JAKARTA – The ministry of environment and forestry (KLHK) needs to fully decentralize Indonesia’s forestry sector to anticipate the widespread competition of interests to access the forestry resources.
“Looking forward, we need to fully decentralize the forestry management to deal with the growing competition to access the forestry resource,” Environment and Forestry (LHK) Minister Siti Nurbaya said in her keynote speech during the 60th anniversary of the forestry faculty of Yogyakarta-based University of Gajah Mada (UGM) in Yogyakarta on Friday, 20 October 2023.
She said that in the future there will be more challenges, such as conflict of interests in land and forest utilization, especially in relation to tenure in densely populated areas, competition to acquire lands for foods and energy in forest areas.
The other challenges include the phenomenon of practical application of carbon economic value and bioprospecting to produce valuable products.
“Both can develop in the attraction of business prospect orientation, but its good governance must be well maintained,” she said.
According to her, in the future the decentralization of forestry management will not be only demanded by regional governments at the levels of province and regency/mayoralty, but also from companies and communities.
To deal with the challenges, Siti stated that KLHK will be implementing a number of new innovations, such as policy breakthrough by considering public interest, national political interest, supervision and law enforcement.
According to her, realizing a balanced allocation of forestry resource is not only based on the government policy, but should be also on market consideration. “But the allocation of forestry resource should not be realized by only following the market. What we need is a balance that can maximize our efforts to improve the welfare of Indonesian people,” she said.
Siti predicted that efforts to manage the forestry resource will be facing greater challenges in the future, accompanied by new turbulences that will be continually emerging. “We need to continually implement innovations and collaborate with all stakeholders,” she said.
She pointed out that the government under President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) has taken steps to reorganize Indonesia’s natural resources and environment based on scientific rules and state political legitimacy.
“Since 2014 until now, Indonesia has seen a significant change in managing the environment and forestry sector, which is in line with the government’s policies to absorb and implement the public aspirations,” she said. (*)
Source: sawitku.id / antaranews.com
