economy

Minister Siti N, Social Forestry: The Evolution Of Efforts To Achieve Land Management Justice

The Ministry of Environment and Forestry (KLHK) organized a Social Forestry Synergy Workshop entitled "Realizing Land Management Justice for the Community" in Jakarta on Thursday (20/06/2024). This activity is part of an ongoing process to continuously improve the Social Forestry agenda.

Since the beginning of President Jokowi's administration in late 2014, Social Forestry has become a national priority. The Social Forestry agenda is a gradual change or evolution, an effort by the state to provide justice to the community, in this case, the village communities around and within forest areas.

"It is a process that we have all felt is not easy, working together to achieve access to forest management. When this activity started, I knew it was initiated by activists and then processed and articulated in policies and government measures called Social Forestry," said Minister of Environment and Forestry, Siti Nurbaya, in her opening speech at the workshop.

At the beginning of the Social Forestry Program, there were intensive discussions between the government and activist figures, who had been interacting since the transition period in 2014, regarding the target of social forest management access. Through discussions and comprehensive forestry data analysis, an ideal figure of 12.7 million hectares was determined as the target for community forest management access through Social Forestry.

"This means that the configuration of 12.7 million hectares will increase the percentage of forest management access from less than 4% in 2014 to 30-35%, including redistribution from a forest area of 4.1 million hectares," explained Minister Siti.

Why should we be realistic? Because it turns out that in the work of social forestry, there are so many high and dynamic aspects related to the lives of communities in villages, especially those within and around forest areas. So it's not as simple as just providing access," he said.

As of May 2024, the achievement of the Social Forestry program has reached 7.08 million hectares, consisting of 10,232 units of Social Forestry approval, involving 1.3 million households throughout Indonesia.

Minister Siti reiterated that Social Forestry, as a government affirmative policy to achieve economic equality, is not only about providing access to forest management, but also about promoting the improvement of human resources capacity and business opportunities, including access to capital and markets.

Continuing to Drive Development

The government continues to encourage the development of businesses for groups that have obtained approval for social forestry management, in terms of improving forest governance capacity, institutional governance, and business governance. "Because the target is better farming, better business, and better living," said Minister Siti.

Currently, there are 13,460 Social Forestry Business Groups (KUPS) that have been formed and are engaged in forest management and utilization based on their forest potential.

"This achievement is quite encouraging, and we must continue to support its proper management so that it can become a catalyst for national economic growth, and especially for building economic growth centers in regions or villages," said Minister Siti.