Co management and Livelihood: Challenges and Opportunities

“Forestry is not about trees, it is about people. And it is about trees only insofar as trees can serve the needs of people”

(Westoby, 1967).

Overview

It is important to have common understanding that forest is not only trees or habitat of wildlife. In Indonesia, or mostly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, if we talk about forest as an ecosystem or landscape, we have to include  communities living inside or nearby forest area or event for those who live far away but their livelihood, their food, health, and quality of life depend upon forest resources and its environmental services. Timber, water supply for consumption, agriculture, and estate, water balance, micro climate; prevention from erosion, landslide, the role of pollination processes, non timber forest products such as rattan, honey, medicinal plants, materials for roof, clothing, housing, canoes, ropes; river system in the forest are part of important transportation system, and so on. More than 2.4 billion people or 40 percent of people live in less developed countries still used firewood for cooking (State of the World’s Forest 2014).

Forest dependent communities (FDC) who live for hundreds of years create their own adaptation to be able to survive and this creates knowledge, shaping, and crafting their own culture for hundreds  of years. Their tacit knowledge about forest resources are very important to be documented and to be considered in any phase of (rural) development planning. Development planning has to be participatory in approach and put them as a subject. People centered development is one of the key success in dealing with them.

In the past, FDC were not fully considered as part of  development planning. Impact of commercial forest exploitation, large scale palm oil plantation, uncontrolled fire and haze, mining operation, to them are so huge with the negative incremental effect to their livelihood due to degradation and rapid loss of forest resources where they used to rely their daily life upon them.

In Indonesia, 48.8 million people live inside or near state forest land and 10.2 million are classified as poor. Based on Ministry of Forestry and National Bureau of Statistic (2007 and 2009), there are 25,863 villages or 26.6% of the total villages in Indonesia located inside or nearby state forest land.

During 2010-2014, Social Forestry Program has delivered 646,476 Ha state forest land to 212,684 households of FDC or 1,063,420 farmers. In the next five years (2015-2019), Ministry of Environment and Forestry should have delivered 12.7 million Ha or 10% of total state forest land in the country for FDC.

Delivering legal access right of state forest land to be managed by appropriate FDC is the first phase. It is very important to reduce conflict or as solution for those who are landless and poor. Putting FDC as a subject in forest or agroforestry management is in fact the key factor in improving their trust to government. Facilitation to strengthen their local institution in managing their area and initiating social entrepreneurship, forest product processing and marketing are among the most crucial efforts as the second phase. In this matter, the role and their leadership of local government at the district and at the province, CSOs, as well as private sectors to develop integrated programs determine the right direction for gaining success of social forestry program which is a long term in process and multi disciplinary in approach. That is why there is a need to guarantee consistent policy back up and strong commitment of multi stakeholders at all levels; from collective awareness to collective action.

Livelihoods and Co-management

We should consider co-management as a means. It is not an end in natural resource management. For decades government in many countries is an epicentrum of decision making process for natural resource management including forest resources. Local government and communities are not considered as part of planning cycle as well as part of decision making process in forest management. Domination of government has proven hinder any participation of local communities. In most cases, local communities is only object and there was very small window for assertive dialogue. Co-management requires many changes in government culture and bureaucratic system. Distrust about government behavior with respect to many development projects in their villages had happened for years. It had increased frustration and in some cases raise even more horizontal conflict, between the speechless groups and newly born local elites that getting the most benefit from top down government projects. Small scale activities involving local communities started from problem identification, in depth discussion about possible solutions is a healthier phase to build mutual trust among local communities members and with government. Co-management should start from small scale and designed in participatory stepwise from below. As long as local communities has seen that there are opportunities to get (direct) benefits from forest, they are willing to be part of dialogue and new initiative. Dealing with local communities who live in a very remote or isolated near forest or inside forest area, we should consider local values or their way of thinking in the local cultural context. Along the way, we should find local champions. Local champion is the person who have leadership capacity and vision to make substantial innovation to solve their problems. They are driven by their passion and have proven their work without any outside intervention. They are the spirit that can help co-management become more effective vehicle to sustain forest healthiness and at the same time increasing awareness at local level and getting benefits from the forest to fulfill their daily needs. Community based ecotourism in Tangkahan, Leuser National Park in North Sumatera, initiated since 2000 until now is the real example of effective co management (Wiratno, 2013).

