Decentralization of Forest Administration in Indonesia, Implications ...

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The Impacts of Decentralization on Tenure and Livelihoods
demands from local communities, it would not be surprising if the government were to
make a somewhat arbitrary decision on this important issue. The government has already
declared that there will be only one administrative unit in each village, meaning that the
multiple villages in one location will be merged and that territories will be determined
based on where people actually live.
In the village of Baru Pelepat (Jambi), however, the opportunity provided by the
decentralization law was welcomed by the adat community. It should be noted that
here adat systems still hold considerable authority. In fact, prior to the decentralization
process, the village government was hardly separate from the adat system (Indriatmoko
and Kusumanto 2001). The decentralization law brought the promise to redefine the
village territory to include part of a neighboring village inhabited by members of the Baru
Pelepat adat group. So far, however, this has not yet occurred.
6.6 Decentralization and Community Livelihoods
In general, the impacts of decentralization on the livelihoods of communities living in and
around forests has been ‘mixed’ (Resosudarmo 2004a). There are some positive impacts
of decentralization on the livelihoods of communities, as well as some negative impacts.
On the positive side, many districts’ total budget has increased under decentralization.
Although a significant share of the districts’ revenues comes from central government
transfers, districts now have considerable flexibility in their use of these funds, potentially
increasing per capita government expenditure. After decentralization, some districts
developed public facilities that would have been unlikely without decentralization.
Development of infrastructure in Kapuas Hulu (West Kalimantan)and Tanjung Jabung
Barat (Jambi), for example, has been a priority in the district budgets, since poor
infrastructure has limited social and economic development of those regions. Of course,
the development of roads and other types of infrastructure can also have potential dangers,
such as promoting deforestation (Dermawan 2004).
At the community level, another positive outcome of decentralization on the
livelihoods of communities is that increased forest exploitation benefited local communities
in some areas, at least in the short term. The small-scale logging permits issued by district
governments during 1999-2002 gave local communities greater opportunities to share
in the benefits associated with commercial exploitation of forests – which previously
went mainly to stakeholders outside the regions in which the forests were located.
Decentralization has partly allowed forest-dependent communities to capture at least
some of the rents generated by timber harvesting. Although the issuance of district timber
and forest conversion permits has effectively been restricted by the Ministry of Forestry
in the period since 2002, at least temporarily the profits obtained by local communities
from small-scale logging were much more than local people were able to obtain during
the Suharto era (Palmer 2004; Dermawan 2004; Casson and Obidzinski 2002).
In Manokwari, customary communities were able to access forest resources by
either asking financial compensation from large forest concessions or applying for smallscale
forest concessions from district and provincial government. Decentralization had
significantly increased local communities’ access to short-term financial benefits, as well
as their access to decision making, at least with respect to forestry harvesting within their
own concession areas (Tokede et al. 2005).