Kemana Harus Melangkah? Masyarakat, Hutan, dan Perumusan Kebijakan di Indonesia*
(This review was published in Sinar Harapan 18 Oktober 2003)
Editor: Ida Aju Pradnja Resosudarmo dan Carol J. Pierce Colfer
Center for International Forestry Research, Bogor, Indonesia, 2003, ISBN 979-461-421-X 515 pages
(The book is available in English and Indonesian. English title: “Which Way Forward? People, Forests, and Policymaking in Indonesia”
In many countries the most visible symptom of bad governance has been the abuse of forests and land, and the lightning rod for expression of public dissatisfaction with corrupt governments has been the struggle for equity in access to natural resources. It was therefore no surprise to find Indonesia's nascent environmental organizations at the forefront of the barricades during these tumultuous days in May 1998 that led to the overthrow of the Soeharto regime.
Since then, the country has been swept by a tidal wave of change. Reformist elements have struggled with the powerful forces of vested interest and conservatism in a game still far from being played out. Meanwhile, opportunists throughout the country, both the rich and powerful and the poor and marginalized, have seized the opportunities provided by huge vacuums in the power structures.
The very process of reform and democratization that should, in the long term, help to bring forests under better public control has, in the short-term, exposed these forests to unprecedented threats.
This book documents the events of the past years in Indonesia and will help us to learn what went wrong. Indonesia may be unique in the magnitude of the forest problems created by corruption and the battles to eliminate it. But many of these problems occur to a greater or lesser extent in other forest rich countries of the tropics.
The question implicit in this collection of ecological, economic, political and social analyses of Indonesia's forests is: what can the forest conservation lobby do better to counter the pernicious evil of corruption and avert the more disastrous asset-stripping associated with the transition to democracy. After all, there are tens of millions of people bearing the cost of forest abuse. And a significant proportion of the billions of dollars generated by international efforts to save rainforests was invested in Indonesia. One irony is that rather than being the allies of the potential domestic constituency for forest conservation - the forest people - the international campaigners were marching to a different drum. They also wanted to appropriate the forests and set them aside for some lofty global environmental purpose - in the eyes of local people they were just as much a threat as the loggers.
We must never forget that the main source of essential knowledge of Indonesian forests remains with the people who live in them. The empowerment of these people and the legitimization of their rights must be a major part of the solution.
Jeffrey A. Sayer
Senior Associate
World Wide Fund for Nature
The Political Ecology of Tropical Forests in Southeast Asia: Historical perspectives
Lye Tuck-Po, Wil de Jong, Abe Ken-ichi
Kyoto University Press, Kyoto; Trans Pacific Press, Melbourne, Trans Pacific Press, 2003, ISBN 4-87698-453-0 293 pages
The reasons given for tropical forests degrading or disappearing are often simplistic: loggers remove too many trees, companies convert forest for plantations, and small farmers slash forest for agricultural fields. “The Political Ecology of Tropical Forests in Southeast Asia: Historical Perspectives”, edited by Lye Tuck Po (Malaysia's Center for Technology, Environment, and Development), Wil de Jong (CIFOR), Abe Ken Ichi (Japan Center for Area Studies) provides more accurate explanations by identifying the political dimensions of forest resource appropriation, contests over forest benefits, and the role of power in the processes of unsustainable forest use. The book brings together ten chapters from a number of forest experts covering 100 years of tropical forest political ecology in Asia.
Several of chapters demonstrate that modern struggles over forests and forest degradation have their roots in colonial periods. Colonial powers used force and discourse to control forests. Lesley Potter in her chapter demonstrates how colonial forest departments invented the argument that deforestation negatively affects the local climate, to expulse forest farmers from timber rich forestlands. Wil de Jong writes that the control of the lucrative trade in such forest products as rattan was often decided by colonial powers using force against local Sultans. In turn, local Sultans used force against forest dwellers, and powerful forest dweller groups used force against weaker groups.
Although the key actors in Asia's tropical forests landscape have changed, many of the processes of contestation remain the same. National rulers, like Suharto in Indonesia, gave away forest concessions to business cronies and the military for the sake of national economic development, and often to win political support. But according to Steve Rhee, a Yale Ph.D. candidate and CIFOR collaborator, recent decentralisation policies have seen the control over forests increasingly contested at lower government levels, or even at the village level among forest dwellers with different ethnic affiliations.
The political ecology of Asia’s tropical forest also has a wider international dimension, and it is not only confined to underdeveloped countries. Fred Gale examines the history of the International Timber Organization and its support for tropical timber producing countries in the face of increasing international concern about the affect of unsustainable logging. John Knight reveals how contemporary economic development thinking has created a set of new problems for forest dependent peoples in Japan where massive imports of foreign timber negatively affects their livelihoods and weaken the links between their forestry existence and their traditional cultural identity.
Further information: n.sabarniati@cgiar.org
Uncovering the hidden harvest: Valuation methods for woodland and forest resources
Bruce Campbell and Martin Luckert
Earthscan Publications, London, 2002, ISBN 1-85383-809-8 262 pages
Campbell and Luckert's research offers some compelling new perspectives on the real world subtleties and contextual complexities of valuing the diverse range of goods and services provided by forests and woodlands - the hidden harvest.
Their manual provides a comprehensive overview of economic and other approaches for valuing the full portfolio of benefits from forests, using an accessible style that should appeal to non-technical readers from diverse backgrounds. Some of the approaches discussed include analysis of household livelihoods and plant-based markets, non-market valuation and decision support frameworks like cost-benefit analysis.
Perspectives from ecologists, economists and sociologists who contributed to this book provide an interdisciplinary dimension to deriving and interpreting natural resource values. The concluding debate on the use of integrated natural resource management (INRM) approaches to conceptualize the relevant systems also helps situate household livelihoods and resource values within the whole system.
Bruce Campbell is an ecologist with the Center for International Forestry Research. Martin Luckert is a CIFOR research associate and a Professor of Forest Economics at the University of Alberta, Canada.
Reviewed by Manyewu Mutamba
Research Associate with the Zimbabwe NGO, Shanduko.
Further information: n.sabarniati@cgiar.org