In my latest report on the economics of forest tenure (see previous post), I headed one section 'experiments in community forestry'. I meant to convey the idea that Indonesia has set targets to do community forestry at scale, yet the actual achievements seem to resemble half-hearted experiments. I did not mean this in a positive way. So it was interesting at the RRI Lombok conference to hear a senior official from the Ministry of Forestry refer to 'our experiments in community forestry' as if this indicated brave steps in policymaking.
The community forestry program (HTR) was not supposed to be a mere experiment. Indeed, with evidence mounting around the world about the effectiveness of locally controlled forestry in achieving the 'triple bottom line' of environmental, social and economic goals, there is no need for further laboratory tests. This remedy is ready to be safely prescribed.
The section from the report is as follows:
Experiments in community forestry
After a few false starts in facilitating community forestry, the 2007 road map for revitalizing the forest sector proposed the ‘people’s plantation’ scheme (HTR), whereby individuals and cooperatives would be encouraged to invest in planting timber on degraded forest land. This was an important part of the target of establishing an additional 9 million hectares of plantations by 2016, 5.4m ha from HTR and 3.6m from industrial plantations. The financing would come from a revolving fund using capital from the Reforestation Fund.
To date the project has been far from successful. The target was to have almost 2 million hectares established by the end of 2010, which would then be producing pulpwood for industry from 2015 onwards. However, by December 2010 less than 45,000 hectares of HTR plantations had actually been approved, although local district governments have identified almost 640,000 hectares of suitable plots of land.
At this rate of progress the scheme will achieve only 120,000 hectares of community-managed plantation by 2016, a cumulative shortfall of over five million hectares (see Chart below). This under-performance will have serious implications for future timber supply and thus forest usage and tenure. The Forestry Ministry has been working from projections (in the 2007 Road Map) that assume the HTR plantations will be meeting 30-40% of the total lumber demand from 2016. If such a significant portion of expected supply does not materialize then something has to give: either supply must be found elsewhere or industrial output must decrease. This may lead to more pressure to over-extract or convert natural forest.
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