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Tropical Forest Research Network |
REDISTRIBUTION OF INDONESIAN FORESTS: IMPACTS OF DECENTRALISATION ON POWER IN FOREST MANAGEMENT
By Hanna Kaisti
Tropical forests have become politically visible sites of competing interests between global, national and local actors, and of diverging conceptions with respect to their intrinsic and instrumental or market value. This political nature of tropical forests can also be seen in Indonesia, which is one of the world's most biologically diverse countries, but where the rate of annual deforestation is alarming, about 1.6 million hectares per year.
During the past few years, forest management has changed significantly as a part of a wider political reformation which began in 1998, when the authoritarian president Suharto was forced to step down. Since then, Indonesia has undergone a process of rapid and far-reaching political, economical and administrative decentralisation, which has had a great impact on the use and conservation of forests. This process is a radical change in politics, because during president Suharto's so called New Order regime (1967-1998) national development was based on high economic growth and the control of natural resources was strictly centralised. For the three decades of Suharto's power, Indonesia had one of the most rapidly growing economies in the world. The forest sector was an important part of this economic growth, but the price has been high since the large-scale logging and plantation activities have had severe environmental and social consequences.
New actors, conflicts
and possibilities
The decentralisation process has caused a considerable degree of political and
economical power to be transferred from the national government to 370 local
governments. According to the new decentralisation laws, the districts and municipalities
now get a more substantial share from the natural resources extracted from the
area and they have the authority to decide how to allocate their own budgets.
Local governments are also obliged to collect local revenues and this has created
pressures to log forests in order to generate income.
The revised Basic Forestry Law of 1999, which outlines the division of authority in the forestry sector under regional autonomy, gives the district head the right to issue 100 ha forest concessions. This was meant to allow the district government to generate income so that the timber royalties could be kept within the region rather than being sent to Jakarta. In 2002, the Ministry of Forestry suspended this regulation, but this suspension has not had much of an impact since district heads feel they can now ignore directives from the central government because of the powers given to them by the decentralisation laws. In some areas the granting of small-scale logging concessions has increased deforestation and created social tensions, because in many cases old and new concession areas are overlapping.
The decentralisation process has at least in some respect changed the position of the system of customary rights or practices, which are collectively known as adat law. Different ethnic cultures function under different norms, rules and resource management strategies and spiritual belief systems. The way in which adat land or forest is defined and used has become one of the key determinants of how forest resources are allocated, for example in Kalimantan and Sumatra. The lack of clarity and the abuse of the opportunities to make claims have contributed to the atmosphere of conflict in some areas. So far the claims have mostly been oriented towards getting compensation for lost or damaged forest. In the long term it can increase political mobilisation based on sentiments related with territory, ethnicity and religion.
Impact of decentralisation
on forest management
Experience from other countries suggests that decentralised systems of forest
management can lead to more sustainable and equitable use of resources, as decision-makers
are physically located closer to where the policies are implemented. Decentralisation
also offers an opportunity to move towards more local participation in recourse
allocation decisions, greater accountability and more sustainable use of natural
resources.
In Indonesia the decentralisation process is very recent and the regional autonomy has been implemented for less than two years, so it is impossible to draw any definitive conclusions. Compared to the previous era, when a very small elite close to Suharto controlled basically all natural resources, the decentralisation process is no doubt a beneficial reform. Until now, however, the implementation of decentralisation has been characterised by intense power struggles among different levels of governance, each of which represents a competing set of political and economic interests. Rules and regulations issued by authorities at different levels are often contradictory and their implementation is deficient. The political participation effect of the decentralisation also falls short since almost no district government official is accountable to his or her constituencies and district residents through direct elections. The heads of the region have a lot of power and corruption is common. The economic and political benefits to local forest-dependent communities remain unclear, since the distribution of the wealth from the extraction of natural resources at local level is far from being equal.
From the environmental perspective, decentralisation has created both pressure and an opportunity for revenue generation at local level, but the focus has so far been on short-term income generation without any long-term planning and control. Protected areas and conservation areas potentially face a greater risk from logging or mining activities since they are not economically productive areas.
Having said all this, one must emphasise that a changing political system in a country as large and culturally diverse as Indonesia takes time. The change in forest politics can, in the future, create a new sense of power and political identity for groups which were previously excluded from decision-making processes. This could lead to a less economic-oriented way of seeing the forest and hopefully to the recognition that other forest functions also exist.
Further information:
Hanna Kaisti
Department of Political Science and International Relations
FIN-33014 University of Tampere
Finland
E-mail: hanna.kaisti@uta.fi