Conceptual Thoughts        

In principles, based on Habermas school of thoughts, human was created to communicate. They are exist due to their social connection through communication. With their capacity in communication there is wide open windows for possible (smart) solution of any humanity problems in the world. Civil conflicts, misunderstanding, distrust, frustration or growing speechless groups are among the major factors in community level that contribute to worsen the situation leading to more complex and unresolved conflicts. In some cases, due to inappropriate policies, there were many direct conflicts between (Adat) communities and law enforcers that resulted a human right problem. For example, conflict in Colol community, Ruteng, Manggarai District, East Nusa Tenggara, March 11, 2004 (Wiratno, 2013).

Multi stakeholders dialogue through assertive communication is one of the key and effective vehicle to build better understanding for initial stage of mutual trust. It is also very crucial to comprehend historical context of human-forest relationship as a basis to construct their typology. From fully shifting cultivation, gradually practicing short period of fallow cultivation by starting mixed farming, to sedentary agriculture and permanent settlement. They adapt to environmental dynamic and adopt new agricultural techniques for years for their survival. It become their traditional knowledge and wisdom. However, their traditional and cultural values degraded due to  fast commercial forest exploitation for export that shorten their fallow period of shifting cultivation, massive land use changes, and wide impacts of  many development intervention across the country. In this situation, people centered development approach is a key factor to understand problems faced by FDCs.  Assertive communication and dialogue is the effective vehicle to build common understanding, common agendas to solve the problems and develop opportunities in conserving forest resources and at the same time getting benefits in a more sustainable way. They need long term and committed facilitation from neutral partners. CSOs could be potential facilitator or partner for local communities in strengthening their institution and capacity for more bottom up planning, participatory at the implementation, monitoring and evaluation processes. In the future, the role of private sectors such as forest concession holders, forest plantation holders, estate holders are also very important. There is a promising policy with regard to access rights for landless or poor communities. Plantation forest holders has to allocate 20% of their concession area for local poor communities or for those already occupied the concession area.   However, in establishing co management between poor or landless groups with concession holders need strong facilitation process to make better bargaining position of community in setting up many collaborative work or working contracts. Mostly, the communities have no bargaining power. They has limited  power to make fair deals. Guidance, monitoring, and evaluation from local and central government is normally weak and it has to be strengthened.  Strong and consistent leadership at all levels is the main factors for potential success.

Challenges

There are many challenges in building co management in natural (forest) resource management. Several of them are identified as follow :

1.       Lack of data and information about socio culture and economic condition of FDCs are common situation.

2.       Short term policy back up, inconsistency policy support from central, province, and district.

3.       Weaknesses in monitoring and evaluation are among the obstacles for us to learn from mistakes.

4.       Remoteness and complexity of FDCs  is also the factor that only few CSOs and local government are willing to facilitate and work with them.

5.       Local government neglect the FDCs  in many development planning stages. 

6.       There are many programs for FDC at national in many ministries  but are not integrated from planning into implementation stages.

Opportunities

Opportunities to implemented social forestry programs for poor communities located near or inside state forest land are widely open: These are four opportunities that need to be achieved.

1.        Support and commitment from many national and local CSOs to jointly work with DG. of Social Forestry and Environmental Partnership are growing rapidly.

2.        Support from provincial and district government and head of district to social forestry program is promising, for examples governor of West Sumatera that already propose 500,000 Ha of protection forest for hutan nagari. Lampung, West Nusa Tenggara, Central Sulawesi, South Sulawesi, Aceh, Jambi Provinces, Pasaman, Bulukumba, Bantaeng, Sigi, Lombok Barat, Lombok Tengah, Lombok Utara districts  are among the strong and consistent supporter.

3.        Revision of regulations related to social forestry and Proposed Map for Social Forestry  that involving key stakeholders in preparation now is in the final correction and it is targeted to be signed by Ministry of Environment and Forestry in the end of October 2015.

4.        Cooperation across Ministries for instant with Ministry of Village and Development of Backward  Area, and Ministry of Home Affair is in the process in order to integrate the programs to increase the prosperity of remote villages close or inside forest areas. 

*) articles is prepared for “Regioal Conference on Co-Management of Natural Resources 2015 (COMACON 2015); 27^th-30 th –Bangkok, Thailand.