1 Introduction
Deforestation has long faced criticism for its detrimental impact on ecosystems, contribution to climate change, and displacement of rural communities, particularly Indigenous people. In response to the criticism, social forestry has become popular in many developing countries, seeking to compensate the dispossessed local communities and establish landscape justice
[1]. Coined by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations,"social forestry" broadly encompasses programs that involve local people in forestry activities. Terms such as "participatory forestry" and "community forestry" are often used interchangeably, emphasizing local participation in decision-making processes related to forest management. Thus, social forestry has gained prominence in democratic movements in many countries, reflecting a broader shift in social justice, where local participation and community involvement are prerequisites
[2].
In Indonesia, the period after 1998 witnessed a decentralization movement that gave greater roles to local governments and communities
[3]. Since the 1990s, rising agricultural and environmental movements against the land grabbing by agribusiness pushed the central state to address land justice for rural communities after a long history of large-scale land dispossession
[4]. Besides responding to civil movements, the Indonesian government laid out the formal scheme of social forestry in 1999 due to the intensifying climate crisis
[5]. This program aims to confer rights to local communities, improve their livelihoods sustainably, and promote environmental conservation. The current policy aims to transfer more than 10% of the forest estate area into social forestry.
However, potential tensions arose as the national government continued to plan the expansion of palm oil plantations to generate revenue till 2023 after launching the social forestry program
[6]. The concurrent expansion of social forestry and palm oil plantations (Fig.1) presents two self-contradictory governing directions, which prompts the following research questions. 1) Why was the social forestry program promoted alongside plantations? 2) What kinds of rights did social forestry grant or withhold from local communities? 3) How should the social forestry program be positioned within the broader political economy?
To answer these questions, this paper reviews the literature on the political economy of environmental projects with sustainability branding. It then examines the historical context of social forestry within the decentralization movement, shedding light on its co-evolution with plantation expansion. This paper also conducted an evaluation on the performance of social forestry through the fieldwork in Java and West Kalimantan and analyzed the substance of landscape justice in social forestry in two ways. First, it assesses how social forestry fulfills its promises to recognize rights, empower livelihoods, and conserve forests. Second, it evaluates the program's inclusivity, considering the diverse socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds of rural populations.
2 Literature Review
The research explores the social forestry program within debates intersecting decentralization, neoliberalism, and critical environmental conservation. Supporters of social forestry often frame it as a manifestation of community development and a decentralization movement
[7]. Over the past decade, many developing countries, especially those were previously colonized, have sought to democratize their governments and decentralize the fiscal system
[8]. The devolution of forest management is a key aspect of these movements, crucial for addressing social and political tensions and ensuring local cultural and political autonomy
[9].
However, scholars caution that decentralization does not necessarily lead to local empowerment. Decentralization processes, limited by local social and human capital, can result in unpredictability and increased rent-seeking
[10]. In addition, decentralization is often quickly captured by market forces
[11]. Consequently, many regions face a severe negative cycle of local capture and insufficient fiscal capacity
[12]. In some cases, decentralization may inadvertently contribute to the further neoliberalization of resources and weakened public goods provision, sparking ongoing debates about the relationship between decentralization, neoliberal development, and democratic planning
[13].
Understanding the political economy of landscape projects requires situating them within the broader economic system and governing structure. In recent years, scholars have raised concerns about the neoliberal turn in environmental conservation, coining the term "green capitalism" to describe the relationship between capitalism and sustainability development
[14]~[17]. Green capitalism literature has offered two qualitatively different views on the impact of the neoliberal market on a sustainable future
[18]. One perspective argues that the market economy offers the best solution for reversing the negative impact while ensuring continuous economic growth
[19]. A prominent idea in green capitalism is emissions trading (or carbon trading), which means developed countries or industries pay developing countries for environmental preservation, trading off carbon emissions from their industries
[20]. The other view posits that the payment of environmental services represents a new form of "spatial fix" for the internal crisis of capitalist production
[21]. Ecological and economic crises are inherent and interdependent aspects of capitalism
[22]. Capitalist production depletes natural resources, exacerbating social struggles and restraining capital's further expansion. Economic crises usually lead to capital expansion and geographical shifts for extraction. In every phase of capital accumulation, a new nature–society relationship needs to be constructed to address previous crises
[23]. Thus, many environmental projects serve as a solution to these crises in the form of green capitalism.
