Forest Margin Protection and Community Involvement

If Nancy Peluso’s “Rich Forests, Poor People” may have been a valid observation until 1992, now ten years later (2002) the title is definitely no longer appropriate, not even for larger Outer Islands such as Sumatera, Kalimantan or Sulawesi and Papua. The situation is becoming extremely cumbersome for millions of shifting cultivators living in or around forest areas. A more recent mapping of the forest cover of Indonesia by the Ministry of Forestry (MOF) has revealed that the rate of deforestation in Indonesia approximately doubled between 1985 and 1997, from less than 1.0 million ha to at least 1.7 million ha each year (Holmes 2002). The mapping predates the widespread forest fires of 1997–98 and the extensive illegal logging that followed the political crisis of 1998. The analysis of the MOF data concludes that over 20 million ha of forest cover have been lost over a twelve year period including 6.7 million ha in Sumatera and 8.5 million ha in Kalimantan. This amounts to an average annual rate of 1.67 million ha, nation wide-roughly 600 ha per day or 190 ha per hour. The rate in the three islands of Sumatera, Kalimantan and Sulawesi is 1.45 million ha per year. The rate of forest loss between 1985 – 1997, which has been quoted from the Holmes’ report shows the disastrous decline of Indonesia’s tropical rain forest (Annex.1 & 2). In central Sulawesi where also the Lore Lindu is located, the forest area constituted 72.3% of total area in 1985. However, the forest area declined to 56.7% in 1997, which means 15.6% in 12 years or more than one percent per annum, equivalent to an average of 35.000 ha.