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10.1. Reducing Poverty via Decentralisation on Forest Management

Hizkia Respatiadi (Center for Indonesian Policy Studies/CIPS)

Abstract

Decentralisation policy in Indonesia is arguably the country’s most significant reform program considering its past as one of the most centralised nations in Asia. In theory, this policy should empower the local governments in exercising their authority in their regional jurisdictions, while enable them to provide better public services by shortening the chain of bureaucracy between the government and the local community that they serve. Indonesian central government implements decentralisation in the forestry sector by giving the authority to the local governments to manage the forests in their regions. Unfortunately, this policy has created prolonged power struggle between the local governments in the provincial level with the ones in the regency level. Meanwhile, the local communities who live around the forests do not receive their rights to use the forest resources notwithstanding their livelihood depends on those resources. These circumstances lead to poverty, inequality, and eventually push them to exploit the nature as they attempt to escape from their predicaments by taking advantage of lack of forest monitoring by the authorities. This paper illustrates the impact of decentralisation on forest management in Indonesia, and argues that such policy should focus more on the livelihood of the local community, and less on the interests of government agencies. This paper will provide several international experiences which could serve as examples on how forestry decentralisation policy could be utilised to tackle the issues of poverty and inequality mentioned above.

Keywords: decentralisation, forestry, poverty, inequality, property rights