The Politics of Participation in Forest Management

Abstract

Embracing the opportunities provided by democratization and decentralization, the Wonosobo district of Central Java, Indonesia, enacted a local regulation for participatory forestry. The regulation emphasized rights-based political participation and as such entailed significant participation by civil society groups. However, this regulation faced a backlash from the remaining representatives of the old authoritarian state. They demanded a state-created utilitarian-based participatory forestry scheme, emphasizing economic and ecological consequences of participation in an instrumentalist manner. Because of legal uncertainty and the persistence of conventional political culture at the local and national levels, state actors were able to produce outcomes contrary to the established regulation. This article illustrates the importance of differentiating between distinct forms of “participation” in order to understand the political struggles concerning forest management decentralization.

The contesting aspirations in the forests

“…Nonetheless, endevors on community forestry program in the island have been sporadically emerging, principally post 1978 World Forestry Congresss themed ‗Forest for People', that was coincidentally held in the country. The forest administration has since elaborated poverty alleviation in some experimental projects (Sunderlin et al 1990, Peluso 1992, Simon 1994, Lindayati 2000, Mayers and Vermeulen 2002, Nomura 2008. However, community forestry as a formal program only came to the equation around the end of the 1990s as the forest administration has embarked on forest policy shifts, adopting the more participatory approach on forest management by creating legal and policy frameworks for transferring some degree of authorities and responsibilities in forest management, to institutions of local people.…”

Poverty Alleviation Efforts through a Community Forestry Program in Java, Indonesia

“…After series of public consultation and discussions with several non-governmental organizations and university scholars (for instance see Nomura, 2008), in 2001 Perhutani introduced its new community forestry program under the scheme of collaborative forest management of PHBM. The core concept of PHBM centers on: 1) the involvement of forest users and their groups in forest activities and, 2) the access and benefits the users and their groups can eventually obtain.…”

Does the ‘One Map Initiative’ Represent a New Path for Forest Mapping in Indonesia? Assessing the Contribution of the REDD+ Initiative in Effecting Forest Governance Reform

“…The institutional fluidity created by the 1998 'reformasi' movement, that created a political imperative to decentralise key competencies in forest governance from the state to the district level, appears to constitute a critical juncture. However, the 'Peta Paduserasi' process, a compilation of authoritative datasets and associated efforts on the part of MoFor to restore control over forest resources, confirms the findings of Gellert [46] and Nomura [86] that this act was insufficient to challenge the powerful domestic industrialist timber networks involving MoFor, and that until 2008 or even later the prevailing equilibrium within Indonesian forestry governance institutions remained. Moreover, several policy initiatives promoted by NGOs and foreign donors, that sought to influence forest governance reform, achieved limited success including the FLEGT-VPA (signed in 2013) whose success remains to be seen [82].…”