Women of Flores Begin Managing State Forests
The midday sun scorches the skin on the southern coast of Labuan Bajo as Yasinta clutches a brown folder tightly in her slightly trembling fingers.
Yasinta Ludia Piun, a 46-year-old woman from Tanjung Boleng Village in West Manggarai, East Nusa Tenggara, is not holding just an ordinary stack of papers, but a symbol of sovereignty for Flores women.
Yes, that folder contains the social forestry approval documents for the Ca Nai Forest Farming Group (KTH), led by Yasinta, which for the first time in their lives officially recognises the state handing over the management of their own forests.
For a long time, in the rural agricultural structure in Flores, women have worked hard without recognition. Yet, they are also the guardians of the family’s social and economic well-being, rising before dawn to plant corn, harvest candlenuts, and dry cloves under the scorching sun.
However, that sweat-draining hard work often stops at the label of family helper. They have no rights over the land and are far from access to strategic decision-making regarding their living spaces. This structured gender injustice makes women the most vulnerable party when crises come their way.
The wind of change is blowing from the ministry offices in Jakarta, which is now attempting to address this inequality with a breakthrough that positions Flores Island as a laboratory and history for social forestry in Indonesia.
The Ministry of Forestry has finally granted management rights over 648.65 hectares of forest area through the Community Forest (HKm) scheme to six forest farming groups in Flores, where 93 percent of the managers are women.
This is not just a number in a ministry report but a radical paradigm shift, because forest management has always been synonymous with the masculine, exploitative world of men.
This decision positions the mamas as sovereign legal subjects. Together with Yasinta, 36 member families of KTH Ca Nai share the responsibility to keep their landscape productive without damaging it.
This access comes amid a situation where villages are under heavy pressure from super-priority tourism ambitions. Land for farming is increasingly limited due to the expansion of hotel and luxury resort businesses creeping up the hills. Not to mention the threats from geothermal resource exploration that continue to loom over the local forest biodiversity.
The fact that hot-dry weather lasting almost the entire year is also a serious threat to the remaining 1.77 million hectares of forest area. In such conditions, many productive young workers choose to migrate to seek fortunes in major cities on Java and Bali, causing the land of Flobamora to lose much of its productive workforce.
In such circumstances, it is the mamas who steadfastly remain to tend the gardens, ensure the kitchen fires are lit, and nurture family ties with the surrounding land and forests.
The Stakes