In this new nature–society relationship, environmental projects are increasingly driven by business profits rather than focusing on the needs of the affected local communities
[24]. Researchers like Kalyan Sanyal pointed out that with the rising human rights discourse, governments face increased pressure to manage the victims of capitalism through poverty alleviation and community development programs. In this circumstance, governments must preserve a portion of land to absorb surplus labor unable to sustain livelihoods after dispossession
[25]. Similarly, other scholars argued that addressing "surplus labor" created by capitalism and land dispossession necessitates "granting" land to people
[26]. The redistribution and preservation of resources seem to reverse primitive accumulation, but it is another way to relieve social pressures, buy political support, and further legitimize capital expansion
[27].
Moreover, among environmental projects, environmental conservation projects have long been criticized for prioritizing certain elitist concepts of environment in the price of sacrificing local communities' needs, exacerbating conflicts and inequalities
[28]. Scholars note that environmental conservation has become a justification for land and resource control
[29], a phenomenon termed as "green land grab"
[30]. Many cases reveal that conservation projects may not always directly lead to land grabbing in a given area, but can trigger such outcome elsewhere
[31]. On some occasions, conservation efforts may block agribusiness expansion in a given area, but companies can simply shift to nearby sites. Some agribusinesses even invest in conservation to offset carbon consumption for other expansion parts, indicating that analysis focusing solely on landscape justice within specific conservation areas may overlook indirect land grabs elsewhere.
In addition, scholars have expanded the debate on social justice and landscape, proposing a new framework of "the right to landscape"
[32]. The right includes physical rights to a safe and healthy environment and cultural and political rights enabling local communities to participate in decisions that shape the landscape. Scholars also point out the challenges in realizing landscape justice as it often runs against the current prevailing economic paradigm
[32]. In this research, the case study engages with these debates, examining the extent to which decentralized community development and environmental conservation realize the local communities' right to the landscape.
3 Research Methodology
The performance of a development project should be evaluated contextually rather than by a fixed metric
[33]. Therefore, this study employs a mixed-methods approach, incorporating policy analyses, interviews, and participant observations. A fieldwork was conducted in Indonesia, from June to August, 2019 in Java and West Kalimantan (Fig.2). Key informant interviews, 21 in total, included academics, consultants, and staff of social forestry, alongside semi-structured interviews with local residents in three villages with the social forestry program. Most of the staff in Jakarta and West Kalimantan speak English, allowing approximately half of the interviews to be conducted in English. A local translator assisted with interviews and conversations in Indonesian dialects. Follow-up phone interviews with three local interlocutors were carried out periodically for 7 times in 2020 and 2021.
The participant observation was conducted within several environmental NGOs in Indonesia. Some allowed visits to their Jakarta headquarters for key staff interviews. One NGO in West Kalimantan, whose research interests aligned with this study, supported the fieldwork to the three villages. Connections with local villager leaders led to in-depth interviews on their opinions of social forestry and the palm oil industry. Pseudonyms were applied to protect the identities of NGOs and their staff and villagers.
4 Background for the Social Forestry Program
The exploration of the local context in Indonesia elucidates the power dynamics between the government's competing goals: expanding the palm oil industry for revenue and promoting social forestry for land redistribution. Indonesia is a primary palm oil supplier, accounting for over half of the global supply
[34]. Forest dwellers have long endured land enclosures, a legacy of the colonial era and continued through the late 1990s
[29]. Around 60% of Indonesia's forests are under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry
[35]. The palm oil industry is a major source of local revenue in West Kalimantan, Sumatra, and Papua, islands predominantly covered by forests. The close ties between palm oil industrial elites and the Indonesian government have perpetuated an opaque and corrupt land-for-sale regime
[36].
