Responsibilization and social forestry in Indonesia

Abstract

The current expansion of social forestry in Indonesia represents an unprecedented transfer of forest management responsibilities to user-groups across the archipelago. The Indonesian state aims to formalize co-management across 12.7 Mha of forest area to enhance community well-being and environmental as well as economic outcomes for the Indonesian public. Contemporary social forestry in Indonesia thus represents a form of natural resource responsibilization. Analyzing Indonesian social forestry as a process of responsibilization provides insight into how social forestry is performed, whether the alignment between community well-being and societal benefits is valid, and existing tensions that occur through the responsibilization of communities for forest management. Using responsibilization theory to examine social forestry policy, this research first identifies the activities that create social forestry in Indonesia and responsibilize new actors for forest management. The transfer of specific control rights to user-groups occurs through a constellation of administrative actors, bureaucratic activities, and virtual platforms. These activities reify user-groups and seek to unite community well-being objectives with environmental and economic benefits to the larger Indonesian public. However, the responsibilization of user-groups for forest management results in three important tensions. First, well-being and well-doing objectives are not always aligned and result in important trade-offs concerning community empowerment. Second, social forestry initiatives are seemingly optional, but they lack free-entry and formal channels for challenging state decisions. Third, at present there is an asymmetry between resources dedicated to approving social forestry permits versus capacity building, monitoring, and evaluating management outcomes. These three tensions provide insights for social forestry in one of the world's most significant tropical forest countries, and they point to promising future work in advancing scholarship on natural resource management and responsibilization.