This report is based on a case study looking at the change in decentralization laws from the highly decentralized system under 22/1999 to a moderate system under 32/2004. It specifically analyses the implications of such change for local-level forest decision making processes related to forestry, spatial planning, shared revenues and village-level institutions in Luwu Utara district, South Sulawesi province. The research is a continuation of previous ACIAR/CIFOR collaborative research under the theme “Can Decentralization Work for Forests and the Poor?”.

This Policy Brief: (1) outlines recommendations for change and improvement; (2) describes the legal and institutional infrastructure of decentralized forest management in Cameroon; (3) describes how basic mechanisms of decentralized forest management operate in practice; and (4) summarizes the findings of five years of World Resources Institute (WRI)-Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) research on decentralized forestry policy and practice.

Laporan penelitian ini menyajikan hasil penelitian lapangan yang dilakukan di Kutai Barat, Kalimantan Timur sebagai bagian dari proyek Menjadikan Pemerintah Daerah Lebih Tanggap Terhadap Kemiskinan: Pengembangan Indikator dan Alat untuk Mendukung Pengembangan Penghidupan yang Berkelanjutan dalam Desentralisasi yang didanai CIFORBMZ. Laporan menunjukkan bahwa dampak otonomi daerah terhadap kesejahteraan Dayak Benuaq, masyarakat yang bergantung pada hutan, kelompok mayoritas masyarakat di Kutai Barat.

The Kalimantan Forest Partnership comes under the umbrella of the Asia Forest Partnership (AFP). It arose from a commitment made in 2002 at the World Summit in Johannesburg by the Netherlands’ Government to support the AFP’s efforts to promote sustainable forest management in Kalimantan, Indonesia. The Kalimantan activities are promoting collaboration among various parties and stakeholders, and linking improved forest governance in Kalimantan to international trade in Asia and Europe.This report details the lessons learned from the collaborative activities in Kalimantan.

In order to maintain the high levels of biodiversity and the ecological functions of tropical forest landscapes in South East Asia, production forests need to be managed in a more sustainable way. Numerous initiatives already exist in the form of codes of practice, criteria and indicators, and certification schemes in the countries of South East Asia, but to date such guidelines and standards have been vague and have lacked quantitative targets.