Community managed forest as pathway to secure land tenure (case study of limited production forest, KPHP Unit XVI, Tanjung Jabung Barat District, Jambi Province)

Abstract

This research focuses on the impact of property rights insecurity that drives to tenure insecurity as well on deforestation and forest degradation in limited production forest (HPT) as part of KPHP Unit XVI at Tanjung Jabung Barat district, Jambi Province. Deforestation is considered as a risk management strategy: property rights insecurity reduces the present value of forest and foster forest conversion into agricultural lands in this case converted into oil palm and rubber plantation. Moreover, deforestation is the consequences of strategic interactions between local community (who has claim over land and forest) with migrant community (which is hungry for land to gain capital increment). This strategic interaction drove to the formulation of informal land market institution that significantly contributed to the deforestation over the study site area. The current situation of forest land encroachment was the result of the lack of forest governance at the site level. The research was trying to get a better understanding on how informal land market institution had been formulated and how this institution had contribute to the deforestation within the frame of legal pluralism and property rights theory.