Abstract
As the Indonesian government sets a target to allocate 12.7 million ha of state forest land for social forestry in 2019, one of the most crucial [and overlooked] issues is the extent of capacity, knowledge, skills, and engagement of social forestry facilitators and the extension workers that support the government in meeting their targets on social forestry. In this short paper, I seek to reorient the discussion towards the main issues and challenges of social forestry capacity development in Indonesia. On the one hand, there are some promising achievements made by the government in the wake of social forestry policy design and implementation, particularly in their ability to expand the scope of targeted areas for social forestry designation, as well as the increase in the numbers of community business group established. On the other hand, however, there are some challenges that are evident. Coordination within the ministry remains a major barrier, and extends to coordination problems across and between sub-national governments. Furthermore, engagement with the private sectors and involvement of NGOs remains lacking. And finally, the distribution of social forestry facilitators and extension workers across the numerous social forestry sites in Indonesia, as well as the overall capacity development needs among facilitators continues to be a major hindrance in meeting targets. I conclude by highlighting that more attention needs to be devoted to the role and capacity of facilitators, and furthermore, that the government needs to address these challenges through various institutional reforms and methods on social forestry training, as well as developing more rigorous training modules for community facilitators.
Highlights
Indonesia's National Medium-Term Development Plan (RPJM) 2015 - 2019 set targets for social forestry (SF) to reach 12.7 million ha in 2019
The ambitious target to establish 12.7 million ha of social forestry certainly requires robust facilitation and extension work as a way to partner with forest communities, and creates a huge demand for the appropriate skills and knowledge base to be developed among SF facilitators and extension workers
The government has developed several rules to support SF facilitation. These rules mainly regulate the activities that require facilitations, mapping forest farmer groups (FFG) to determine the form of facilitation interventions and types of knowledge and skills needed for FFGs, competency standards for extension workers and facilitators in SF, materials and methods for extension workers, and guidance for development, monitoring and evaluation for SF
Summary
Indonesia's National Medium-Term Development Plan (RPJM) 2015 - 2019 set targets for social forestry (SF) to reach 12.7 million ha in 2019. Based on Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MOEF) Regulation No 83/2016, this achievement is to be met through five different schemes: Community Plantation Forests (HTR), Community Forestry (HKm), Village Forests (HD), Customary Forests (HA), and Community Forests (HR) These SF programs are envisioned to help achieve key national development targets and priorities, whereby rural communities across Indonesia will be able to more actively engage in, and benefit from managing Indonesia’s forests. The policy does not explain how central and provincial governments, private companies, and NGOs can work together to facilitate communities to independently manage forests as part of SF programs Based on these considerations, this paper discusses how government efforts can increase and improve the capacity of SF facilitators and extension workers in Indonesia. The ambitious target to establish 12.7 million ha of social forestry certainly requires robust facilitation and extension work as a way to partner with forest communities, and creates a huge demand for the appropriate skills and knowledge base to be developed among SF facilitators and extension workers
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