelitian. Pengambilan data penunjang dilakukan dengan penelusuran pustaka dan observasi lapang.…”

Bridging social forestry and forest management units: Juxtaposing policy imaginaries with implementation practices in a case from Sulawesi

“…The KPH at the site level has recently become the core policy of forest management reform in the domestic forestry sector in Indonesia (Kartodihardjo et al, 2011;Raharjo & Ulifah, 2014;. The KPH are envisioned as the main management approach anticipated to solve the problem of the lack of managers at the site level, addressing uncontrolled illegal logging and illegal trade, reducing forest degradation, resolving tenure conflicts, and overcoming economic decline in communities in and around the forests (Kartodihardjo et al, 2011;Rizal et al, 2011;Raharjo & Ulifah, 2014;Ekawati, 2014b;Suwarno et al, 2016;Fisher et al, 2017).…”