Forest rehabilitation in Indonesia Where to After More Than Three Decades?

Abstract

Indonesia has 96.3 million ha of degraded forestland due to illegal logging, forest fires, forest conversion, unplanned agricultural expansion, consequences of the beginning of Reformation Era since 1998, and social conflict over forest resources. An estimated 54.6 million ha of this degraded forestland includes production forests and conservation and protection forests, and 41.7 million ha of degraded land outside forest areas. Since the early 1950s, the Government of Indonesia (GoI) has implemented a range of rehabilitation programmes. In the past, most rehabilitation projects were government driven, dependent on public funding from the Indonesian government and international donors and focused mainly on the technical aspects of rehabilitation. Institutional arrangements for executing the rehabilitation programmes to establish effective implementation on the ground were not developed. As a result, there has been little adoption of the rehabilitation techniques by local people living in and around the target areas. Innovative approaches are necessary if the objectives of a rehabilitation programme are to be achieved while at the same time giving associated socioeconomic benefits to private companies and local people.