Amid growing concerns over climate change and human rights, the Indonesian government initiated the social forestry program. The 2016 Regulation by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry defines social forestry as a new way of forest management to improve local communities' welfare, environmental balance, and social dynamics
[37]. It emphasizes that local communities should have rights in regulating and managing forestry according to their interests
[38], but also comes with restrictions and conditions (Tab.1)
[39][40]. Compared with the customary forest granting full land rights, the local villagers, rights to access the social forestry program are highly restricted.
The three visited villages, located in Ketapang region in West Kalimantan—a new frontier for the palm oil industry
[41] and the primary research site—are also involved in the social forestry program with multiple purposes including poverty alleviation. Ketapang has the highest number of poor villages in West Kalimantan
[42] and local villagers sustain their livelihoods through palm oil, rice, and rubber farming, often insufficient for subsistence. Consequently, they resort to illegal logging and land sales to palm oil companies, which continue despite prohibition by local governments. Thus, the local governments hope that the social forestry program can provide alternative livelihoods, reducing illegal logging incentives. However, implementation of the social forestry program has been criticized for its extremely slow progress
[5] [39]. Conflicts between villagers and palm oil industries persist, raising the question of why social forestry program, which was intended to achieve justice in natural resource redistribution, has failed.
5 Findings and Discussion
As some scholars put it,"the ability of people to confound the established spatial orders... means that space and place can never be 'given, ' and that the process of their socio-political construction must always be considered"
[43], suggesting that the spatial order of social forestry should never be taken for granted. The formation and implementation processes all shape the spatial order.
5.1 Green Capitalism or Community Development
To discern whether Indonesia's social forestry program aligns more with green capitalism or community empowerment, it is crucial to understand its historical formation, especially its relationship with plantation capital and the governing system. Emerging within the broader community development and decentralization movements of the 1990s, social forestry swiftly became a focal point for two competing groups over forest resources control: local governments and civil organizations
[3] [44].
The economic crisis in mid-1998 prompted the central government's push for decentralization, empowering local governments to manage their revenues and budgets for development
[45] [46]. In 1999, local governments gained the authority to grant location permits for land acquisition, a pivotal power for land concessions. This devolution of financial and administrative management granted local governments significant autonomy in resource management, including the controversial right to authorize small-scale (less than 100 hm
2) logging licenses
[47], even in previously prohibited areas. With this new power over forestry management and the shrinking revenue under decentralization, local authorities sought for revenue from palm oil plantations with little interest in forest conservation and local village populations
[8] [48].
Meanwhile, the decentralization movement provided civil organizations with political space to assert claims over the land
[4], leading to the rapid growth of newly initiated environmental movements. These organizations have long fought to redistribute forest resources and oppose the expansion of palm oil plantations
[49]. Agrarian activists, NGOs, and student groups mobilized numerous dispossessed peasants to occupy state forest and plantation zones, which significantly influenced the management of large palm oil plantations
[4] [50] [51]. To maintain the control over forest and palm oil plantations, the state initiated the social forestry program to replace the civil movements. The complex historical trajectory shows that social forestry was encroached by plantation capitalism, packed into green capitalism.
5.2 Renegotiated Participation and Mismatched Expectations
This section analyzes the tangible rights afforded to villagers to assess to what extent social forestry has failed to fulfill its promises of recognizing rights, empowering livelihoods, and conserving forests. Social forestry typically grants villagers' access to specific state forest areas to alleviate poverty, endowing them with rights accompanied by obligations and restrictions related to environmental conservation that is crucial in determining its actual benefits for local villagers. For instance, according to the 2014 Regulation by the Minister of Forestry (now the Ministry of Environment and Forestry), village forestry does not grant ownership rights in the forest area
[52]. Instead, villagers' activities are highly regulated, particularly concerning the types and quantities of products they can collect from the forest
[53]. Collection for NTFPs like rattan, honey, fruits, or seeds cannot exceed 50 m
3 or 20 tons per village institution
[54].
