Sustainable Forests in Bali

Abstract

On the island of Bali, efforts to conserve forests have been around for a long time through the tradition of Wanakerti and Tumpek Bubuh, namely rituals of respecting forests and plants which are implicitly an implementation of environmental preservation and are also part of local wisdom. This is considered insufficient considering that the condition of forest areas in Bali is experiencing distortion. This study aims to determine the simultaneous and partial effects of the factors that affect forest sustainability. By using data from the 1993-2020 period analyzed with the semilog model approach, it is known that simultaneously GRDP, population, and decentralization have a significant effect on forest preservation during the analysis period, while the decentralization factor does not partially affect forest sustainability. Forest is an integrated ecosystem containing biological natural resources, dominated by trees in their natural relationship with their environment. Therefore, forest management must rely on three pillars, namely the local economy, ecology, and socio-culture which also need to be considered to achieve sustainable forest management and utilization.