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s part of its land tenure reform policy, the Indonesian government under President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has set an ambitious target of 12.7 billion hectares of state forest land to be made available for legal access by rural communities under a number of social forestry schemes.

At the central policy level, social forestry has evolved to embody three core development objectives: Democratization of resource access, poverty alleviation and sustainability of forest resources. These objectives closely parallel the current sustainable development goals Indonesia is struggling to achieve.

This positive policy is predisposed toward poverty alleviation for those living in rural areas. However, looking at the present-day pace, social forestry development in Indonesia has been constrained by a myriad of factors and has created paradoxes within it.

First, Indonesia, which has the highest forest cover in comparison to other Southeast Asian countries (around 120 million hectares), surprisingly has one of the lowest achievement records in terms of forest area under social forestry agendas.

The latest data from The Center of People and Forests (RECOFTC) shows that while the Philippines and Vietnam have each exceeded 4 million hectares of forest under social forestry programs, Indonesia is stuck at less than 1 million hectares up to mid-2017, most of which has been achieved in the last 10 years.

Although countries may have varying definitions for “forest” and “social forestry,” Indonesia has less than 1 percent of its total state forest land area under such schemes, as compared to Vietnam, which has about 30 percent, and the Philippines, which has 50 percent.

Second, while the target has been set high and is ambitious, the bureaucratic processes established within the Environment and Forestry Ministry to achieve this target are cumbersome and have been almost static for years. This is not surprising for those who have been following Indonesia’s forestry regime policy processes.

Historically, since the 1970s the forestry regime in Indonesia has been top-down and in favor of supporting big business interests by a policy of granting exploitative forest concessions. This exploitative regime has been responsible for wide-scale forest destruction and economic injustice for those living in rural areas.

This mentality, although gradually fading away, somehow remains pervasive and it is therefore not easy for the ministry to transfer its forest licensing authority to lower government levels. Even some local governments are accusing the ministry of returning to the recentralization effort.

Due to the pervasiveness of this attitude, the authority to grant most of the social forestry permits is still with the central government, and this has been the cause of many delays, which have been counterproductive to achieving the President’s land reform target.

Third, the imbalanced attention given to the four social forestry pillars: Expanding the social forestry area, forest management, forest product processing and market linkages.

The current process has led the forestry administration to focus mostly on issuing new permits to achieve the target of 12.7 million hectares by 2019. Coupled with long licensing processes and the lack of budget, this has led to the disregard for the other three important pillars, which if implemented would lead to a more balanced endeavor.

This lack of attention to post-permit processes has led to the mismanagement of the existing social forestry areas. Cases of abusing social forestry licensed areas for illegal logging and oil palm plantations are quite common.

Fourth, and this is quite embarrassing, is that at the lower level system, the Forest Management Units (FMU) which used to be the central government’s pseudo entities to support forest management at the local level, have not been fully supportive of the President’s priority for forest land reform.

There are many cases in which the FMU supports only one social forestry scheme, forest partnership, and rejects all other critical schemes like Community Forestry (HKM), Village Forest (HD), and Community Plantation Forest (HTR). This is likely due to the illogical reasoning that the FMU might lose control over its management area if the permits granted to local communities are in the form of HKM, HD or HTR. Not recognizing other legitimate social forestry schemes will also further jeopardize the president’s target of 12.7 million hectares of Social Forestry area by 2019.

Another paradox is that the target itself, 12.7 million hectares, is unrealistic. A rapid assessment by an expert from the Bogor Agriculture Institute revealed that only about 6 million hectares are truly available for social forestry, while the remaining area is neither accessible geographically nor available due to conflicting ownership.

Looking at the current paradoxes mentioned above, there are a few ideas that could be considered to increase the area covered by social forestry schemes and to improve post-permit action.

The current sectoral approach by the Environment and Forestry Ministry through its long bureaucratic procedures needs to be simplified through, if needed, a higher level policy such as a Presidential Decree.

This will not only cut down on procedures and transfer social forestry authority to lower levels of government, but will also encourage other related ministries such as the Home Affairs Ministry, the Trade Ministry and the Village Development, Disadvantaged Regions, and Transmigration Ministry to contribute to improving the quality and implementation of the other three pillars of social forestry activities mentioned above.

The recent development of adopting social forestry schemes into village development provides potential support from village governments to speed up social forestry development as long as there is clear long-term benefit for villagers to engage in this system.

The social forestry system for the future can also be tailored to solve local forestry issues and conflicts. This will require efforts from NGOs, research institutions and universities to mediate and expedite the resolution of these conflicts to achieve sustainable forest management.

While the strategic plan prepared by FMUs should be respected, FMUs across Indonesia should fully support the social forestry agenda. Since FMUs are already fully transferred to provincial governments, full participation from governors across Indonesia is sorely needed. FMUs can even play a pivotal role in expediting the implementation process, due to its extensive infrastructure.

Without a bold resolution, the social forestry program will remain an agonized oxymoron of forestry land reform in Indonesia.
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The writer is an international consultant focusing on biodiversity protection, climate change and forest governance.