Distinguishing social forestry from traditional land reform is crucial for understanding Indonesia's nuanced landscape of land tenure. Unlike traditional land reform, which entails granting land ownership to villagers, social forestry falls short of comprehensive reform due to the relatively small proportion of land allocated to villagers and the limited rights bestowed by the government. Notably, before the government championed the social forestry program, some progressive civil organizations helped villager groups successfully occupy state land, securing full ownership.
While governments advocated for social forestry, they lacked sufficient capital and human resources to support local communities to apply for social forestry. Instead, both central and local governments outsourced environmental NGOs domestically and internationally to cooperate with government programs and facilitate local communities. However, the mismatched expectations between NGOs and local villagers regarding the social forestry program have given rise to multifaceted problems. While NGOs perceive the social forestry program as a means to preventing the illegal collection or logging of forest resources, villagers contend with limited benefits. Conversations with local villagers revealed a stark contrast in their perception of land rights. Many local communities have been collecting timber products in a sustainable amount for centuries. The new regulations in social forestry that limit villagers' collection on timber products have frustrated local communities (an NGO worker, personal communication, July 2019).
Disagreements on the ways to manage the granted forest add complexity; some villagers seek immediate gains by selling land to palm oil industries, while others lean towards participation in social forestry. According to local NGO staff, tangible benefits of social forestry may only become apparent after five years, aligning with the growth pattern of plants. Village leaders express frustration, citing the difficulty in persuading individuals to commit to a program that offers minimal incentives. Subsistence activities, encompassing rice paddy cultivation and palm oil plantations, already consume most villagers' time and are compounded by annual construction and infrastructure maintenance responsibilities. Currently, villagers engage in social forestry voluntarily. Villagers' reluctance is primarily rooted in the absence of long-term incentives, a perspective at odds with NGO staff, who interpreted it as a deficiency in environmental awareness and solidarity.
Furthermore, while social forestry does not grant complete ownership of resources to villagers, it imposes upon them the responsibility of managing forests for the community's welfare. It involves ecological services such as water supply safeguarding, erosion prevention, disaster mitigation, and biodiversity protection. Villagers risk government confiscation if they fail in their custodial role. The misalignment of expectations and unequal rights and duties complicates the implementation of the social forestry program within local communities. It makes the program more of an extra burden than a means to achieving landscape justice for villagers.
5.3 Difficulties in Poverty Alleviation
Efforts toward poverty alleviation within the social forestry program encounter challenges. The difficult process has made local communities more dependent on the assistance of NGOs. First, gaining approval for social forestry applications is difficult. Under the decentralized Indonesian government, social forestry applicants are responsible for securing funding and various kinds of support. Across the villages visited, local communities lacked the capacity to complete all the necessary documentation for applications. Seeking assistance becomes imperative even for the initial application process.
"Local government does not give us support except setting up with this program. Only this organization (NGO) helps us," said a local villager (personal communication, January 2020). Similar complaints were heard from villagers in every village. The local government directs social forestry applicants to seek support from business groups, institutions, and NGOs. Consequently, applying for and managing social forestry demands substantial social capital for a village, concerning the quality of technical assistance, amounts of financing, and support for local leadership in finance and human resources. The village committee should submit a management plan and development plan for forest conservation and economic development to demonstrate commitment and capacity. Compiling the application materials requires knowledge of business, laws, human resource management, and GIS techniques. During the meetings, it was mentioned several times that the amount of paperwork for the social forestry application was overwhelming. In addition, there is a prolonged waiting period after submitting the application.
To alleviate poverty, governments encourage villagers to initiate their own NTFP businesses, as regular loggings and timber collection are prohibited. However, running the NTFP business has been also challenging. Villagers expressed their concerns about the lack of market linkage and insufficient resources to manufacture products. In one village, a leader of an NTFP group specializing in handmade baskets mentioned that they currently only use WhatsApp to get small orders (Fig.3). They desired more orders but could not handle large orders due to limited equipment, materials, and skilled labor. Thus, the financial returns from NTFPs are substantially limited.
