T

he government should remap the country's forests, strengthening the legal certainty of national forest management and streamlining bureaucracy if it is to accelerate the investments to develop production forests, especially the community-based ones, a forum says.

Speaking during a meeting between Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan and a number of forestry NGOs last week, Diah Rahardjo from the Multi Forest Program said that after the application of the regional autonomy, many regencies have changed forest zones and designations that were not in line with those set by the central government.

"The ministry should do it quickly. Otherwise, the regencies will control the forests for their own benefit without allowing the general public to manage the forests legally."

She pointed out that the takeover of forest sites by many regencies had resulted in many local people no longer being able to enjoy economic benefits as had previous generations.

She added this was because many investors were reluctant to enter the business of developing the production forests as the regencies' action had created the uncertainty.

Abdon Nababan, the secretary general of the Indigenous People's Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN) concurred with Diah, saying that forest zones are shrinking due to the changes in forest zones and designation regulations since the application of regional autonomy in 2001.

"We need to remap the forests so that we know the exact condition of our forests and therefore we know how to manage them."

He called on the government to adopt the indigenous people's traditions in managing the forests to strengthen the legal certainty on land and forest ownerships.

Taufiq Aliani, the executive director of the National Forestry Council, shared the same view.

"We've seen that often certain administrations of regencies abruptly changed the forest functions.

"For example, from forest concessions into mining. These kind of things have certainly discouraged the investors."

They were commenting on the foresty minister's target to annually develop 500,000 hectares of production forests, industrial plantation forests (HTI), and community-based forests (HTR) by the public on their own or on partnerships with forestry-related firms.