Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

94 • Trikurnianti Kusumanto
approach to make a difference in both forest quality and human well-being.
A description of the research project and the stages of an ACM approach
in action follows. The chapter then shares the challenges, strengths and
limitations of the ACM approach that were illuminated by the research. A
concluding section offers implications for a wider application of ACM in
Indonesia.
Context: divergence, inflexibility, and chaos
Indonesia’s forests, the third largest after Brazil and Congo and among
the most diverse in the world, provide essential social, economic and
environmental goods and services to rural and urban communities
throughout the Archipelago. Conservatively estimated, the livelihoods of
at least 65 million rural people depend on these forests (Fay and Sirait 2002)
and on water flows to agricultural, industrial and urban areas regulated by
forest ecosystems. From a national economic view, forestry industries rank
second only to petroleum in contributions to the country’s gross domestic
product (Barr 2002).
Despite the significant role that forests play, forest management is beset by
problems. Severe deforestation and forest degradation, partly the result of
state structures and partly driven by the lucrative national and international
trade in forest products, have hurt local livelihoods, reduced biodiversity
and undermined ecosystem functions. Where forests have remained
relatively productive, disputes often surface among people competing for
the same resources. Often in such situations, however, mechanisms to
manage conflicts in a just and effective way are lacking (Wulan et al. 2004;
Yasmi 2007). Altogether, these problems have eroded the quality of forests
and rural people’s livelihoods.
Indonesia’s policy landscape is complex and characterised by state
dominance and political foment. Some 70 to 80 percent of Indonesia’s
area is considered state forest, given in mandate to the Minister of Forestry
for the regulation of its use and management (Contreras-Hermosilla
and Fay 2005). The national government has allocated more than 60
million hectares of forest to commercial logging companies (Barr 2002).
The consequences at local levels have been far-reaching: communities
living within and close to state forests have been invisible to government
planners, with the result that community lands are overlain by concession