Talking about Social Forestry, this is an inseparable situation from the efforts of the government that has launched this program as part of a national program.
The government through its apparatus’ research realized that the reality of forest management activities so far is more economic growth-oriented that has led to the marginalization of that social life in and around the forest.
Why the community gets marginalized?
The fact that the various data and information of indigenous peoples has not been recognized officially– fine words not to, contained in official government statistics and internal discourse about development orientation and alignments.
At the level of welfare, it should be noted that the benchmarks currently used by the government are only based on one dimension, namely the economic dimension. However, if explored further that the level of community welfare includes basic needs, psychological, social, and spiritual. From these four aspects, it can be seen that there are at least two aspects of need in measuring the level of community welfare, namely physical and spiritual.
Community Empowerment Model Based on Local Potential
There are several empowerment models carried out by a researcher which can then be used as an alternative in development at the local community level. Namely.
1) Preparation stage or Look and Think stage, including administration preparation and field preparation for the research location. Administratively it includes the preparation of the design and stages of research, licensing and initial contracts with various parties that will be involved in the research.
2) Act Stage, namely entrepreneurship guidance, skills guidance, social assistance by local facilitating teams, and program synchronization processes between agencies to support economic acceleration, through technology development to be utilized by target groups
3) Monitoring and Evaluation, activities in the evaluation and monitoring stage are carried out in the form of group discussions at the local community level.
Samples of Marginalized Community and their Striving
The Seberuang Dayak Indigenous Community, is one of hundreds of Dayak sub-tribes in Kalimantan. This community lives a.l. in the region of Riam Batu Village, Tempunak District, Sintang Regency, West Kalimantan, is only 77 km away from the Regency Capital. The area of the village which is only 5,000 hectares with a population of 264 households has abundant natural and environmental resource potential.
Recent economic studies in the village show other interesting things relative to the main narrative and the passage at the beginning of this paper. The entire Dayak community depends on the existence of natural resources and the environment. Hundreds more identified benefits are in the form of commodity products and environmental services that they use. From this one hundred identified several commodities that are recognized as the main drivers of the economy. Water is one of them. As they claim, water has two dimensions at once, as commodities and services for the existence of their customary forests: micro-hydro power plants and clean water.
Trickle-down Effect of Social Forestry
The concept of trickle-down effect or growth for equal distribution, it turns out that it cannot necessarily improve the welfare of the Public. As a result, economic injustice arises with the consequence in inequality inter-community welfare, especially between people who have access
to the benefits of forests (forest entrepreneurs, and local elites) and the community at large which has limited access to forest benefits
The national program considers well the Social Forestry and poverty alleviation programs. How come? Poverty alleviation by involving the community in forest management is no longer a strange program.
The Social Forestry Program is a Government Priority Program that has the main objective of improving the welfare of people living around forest areas, reducing conflicts over land issues in the community and in the future can help overcome poverty.
The regime change from Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to Joko Widodo in 2014 did not stop the social forestry agenda. After that, the term “social forestry” was also increasingly known. Then the implementation target was raised to 12.7 million hectares. Officials under the Ministry of Forestry specializing in social forestry were formed, case handling working groups were organized, and bureaucracy simplified.
The soaring target of implementing social forestry is influenced by President Jokowi’s mission in developing Indonesia from the periphery and overcoming the poverty of the people, especially the people around the forest. The government transition team at that time, according to Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya in March 2018, even proposed this agenda target of 30 percent of Indonesia’s forests. This means that 37 million of the 125 million hectares of forest could be conjured up as social forestry (KLHK, 2018).
As the nomenclature of PermenLHK No. 83/2016, that Social Forestry is a system of visionary sustainable forest management that implemented in state forest areas or customary forests / customary forests implemented by local communities or customary law communities as the main actors to improve their welfare, environmental balance and dynamics social culture in the form of Village Forest (HD), Community Forest (HKm), Community Plantation Forest (HTR), Customary Forest (HA) and Forestry Partnership (KULIN KK).
The government in the 2015-2019 period allocated forest areas through the Social Forestry program covering 12.7 million ha, as well as the establishment of the revised Indicative Map of the Social Forestry Area (PIAPS) of 13.8 million Ha, with the hope that this program could bring about social justice for the people who live in and around the forest and raise public awareness in preserving forest resources.
Providing access to forest management to the community through Social Forestry has reached an area of 3.09 million ha, involving more than 679 thousand households or has provided benefits to approximately 2.7 million people in and around the forest. For the Kalimantan region it reached 846,164.14 hectares with a total of 521 SK units for 83,821 households. Region only