Forestry Ministry revises governance rules to strengthen KPH role

The Ministry of Forestry is maturing plans to refine the Minister of Environment and Forestry Regulation Number 8 of 2021 to strengthen the role of Forest Management Units (KPH) as landscape managers at the site level.

Director General of Sustainable Forest Management at the Ministry of Forestry, Laksmi Wijayanti, stated during a webinar on Thursday that this regulatory refinement is crucial for improving the governance and utilisation of forest areas in Indonesia. Laksmi noted that within the forestry governance ecosystem involving regulators and business actors, the presence of the KPH as a field or site manager plays a very central role.

“Because we fully understand that when we talk about forest governance and utilisation, the position of the KPH in governance becomes very important. Forest governance includes actors, regulators, and importantly, site managers,” she said.

However, she continued, these three important elements often cannot be implemented precisely due to the unique geographical conditions and specific situations in each management area. To break the bottleneck related to resource limitations and institutional capacity in the field, Laksmi stressed that intervention through regulatory updates is a very decisive key driver.

She underlined that strengthening the role and capacity of the KPH is in line with the government’s efforts to promote a bioeconomy approach in the national forestry sector. “We are talking about strengthening the value of forests, utilising forest value to ensure that all parties have an incentive to protect forests, not convert them to other uses,” Laksmi said.

Through the revision of the Ministerial Regulation, the KPH is expected to transform into a reliable field coordinator in bridging the operations of various parties, from business permit holders to social forestry operators. In this effort, the Ministry of Forestry continues to hold a series of public consultations to hear direct input from experts, KPH operators, and local governments so that this legal umbrella revision can become a concrete and comprehensive solution for Indonesia’s forest conservation.