Kemiskinan adalah masalah yang persisten di Indonesia. Tujuh tahun setelah dimulainya desentralisasi hanya terlihat sedikit peningkatan pada kesejahteraan masyarakat. Pemerintah daerah telah memperoleh kesempatan dan tanggung jawab baru untuk melaksanakan pembangunan, tetapi hanya beberapa kabupaten saja yang mempunyai kemampuan dan pengalaman yang diperlukan untuk mengurangi kemiskinan secara efektif. Laporan ini menyajikan potret kemiskinan dan kesejahteraan di Kutai Barat, sebuah kabupaten yang baru didirikan pada tahun 1999.

Poverty is a persistent problem throughout Indonesia. With decentralization, local governments had a new direct role in alleviating poverty and local wellbeing. At the same time they could do so in accordance with local realities and development needs. Yet, there is little improvement in the wellbeing of rural people. Local governments may lack the necessary capacity and experience to reduce poverty effectively. This report shows how a local specific monitoring system can be developed and applied.

Farmers in Malawi remove woodlands to plant crops but they also derive a vast range of other basic needs from the surrounding forests. These miombo woodlands have until relatively recently always been vast in comparison to the human population and their needs. Over the years the woodlands and the way they have been used have changed, but their contribution for maintaining well being and providing peoples’ basic needs appears to have remained important.

CIFOR facilitated 27 communities in the Upper Malinau watershed to develop agreements about their village boundaries and map them through participatory methods. Decentralization reforms created new values of forest resources and uncertainties that increased conflict over local resources. We report on the nature of these conflicts, the stability of agreements and the factors affecting how agreements were reached.