Improving forest sector management in Indonesia

This three year management project of the Multi-Stakeholder Forestry Programme will help strengthen governance across Indonesia’s forestry sector.

Project team members

Eradicating illegal logging, conserving biodiversity and strengthening climate protection are key aims of the Indonesian Government. We have been selected to manage the implementation of DFID’s third Multi-Stakeholder Forestry Programme (MFP3), facilitating partnerships between central and local government, civil society and private sector actors to support these aims against the backdrop of a shift towards community-centred forest management. Work will focus around promoting activities that support industry-wide adoption of Indonesia’s Timber Legality Assurance System as well those that support the effective implementation of community-centred management, and help ensure access to forest resources by small-scale enterprises and community groups. Areas of work will include the facilitation of stakeholder consultations, undertaking comprehensive reviews to map existing initiatives, challenges and opportunities, and developing methodologies for assessing impact. More broadly, MFP3 activities should help contribute to Indonesia’s wider development goals by reducing rural poverty, enhancing biodiversity conservation, and improving climate protection.

Challenges

The Indonesian Government has taken a number of steps to eradicate illegal logging and conserve the country’s forests to maintain biodiversity, help alleviate global warming and support its ambitious climate change targets. DFID is supporting this process through its Multi-Stakeholder Forestry Programme (MFP). Currently in its third phase, the MFP aims to establish a legal and technically effective community-based forest industry to complement corporate industrial forest production, reduce illegal (unplanned) forest degradation and deforestation, provide greater tenure security, improve rural livelihoods, protect forest ecosystems and the environment and mitigate against climate change. These will be achieved through three main elements: timber legality, community-based forestry enterprises and community access to forests.

Effective implementation of MFP3 will depend in a large part on strengthening the capacity of government and non-government assessment bodies and improving the monitoring abilities of civil society groups. In addition, as the forestry sector in Indonesia moves away from a large-scale concession model towards one centred around community-based forest management, ensuring access to resources and markets willl be a key priority of the programme. This in turn will depend on participatory mapping and effective land-use planning reforms based on robust evidence on the nature and extent of existing initiatives.

Our approach

We are leading a team of experts, working closely with the Indonesian Government, DFID and other stakeholders to deliver MFP3 activities and manage the day-to-day operations of the programme. Working in selected provinces and districts across Indonesia, the team will build on the progress made by MFP and MFP2, facilitating partnerships between central and local government, civil society and private sector actors to strengthen governance across the forestry sector.

The key focus of the project will be mobilising projects that promote industry-wide adoption of Indonesia’s Timber Legality Assurance System as well as those that support the effective implementation of community-centred management and ensure access to forest resources by community groups. This will include establishing initiatives to promote awareness of compliance standards on the demand-side and building the capacity of key actors including Ministry of Forestry officials, SMEs and community-based enterprises on the supply-side. In addition, it will involve developing a robust framework for monitoring and evaluating the impact of different initiatives.

Specific services provided by the team will include:

  • facilitating stakeholder consultation processes and developing a methodology to assess the impact of the VPA;
  • conducting reviews of existing community-based forestry initiatives and assessing challenges and opportunities for their development in line with compliance to legality assurance systems;
  • establishing a training network to support capacity building of target participants including small-scale forest enterprises;
  • coordinating regional-level multi-stakeholder technical working groups to support market access for small-scale and community-based enterprises;
  • identifying and testing spatial mapping technologies to support community forest boundary clarification; and
  • developing participatory mapping methods for agreeing land use boundaries.

Outcomes

This project will help improve governance of forestry resources across Indonesia. By strengthening existing relationships and facilitating new ones, the MFP3 will support the pooling of resources and knowledge, promoting partnerships to achieve common sector goals in the most efficient and cost-effective ways. These goals include the industry-wide adoption of timber legality assurance systems, the effective implementation of community-centred forestry management and the establishment of mechanisms for ensuring access to forest resources by community groups and small-scale enterprises.

Furthermore, by promoting greater public awareness of, and civil society engagement in, forestry management issues, this project should help improve monitoring and accountability in the sector, to help ensure the sustainability of initiatives.

Over the longer-term, the effective implementation of MFP3 activities should help contribute towards Indonesia’s wider development goals by reducing rural poverty, enhancing biodiversity conservation and improving climate protection through forestry-related emissions reductions.

Areas of expertise