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".