Social Forestry for resilience? Lessons
from Indonesia, (Laos and Vietnam)
Moira Moeliono, Cynthia Maharani, Indah Waty, Grace
Wong and Maria Brockhaus
RESILIENCE2017 Conference-Stockholm 21-23 August 2017

Background
• SE Asia, forest dependent people; traditional forest management practices
• ASFCC project argue that swidden is part of the traditional systems CAS/SES
• Governments argue that swidden is a direct cause of deforestation and often
bans the practice
• Swidden and traditional forest mgt practices are changing as they become
more integrated in national and global systems (land use plans), intro of large
scale industrial crops, commodification of land; infrastructure and other
development projects
•  deforestation and forest degradation
• Governments are introducing CF/SF defined as any situation which intimately
involves local people in a forestry activity” from subsistence collecting of NTFPs
to commercial growing of trees (Arnold, 1992)
RQ: Government programs replace traditional systems: will it be effective?
Sustainable?

Framework (Biggs et al, 2012)
• to alleviate poverty of forest
dependent people,
• to secure access to, and
ownership of the resources
and their benefits
• to improve the condition of the
forests
• SF/CF for adaptation and
mitigation of climate change

Traditional systems
(Indonesia case)
Role of Agency and adaptive systems
But already changing shortened
fallows, loss of biodiversity, loss of
interest

CF/SF as government program
• CF/SF as permit system,
more sectoral and isolated
from other policies
• Uniform models
• Participative?
Structure over agency loss
of flexibility

Conclusion
Government SF/CF programs be more effective and
sustainable if:
• Government would allow more flexible
arrangements, i.e. allow more local autonomy;
• Integrates the key principles in design of SF policies
especially allow learning and experimentation (eg
Vietnam and pilots)
• SF alone is not enough to achieve the objectives of
poverty reduction, improved forest management and
adaptation and mitigation of climate change

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ForestsTreesAgroforestry.org
For more information:
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