Since the collapse of Soeharto’s New Order regime in May 1998, Indonesia’s national, provincial, and district governments have engaged in an intense struggle over how authority and the power embedded in it, should be shared. How this ongoing struggle over authority in the forestry sector will ultimately play out is of considerable significance due to the important role that Indonesia’s forests play in supporting rural livelihoods, generating economic revenues, and providing environmental services.

This study has two central concerns: the state of human health in forests, and the causal links between forests and human health. Within this framework, we consider four issues related to tropical forests and human health. First, we discuss forest foods, emphasizing the forest as a food-producing habitat, human dependence on forest foods, the nutritional contributions of such foods, and nutrition-related problems that affect forest peoples. Our second topic is disease and other health problems.

In recent years, the term ‘gender’ has become a hot discussion topic in various forums and media. Many development sectors require gender analysis as a component of a program’s implementation. However, even today, many people still equate gender with sex or even, as a narrower definition, with women. This is particularly true in regions, where gender has not yet commonly been discussed, such as Bungo and Tanjung Jabung Barat (Tanjabbar) districts, Jambi.

The Center for International Forestry Research has developed and adapted various participatory tools for use with forest communities and other natural resource dependent groups. The tools have diverse applications: stakeholder identification, decision making, planning, conflict management, information collection, landscape assessment and other uses. The Guide to Participatory Tools for Forest Communities is intended for environment and development practitioners, researchers and local government officials.

Many people want to improve the governance of forest areas, yet what is considered good governance is not necessarily self-evident or agreed upon by everyone. This study demonstrates the diversity of views held by communities and government officials in Malinau, Indonesian Borneo about what they consider to be good governance. Each group described how they thought decisions about forests should be made, including how to represent interests, allocate land rights, distribute cash benefits from forests, share information and manage forests.