Contribution of Forestry to Poverty Alleviation - APFNet

decentralized many functions of the central government, including various aspects of forest regulation
and management, to the provincial and district governments. Inspired by the reformasi, advocates of
community-based forest management (CBFM) pushed for the greater recognition of communities’
ownership of and rights to forest resources. Act No 41/1999 on Forestry provided a legal basis for
CBFM (Safriti 2010) while “promoting social objectives by recognizing forest land tenure and user
rights and allowing individuals and cooperatives involvement in forest-based business” (Wardojo and
Masripatin 2002 in Yasmin et. al. 2010), although it was criticized for its limitations in acknowledging
indigenous peoples’ rights to their adat forests and introducing more secure land tenure reforms for
local people in forestlands.
Through Regulation 6/1999 on Forestry Enterprise and the Extraction of Forest Products in Production
Forest, the central government authorized district governments to issue small-scale Forest Product
Harvesting Permits (Hak Pemungutan Hasil Hutan or HPHH) in areas within forest estates. Many
districts then passed local regulations authorizing the district heads to issue different types of smallscale
logging permits. The proliferation of small-scale timber extraction and forest conversion permits
issued by district governments threatened the large-scale concession holders, as the increasing
administrative authority of the district governments over lucrative timber resources did the MoF (Barr
et. al. 2006). In response, the MoF actively took steps to stop the issuance of these permits until
Regulation 34/2002 on Forest Administration and the Formulation of Plans for Forest Management,
Forest Utilization, and the Use of the Forest Estate was signed into law in June 2002. Revoking
Regulation 6/1999, Regulation 34/2002 reaffirmed MoF’s authority over large-scale timber extraction
and the transport and marketing of both timber and NWFPs in the domestic market, and also extended
MoF’s administrative control over wood-processing industries (Mc Carthy et. al. 2006). Regulation
34/2002 “effectively recentralized control over the allocation of timber concessions and small-scale
logging permits—and many other aspects of forest administration” (Barr et. al. 2006).
Decentralization efforts led to both opportunities and challenges for the legalization of community
property rights, allowing communities to have more participation in forest-related policy-making
in some areas but also critically threatening community rights to forests in other areas (Contreras-
Hermosilla and Fay 2005). In some places, decentralization encouraged some district governments to
formulate local policies on community forest management (Fey 2007; Adi et. al. 2004) and led to greater
accountability at the local level, increased equity and more sustainable forest management (Contreras-
Hermosilla and Fay 2005). However, in many areas, the abuse of authority over forest resources, lack
of capacity and corruption among local officials as well as confusion over forestry administration and
management accelerated forest loss (Poffenberger et. al. 2006; Simorangkir and Sardjono 2006).
During the last two decades, various CBFM schemes, recognized or developed, with varying levels of
support from civil society organizations, local communities and development agencies, have—besides
private forests—allowed community access to state forest lands and resources (Safriti 2010). Forests
with special purposes are designated for research and development, education and training, religion and
culture or other purposes of public interest. Government Regulation (PP) No. 6/2007 aims to empower
communities living in or around production and protected forests through community forests, village
forests and partnership between communities and forest concession holders, with the opportunity to
obtain licenses for using forest resources (HPH). Ministerial Regulation P.49/2008 concerning village
forests provides village-based institutions with licenses to manage protection and production forests
within a village’s administrative area. Community forests are state forests intended for empowering
forest communities. Local individuals or cooperatives (indigenous or not) can be granted rights to state
forests through community forest licenses for commercial utilization of forest areas, timber and nonwood
forest products (NWFPs) and licenses to collect timber and NWFPs. This licensing system allows
communities to have the same opportunities as private companies in accessing the forests (Fey 2007).
Other than general provisions contained in Act No 41/1999, no specific national policy on recognizing
customary rights of indigenous peoples to their adat forests and lands has been issued yet. Based on
the draft regulation, a community has to be proven to exist first before the district government will
recognize an adat forest. In 2007, the MoF introduced the scheme, community timber plantation (hutan
tanaman rakyat or HTR), which provides communities rights and incentives for developing timber
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