Can Decentralization and Localism Increase the Effectiveness of Indonesia’s Forest Rehabilitation Effort? Special Case in Customary and Community-Owned Forest in Indonesia

Decentralization is often seen as an opportunity to bring a localism approach into practice. As Indonesia experiences rapid decentralization, there is hope that localism will help to improve forest management. However, the rapid process of this decentralization has not shown promising signs, especially given the capacity of local governments in embracing localism to promote a sustainable forest management. This paper presents three provincial case studies – East Kalimantan, West Java, and Central Java– that have been used to assess this issue. These provinces are selected based on important characteristics in forest management – population growth, percentage of poor people, forest areas and agricultural expansion as well as the type of forest utilization permit given to the province. From these varieties of provinces, the results show the need for local government to increase the support for the localism that has been growing in a decentralized environment. In addition, localism is proven to make a difference in forest management, especially in customary forest management in West Java and East Kalimantan. The fact that there are pockets of community to defend and carry out their version of localism is encouraging.