Decentralization of Forest Administration in Indonesia, Implications ...

Christopher Barr 19
profits has, for better or worse, provided a model that has been adopted by many
forest-rich districts under decentralization. Although district governments have been
heavily criticized for mis-managing forests in their jurisdictions following the onset
of regional autonomy, it is quite clear that the policies and practices of the New Order
government had already created a state of crisis in Indonesia’s forestry sector well
before Soeharto fell in May 1998.
This chapter also shows that the struggle between a centralized state and local
actors to control the country’s forest resources did not suddenly emerge with the
1999 regional autonomy law. Rather, the roots of this struggle arguably extend from
the Dutch colonial government’s efforts to control the teak forests of Java. In postindependence
Indonesia, it is notable that provincial and district governments held
significantly greater authority than the central government to administer forests within
their jurisdictions up until the end of the Soekarno era in the mid-1960s. In some
fundamental respects, the administrative arrangements that were in place at that time
bear striking similarities to those that emerged during the post-1998 decentralization
process.
2.2 Forest Administration from Independence through
the Soekarno Era, 1945-1966
The Indonesian Forest Service (Jawatan Kehutanan) was founded in late-1945,
shortly after Indonesia’s nationalist forces declared the country’s independence
from the Dutch colonial regime. In both structure and orientation, the Indonesian
Forest Service drew heavily on its origins in the colonial forest bureaucracy, the
Dienst van het Boschwezen (Peluso 1992). Concentrated in Java, the institution’s
early leadership – much of which had been drawn from the ranks of the colonial
forest administration – had a strong predisposition for managing forests for timber
production, according to the principles of ‘scientific forestry’ as the Dutch (and their
German foresters) had done since the late-19th century (Peluso 1992). Moreover, in
establishing a legal-regulatory framework for the new republic, the leaders of the
Indonesian Forest Service simply translated many of the Dutch forestry laws into
Indonesian, often doing so verbatim.
In this manner, the post-independence state perpetuated many of the
fundamental laws and policies that had guided the Dutch administration of forests in
the Indonesian archipelago through the colonial period (Peluso 1992). In particular,
the policies of the new republic replicated the colonial state’s decision to maintain
separate regulatory structures and bureaucracies to administer the forests of Java and
those of the Outer Islands. In Java, the Dutch had administered forests in a highly
centralized manner, with the state exerting control over “all land that could not be
proven to be owned (individually or communally) by villagers” – or effectively all
lands except those under small-scale or plantation agriculture (Peluso 1992). By
contrast, in the Outer Islands, the Dutch generally exercised indirect control over
forest resources, leaving these under the authority of indigenous rulers for most of
the colonial period (Djajapertjunda 2002). The Dutch administration did take steps
to restrict the authority of ‘local autonomous governments’ (Pemerintah Swapraja)