The performance studies of social forestry in Java reach similarly unfavorable conclusions
[55]. After examining the feasibility of economic developments in social forestry, scholars found that instead of alleviating the poverty of the forest users, the community forestry scheme, at best, creates only a subsistence economy. Consequently, the demanding requirement of social forestry hinder its effectiveness in poverty alleviation. This kind of neoliberal empowerment program shifts the discourse on poverty from the state's responsibility to villages without substantial systemic adjustments.
5.4 New Inclusion and Exclusion
Besides the difficulties in achieving dual objectives of environmental preservation and poverty alleviation, the program produced unexpected side effects resulted from the way that NGOs interact with local communities. The social forestry program aims to empower the local communities. Yet, this endeavor presupposes a pre-defined community. Simply living in the same region does not automatically create a cohesive community. Instead, the delineation of community membership—determining who belongs and who does not—remains unclear
[56]. Every community entails a certain level of inclusion and exclusion. Although social forestry emphasizes on community empowerment, it may inadvertently create new socially constructed communities through material redistribution. Thus, it is crucial to examine the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion of social forestry.
The three villages visited are not formed by a singular community but amalgamations of multiple communities. These villages, situated within trans-migrant resettlement areas and primarily inhabited by Indigenous people, exhibit distinct attitudes towards social forestry. Conversations with NGO staff revealed their preference for working with specific villages or communities. Some staff referred to villagers unwilling to participate social forestry as "stubborn," compared with the "cooperative" ones (an NGO worker, personal communication, May 2019). This raises questions about the reasons behind these differing attitudes and the role of NGOs.
Interviews revealed a clear correlation between villagers' views on palm oil industries and their stance on social forestry. Some villagers welcome palm oil industries, anticipating economic benefits, improved infrastructure, and job opportunities, albeit without a full understanding of the potential pollution and challenging working conditions. In villages where most residents work part-time in palm oil plantations, complaints about the palm oil industries were notably scarce. For individuals, engaging in social forestry was just another project that may provide additional livelihood opportunities. Conversely,"stubborn" villagers strongly opposed plantations. One villager asserted that "I will slash an oil palm whenever I see one in the forest. It ruins my forest" (a villager, personal communication, January 2020). They fully rejected social forestry on compromised land, citing an anti-plantation and anti-dispossession stance and unmet expectations on social forestry.
Further investigation revealed that the "stubborn" attitude and resistance to palm oil industries were closely tied to Indigenous people and migrants different experiences and expectations on land. Indigenous people perceive the government's conversion of their ancestral forests to plantations as dispossession and exploitation
[57]. In West Kalimantan, the dominant Indigenous ethnic groups are Dayak (34.93%) and Malay (33.84%), while the rest are mainly migrants from Sulawesi and Java
[58]. The Dayaks, marginalized historically, emphasize the importance of gaining customary forestry with full ownership over social forestry with limited rights
[57], making them resistant to social forestry initiatives. Conversely, migrants from land-scarce regions such as Java prioritize survival over forest preservation. The relationship between Indigenous and migrated populations has also been strained, with Indigenous people viewing migrants as occupiers of their resources. Thus, ethnic politics subtly permeates NGO activities.
There is also a problem of geographic distance between NGOs (Tab.2) and local communities. One staff stated that "we cannot always be on the site; in the end, only local villagers can take responsibility for conservation" (an NGO worker, personal communication, August 2019). The policy of staff rotation in this NGO exacerbates this situation, with leaders from Europe being assigned every four years. This frequent turnover leads to frustration among local leaders, who find it challenging when these leaders depart just as they begin to understand the intricate local politics.
