Adisti Sukma Sawitri, Jakarta – Muhidin, 34, a farmer from Dompu, West Nusa Tenggara, is in despair. The Dompu District Court recently sentenced him to seven months in prison for cultivating a piece of land in the So Ncadu Conservation Forest.
He was found to have violated the 1999 Law on Forestry by crossing into the conservation area to grow cashew trees.
"Muhidin is innocent. He and his friends are victims of policy inconsistencies between the central government and the local administration," Alamudin, a member of the Dompu farmers' advocacy team, said at a seminar on the abuse of local communities in forestry management.
Muhidin's initiative to farm the land was motivated by a Dompu administration bylaw that allows locals to cultivate about 750 hectares of the forest in a joint forestry management program.
Without giving a clear reason, the administration changed its policy at the end of last year and arrested Muhidin, along with 80 other farmers in the area, for cultivating land in the forest.
Muhidin and his friends are not the only victims of policy inconsistencies in forest management. Such problems have happened throughout Indonesia for decades, and have been exacerbated by policy changes due to regional autonomy.
Up to 65 million people live in and around a total of 50 million hectares of conservation forests in Indonesia.
"I think the government deliberately leaves the problem unresolved, so it can blame locals for chopping down the woods and living in conservation forests," activist Abusaid Pelu of the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras) told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.
He accused the central government, regional administrations and businesses of trying to scapegoat forest settlers in order to cover up their own roles in rampant deforestation.
A similar case occurred in Muna regency, Southeast Sulawesi, when residents were battling the local administration over its effort to remove them from a conservation forest in Kontu subdistrict.
The Muna administration had previously supported the cutting of teakwood by logging companies, but two years ago it suddenly stopped the logging activities. Later it expelled hundreds of locals who had moved in to cultivate the cleared land.
At least 12 residents and four members of a local advocacy team were arrested when the administration closed the area to further farming.
"They have used the forestry law to arrest these people, even though they benefited from the teakwood clearance revenue as a source of regional income for years. So which conservation area are they talking about?" Abusaid said.
Hariadi Kuntodihardjo, a forestry expert from the Bogor Agriculture Institute, said the problems with managing forest communities in Indonesia stemmed from the government's poor assessment of the local situation before establishing and implementing laws. "The government and local administrations have never involved residents in enacting regulations, although they know that the locals are affected by them," he said.
Hariadi added that the government actually had a good forest community model that involved locals in managing some parts of the forests, but had never applied it in a substantive way.
Meanwhile, Forestry Minister Malam Sambat Kaban said local administrations and local communities were both to blame. He said his ministry was limited in its ability to advocate for residents.
"Basically, we don't want to hurt locals but we cannot take firm actions against the administration because they are overseen by the Home Ministry," he said.
He urged law enforcement authorities to act objectively in dealing with these complicated situations.