Based on field research carried out in Central Kalimantan during June and July 2000, this chapter examines the likely impact of the decentralisation reforms on forest management in Barito Selatan. Conclusions are derived from three major sources. First, interviews were conducted with key government officials and community figures in the provincial capital, Palangkaraya, and the district capital, Buntok. These were supplemented with information from relevant newspaper and government reports.

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 report explores criteria and indicators (C&I) for monitoring and assessing the sustainability of community managed forests (CMFs), and offers some insights into methodological tools and conceptual approaches for C&I development. The research was intended to explore the potential value of C&I to forest communities, their partners and their representative organisations to legitimise and enhance management, including strengthening of control over forest resources and facilitating the equitable distribution of the costs and benefits of forest management.

The study provides a comparative analysis of the devolution and empowerment process in 14 case studies drawn from eight countries in southern Africa. Each case study examined the extent to which policy and legislation devolves significant control over decision making and benefit flows to communities; the legitimacy and power of different community institutions and their relationship with other stakeholders such as local authority structures, NGOs, donor agencies, and the private sector; and lastly the relationship and divisions between different actors and groupings in the community.

Local people in South-east Asia are often cited as skilled forest managers. It is barely acknowledged that an essential part of this forest management does not concern natural forests, but forests that have been planted, often after the removal of pre-existing natural forests; forests that are cultivated not by professional foresters, but by sedentary or swidden farmers, on their farmlands; forests that are based not on exotic, fast-growing trees, but on local tree species, and harbour an incredible variety of plant and animal species.

This study adopts an institutional approach to analyze the way in which informal rules, in their interaction with formal rules, shape the use of forest resources by diverse types of smallholders and communities (i.e., indigenous people, agro-extractive and traditional communities) in Latin America. Attention is given to understanding the ‘working rules’, comprising both formal and informal rules, that individuals use in making their decisions for land and forest resources access and use, which in turn affect benefits generation and distribution from such resources use.