After Social Forestry Decrees, What Comes Next?
Social forestry is a vital effort to improve the relationship between the state, the community, and the forest. For decades, communities living within and around forest areas have often been marginalised within management systems. They are geographically close to the forest, but have not necessarily been granted adequate space to determine how the forest is managed and how its benefits are distributed.
Social forestry seeks to change that situation. Through various schemes, communities obtain legal access to manage forest areas while gaining opportunities to improve their welfare. To date, the area of social forestry has reached approximately 8.45 million hectares, through more than 11,000 decrees and involving around 1.44 million access recipients. Above this, nearly 17,000 Social Forestry Business Groups (KUPS) have emerged. This achievement is significant and deserves appreciation. However, after millions of hectares of access have been granted, we need to ask more substantive questions:
What happens after the decree is received by the community? Does their income increase? Does the group’s institution become stronger? Do businesses grow? Does conflict decrease? Is the forest improving? These are the questions that should mark the new phase of Indonesian social forestry.
The issuance of a decree provides certainty of access. However, certainty of access does not automatically create prosperity. Once the decree is received, the community enters much more complex work. They must build institutions, prepare management plans, establish group rules, maintain the area, select commodities, develop businesses, obtain capital, improve product quality, find markets, and resolve internal conflicts.
From a Community-Based Forest Management perspective, community-based forest management only holds meaning when the community does not merely exist as programme recipients, but has real space to make decisions, obtain benefits, bear responsibility, and maintain resource sustainability. Therefore, social forestry is not merely the redistribution of access.
It is a process of simultaneously building rights, responsities, capacity, and independence. This is where Elinor Ostrom’s thinking regarding the management of common-pool resources becomes relevant. Ostrom demonstrated that the sustainability of resources cannot be guaranteed by ownership status or access rights alone. It requires mutually understood rules, user participation, monitoring mechanisms, agreed-upon sanctions, conflict resolution, and trusted local institutions. The message is simple: providing rights without building collective capacity is not enough.
Social Capital Often Forgotten
Social forestry is not just a matter of land and commodities. It is also a matter of people. There are groups that possess large areas and significant economic potential but fail to develop because relationships between members are fragile. Conversely, there are groups with limited resources that thrive because their members trust one another, possess good leadership, and are able to work together. This is what is referred to in social science as social capital.
Trust, shared norms, networks, leadership, mutual cooperation (gotong royong), and the ability to resolve conflicts are assets whose value is no less significant than financial capital. In our society, ‘gotong royong’ is not an alien concept; it has long lived within village and community traditions. The challenge is how to strengthen this social capital into healthy, transparent institutional governance capable of managing businesses professionally. Therefore, social forestry assistance should not only deal with administration. Mentors must be able to develop both people and institutions.
Mentors are Not Merely Project Facilitators
The success post-decree depends heavily on the quality of assistance. Mentors stand at the intersection of the community, government, market, universities, financing institutions, and the business world. They must understand forestry, but simultaneously be able to read social dynamics. They need to understand institutions, entrepreneurship, conflict, business development, and market networks. With such a significant responsibility, social forestry mentors should be positioned as a strategic profession, not merely project implementers.
The issuance of the Indonesian National Work Competency Standards for Social Forestry in 2026 represents an important momentum. These standards need to be translated into a human resource development system: training, certification, competency-based placement, professional career paths, and results-based evaluation.
Groups that have just received a decree certainly have different needs compared to KUPS that are building brands or entering export markets. Therefore, a ‘one size fits all’ approach must be abandoned. Assistance must be tailored to the developmental stages of the group.
Measures of Success Must Change
Policy usually moves following the indicators used. If the measure of success is only the number of hectares and the number of decrees, the bureaucracy will be driven to chase hectares and decrees. However, people do not live off hectare figures. Therefore, social forestry indicators need to shift towards impact.
We need to ask: by how much has household income increased? How many KUPS have moved up the value chain? How many products have gained added value? How many jobs have been created? How many women and young people have gained economic opportunities? How many tenure conflicts have been successfully resolved?
And of course: what is the state of the forest? Has vegetation cover improved? Has fire decreased? Is rehabilitation progressing? Are water sources maintained? Is biodiversity being preserved?
The Sustainable Livelihoods Framework approach helps us view this issue more comprehensively. Communities do not only need natural capital in the form of forests. They [also need…]