Desentralisasi kewenangan atas hutan di belahan dunia saat ini sedang berjalan cepat, disertai implikasi positif dan negatif bagi masyarakat dan hutan itu sendiri. Penelitian terbaru dari beberapa negara di Wilayah Asia-Pasifik dalam buku ini menyajikan pengalaman desentralisasi yang sangat kaya dan beragam, sehingga bisa menjadi pelajaran berharga bagi wilayah lain. Dimulai dengan tinjauan sejarah dan geografi, bab-bab selanjutnya dalam buku ini mengulas secara mendalam negara-negara di wilayah ini.

This proceedings contains a summary of national seminars on social forestry in Indonesia. It covers history of social forestry in Indonesia, principles of social forestry, and the different types of social forestry initiatives in Indonesia. There are similar problems faced in forestry sector such as forest boundaries, land tenure. Other problems in social forestry are: a) national forest policy (2) Decentralisation and space for social forestry; (3) Multistakeholder arrangements in social forestry; and (4) strengthening institutions and collective learning processes.

The brief describes development planning consultations, locally known as musrenbang, conducted in stages through different levels of governance: village, sub-district and district. The brief then documents lessons from experience catalyzing collective action among local community goups (in particular women’s groups) to engage in this development process and to help articulate the women’s aspirations in such a way that they could be heard by district decision makers.

Berau district has been one of East Kalimantan’s largest sources of timber since the mid-1980s. Until the fall of the Suharto regime in 1998, most of the district’s formal timber production was conducted by large-scale HPH concession holders, and the vast majority of the fiscal revenues generated flowed to the national government. Over the last several years, considerable volumes of logs have also been harvested illegally both by timber concessionaires and by small-scale manual loggers.

This study focuses on the impacts of decentralisation on forests and estate crops in the original districts of Kampar and Indragiri Hulu, located in Riau Province, Sumatra, Indonesia. The research was conducted during 2000, preceding the beginnings of decentralisation in January 2001, with a brief follow-up to March of that year. It was important to chart attitudes to decentralisation at provincial level, as well as examine the deconcentration of the regional office of the Jakarta-based Ministry of Forestry and Estate Crops.

Malinau District, established through partition in 1999, is the largest district in East Kalimantan and contains some of its largest tracts of forest. With decentralization, the district has sought to generate revenues from its forests, but these efforts have been handicapped by a concurrent lack of institutional capacities to manage rapid forest exploitation and conflicts over claims. Timber extraction and utilization permits (Izin Pemungutan dan Pemanfaatan Kayu or IPPK) have been the main instrument for revenue generation, with 39 IPPK covering 56,000 ha.

The report describes the impacts of forestry decentralization on district finance, local communities and spatial planning, drawing on an 18-month research project in Bulungan District in East Kalimantan Province. It describes forestry management policies following the implementation of regional autonomy, and their impacts on district revenue and local livelihoods. The authors analyze district spatial planning, forest land use and community control over forest lands.

Throughout Southern Africa there has been a move to decentralize natural resource management (NRM). Decentralization has taken many forms, resulting in different organizational structures for NRM. Fourteen case studies from eight countries can be classed into four types, depending on the key organizations for NRM: (1) district-level organizations; (2) village organizations supported by sectoral departments (e.g. Village Forest Committees); (3) organizations or authorities outside the state hierarchy (e.g.