Land tenure reform proposed to save community forests

Land tenure reform proposed to save community forests

Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Sumbanese winner of the Kalpataru award, Katrina Koni Kii, has
more than seven small green hills surrounding her modest house in
North Wejewa, West Sumba, where she grows various crops and
plants, including thousands of sandalwood trees.

Her sandalwood forest brought her to the presidential palace
to receive the award from the President himself earlier this
year.

In the rural area in which she lives, where people live far
away from each other, smallholders cultivate small plantations
near their homes. However, nobody has title documents for their
plantations.

Meanwhile, data from the Ministry of Forestry far away in the
shows that the state owns 120 million hectares of forest land.
Some of this in reality, however, consists of private plantations
and forests, like those owned by Katrina.

The differing interpretations often spark conflict and land
disputes, which in turn can lead to increasing deforestation.

"Conflicts between communities who assert claims over the land
and the resources within forest areas, and other parties who have
interests in forests have arisen over the past 15 years," said a
press statement made available by the Nairobi-based World
Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) on Dec. 19.

"The conflicts cause massive deforestation, decreasing
biodiversity, forest fires, soil erosion, devastation of forests'
hydrology systems, which in turn impoverish the people," the
statement continued.

Therefore, a study largely conducted by Arnoldo Contreras-
Hermosilla from the Washington D.C.-based Forest Trends and Chip
Fay from ICRAF, have proposed land tenure reform to specifically
determine who is responsible for particular forest areas.

The study, written in English and published in a thin folio-
sized book titled "Strengthening Forest Management in Indonesia
through Land Tenure Reform: Issues and Framework for Action",
shows that of the total 120 million hectares of forest land
claimed by the state, only 12 million hectares have actually been
confirmed as being legally owned by the government.

The study was launched and discussed during an event at the
Ministry of Forestry in Central Jakarta on Dec. 19.

It also reveals that a staggering 33 million hectares of the
claimed forest areas are in reality not forests. They have either
been denuded, or are given over to settlements, grassland or
agricultural use, the study says.

"The diminishing forests are due to massive logging both
by large companies or by small-scale logging investors. Some of
the forest loss is also due to the activities of villagers," said
Martua Sirait, an activist with ICRAF, during the discussion,
which also involved a number of ministry officials.

Locals more reliable

In the discussion, some forestry activists revealed that at
the local level, administrations sometimes usurped the rights of
local people over forests and sold them to small-scale logging
investors.

Sirait said that his organizations had seen that smallholders
engaged in agroforestry were much more trustworthy in preserving
their forests compared to the private sector or the government.

"In many areas, we find that farmers who grow export crops,
like cocoa or coffee, between the trees in their forests are more
concerned with preserving the environment compared to others,"
Sirait said.

He said that they preserved the environment because it
represented their livelihoods.

"In Papua, for example, many tribal communities depend on
their forests for hunting. Of course they preserve their
forests. Therefore, the government should give these local
communities security of tenure over their forests," Sirait said.

However, he admitted that this would give rise to the
possibility of communities selling their forests to logging
investors for cash.

"It's not difficult to formulate special ownership
arrangements for forests. The government could grant non-
transferable titles, or whatever they think is necessary," Sirait
said.

He added that security of tenure over their forests was
important for traditional communities.

"Ownership documents provide assurances that the government
will never turn the forests over for settlement purposes or for
harvesting by loggers," Sirait said.

Sirait said that the study, on which he along with the other
three activists worked as contributors, was aimed at changing the
simplistic interpretations that led to mismanagement.

Ministry of Forestry officials attending the discussion
accepted the criticism of the ministry contained in the study.

The study, which sets out a framework for land tenure reform,
also recognizes the difficulties involved. Of the 24 measures
required to bring about meaningful reform, the average difficulty
level averages 3.3, with 5 representing "extremely difficult".