Decentralization of Forest Administration in Indonesia, Implications ...

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Forest Administration and Forestry Sector Development Prior to 1998
Development Planning, First Phase 1961-1969 (Ketetapan MPRS No. II/MPRS/1960 ttg
Garis-garis Besar Rencana Pembangunan Nasional Semesta Berencana Tahap Pertama
1961-1969).
8
See Magenda (1991) for details on how this struggle played out between Jakarta and the
provincial apparatus in East Kalimantan.
9
The procedures for conducting an inventory, survey, boundary determination and marking,
and subsequent classification of the Forest Estate were detailed in Government Regulation
33/1970. Systematic classification of the nation’s Forest Areas was not implemented, however,
for over a decade. Barber (1990:12) notes that “systematic national implementation of the
Basic Forestry Law’s classification and planning mandate only began in 1980, when the
Minister of Forestry [sic] sent a memorandum to the Governors of all Provinces, informing
them that the Department would prepare a ‘Consensus Forest Land Use Plan’ (Tata Guna
Hutan Kesepakatan, TGHK) for each province, in cooperation with all agencies involved
with land use at the provincial level.”
10
In formulating these requirements, forestry policymakers assumed that logged-over forest
would naturally regenerate at an average rate of 1-2 m 3 per ha per year, and as such would
be able to sustain a selective harvest on average every 35 years. To promote concessionaire
compliance with the HPH contract, the Forestry Department required that private timber
operators submit for approval 20-year, 5-year, and annual work plans. Approval of the yearly
work plan was supposed to involve cruising of the applicant’s logging block by provincial
forestry officials in order to determine the company’s annual allowable cut (AAC).
11
At the national level, Indonesia’s forest resources were administered by the Directorate
General of Forestry in the Ministry of Agriculture until 1983, at which point the Ministry of
Forestry was given cabinet status.
12
FOB refers to ‘freight on board’, or the price of goods sold with transport costs excluded.
13
‘Cutting during the flood’, a term to describe the nonmechanized logging technique. The
operators cut logs by hand and floated them out of the forest on swollen rivers during the
monsoon season, using no roads, trucks, or bulldozers (Ross 2001).
14
Much more recently, the same argument has been made by MoF officials seeking to halt
the allocation of small-scale logging and forest conversion permits issued by district
governments under Indonesia’s post-1999 decentralization process.
15
In East Kalimantan, for instance, Banjarese officials who had controlled the province and
kabupaten-level bureaucracies through the first years of the New Order period, lost their
main source of finance for both business ventures and political endeavors (Magenda 1991).
They were replaced in many key positions by members of the Regional Military Command
(Komando Daerah Militer, Kodam) for East Kalimantan, which was dominated by Javanese
officers connected to the Ministry of Defense in Jakarta through both the formal chain of
command and informal patronage networks.