Moreover, these diverse NGOs from different parts of the world hold varying ideologies and visions toward local communities with different funding sources. For example, some NGOs are willing to cooperate with palm oil companies, while some refuse. One head of NGOs mentioned that "this is just not the way we envision the future of the forest, but the firm immediately found another NGO to work with" (an NGO worker, personal communication, August 2019). Similarly, not all NGOs prioritize Indigenous rights in their conservation project. Consequently, NGOs tend to collaborate with communities that align with their specific visions, fragmenting social forestry efforts.
6 Conclusions
Henry Bernstein, a sociologist, proposed four questions for land reform: "Who owns what? Who does what? Who gets what? What do they do with it?"
[59] These questions can also be used to examine the social forestry program: Who owns social forestry? Who creates and shapes social forestry? Who gets access to social forestry? What do villagers and palm oil industries do with social forestry? When guided by these questions, the exploration shows that the genuine benefits to local communities from those programs are uncertain. Environmental conservation or natural resource redistribution does not inherently guarantee "landscape justice."
Examining how the social forestry program developed over time can help avoid overlooking the infiltration of capitalism, which may evolve into a form of green capitalism. The simultaneous growth of extractive industries and neoliberal environmental projects creates a paradox, which requires a critical lens to comprehend the co-constitution of them. In Indonesia, social forestry has never been isolated from the ever-expanding palm oil plantations from the outset. The social crisis led to the civil movement for land redistribution. However, the state strategically appropriated the social forestry program amidst these struggles to pacify civil movements. Providing a subsistence economy through small-scale land redistribution can justify the further expansion of capital projects
[27]. Environmental projects are not antithetical to capital expansion but emerge as a byproduct contributing to green capitalism.
Although social forestry is regarded as "participatory" from the beginning, realizing true participation and local empowerment demands comprehensive institutional support. Merely granting local communities limited access to land is insufficient for community empowerment, not to mention poverty alleviation. Social forestry regulations, with their numerous requirements, make it a project, not a secure accomplishment for the stated goals
[60]. Governments have rendered the problems of poverty technical, rather than political, and shifted the responsibility to local communities. While the social forestry program was designed to benefit rural communities and environment preservation, some level of state involvement is still necessary to address the larger structural inequality in resource distribution under plantation capitalism.
In addition, it is important to understand the social impact of environmental policies pursued in the name of landscape justice. Social forestry is co-governed by local, national, and international groups, necessitating the reconfiguration of power based on existing social structure. From a governmental perspective, decentralized governments create a significant vacuum for implementing social forestry, which is controlled by a plethora of new and small NGOs. These NGOs work with their own agenda and ideology but often compete with each other for finite resources, creating new social divides.
Examining the everyday practices of villagers and NGOs provides insights into how local communities experience the reality of social forestry. People's attitudes towards land, land rights, and subsistent livelihoods are mediated by government and NGO discourses on the environment, poverty, and Indigenous people. Attention to the social structures upon which environmental politics operate is vital, as illustrated in this case study, where the dynamics between Indigenous and migrant communities were overlooked by environmental NGOs, potentially exacerbating social tensions. Further research is warranted to explore the evolving eco-social structures.
Recognizing that landscape justice cannot exist in isolation from other social issues is also crucial. Some scholars' advocacy for "agrarian climate justice" highlights the increasing convergence of sectoral social justice movements, from agrarian and fishers' movements to Indigenous people's environmental movements
[61]. Landscape justice is interconnected with many other issues and cannot be achieved without considering other justice movements. As landscape justice progresses, the dynamic interplay between capitalist expansion and local structures must be considered. Pursuing landscape justice entails incorporating the intricate concerns of local livelihoods. In addition, local communities' right to the landscape should also entitle them to "secure a home that is more meaningful and resonates with their cultural references and meanings."
[32]This project underscores the need for a nuanced understanding of the multifaceted dimensions shaping landscape justice. An environmental project is never complete at one point in time. It can be appropriated and reconfigured by different powerful stakeholders for their interests. Thus, a constant reevaluation on the processes and the impact of projects on different local communities is necessary. Ultimately, achieving true landscape justice requires addressing the intricacies of both local and global dynamics.
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