Enhancing sustainable forest management in Indonesia

Abstract

This paper gives an overview of the problems of forest management and proposed strategy to enhance sustainable forest management in Indonesia. The increase of the population number leads to need of land to support their activities, particularly for agriculture, pasture, settlement, etc. Since forest is the major land-use in Indonesia, deforestation is inevitable. Deforestation rate in Indonesia increased, from 0.3 percent in 1970s to 0.6 percent of total land in 1980's, causing socio-economic and ecological consequences. Based on the awareness of the multiple forest functions concerning the ecological, social and economical aspects, declined forest land area might lead to local and global catastrophes. Hence forest resources should be stabilized or even the area should be increased through declining deforestation, increasing reforestation areas on degraded land, etc. In addition the forest should be maintained based on the principles of sustainable forest management. Efforts in sustaining forest existence and forest management in Indonesia have been started since long time, but the success of these efforts is still to be increased by enhancing sustainable forest management.