Trust alone is not enough. Trust must be followed by meeting the needs of the community so that one day they can be independent in managing forests. What is needed is the capacity to manage forests, which can be in the form of knowledge, skills and funds that can guarantee the sustainability of forest management. This is important because unlike private concessions (HPH), which are given the right to manage forests for tens of years, they also have the capital and have the ability to buy forest management knowledge and skills by paying forestry engineers.
it is the government that gives this recognition as the authority holder who can delegate its authority to other parties, including the authority to manage forests by giving recognition to other parties, including the community.
The government's way of giving recognition is by giving permits as in social forestry which applies to production forests and protection forests. Whereas in conservation forests (conservation areas), it is carried out through a Cooperation Agreement (PKS) between community groups and the Head of the National Park or the Head of the Center, with the knowledge of the Director General of KSDAE.
PS forest management communities are able to protect the forest, utilize forest products according to their carrying capacity, and carry out rehabilitation or restoration of ecosystems for degraded locations.
To protect the forest, the community needs to carry out routine patrols in the PS forest area. We from CFES have introduced SMART Patrol for the community so that they can carry out patrols with the help of an Android cellphone, to enter data on findings in the field and at the same time be able to process it into a patrol report.
Ecosystem restoration activities can also be carried out by the community. Latin When MCAI once facilitated 14 villages in Kerici and Solok Selatan, each produced 100,000 tree seedlings which were then planted on degraded land. This experience is now being continued for CFES-supported villages.
The capacity to utilize forest products according to the carrying capacity is a capacity that is not fully owned by the community. Communities usually only use forest products, without taking into account carrying capacity. This may require a deeper study of whether the community actually has local knowledge in assessing the extent to which the carrying capacity of the forest is utilized by them. Or if there is none, then assistance from the university is needed to conduct a study on this matter.
Another important thing is the support from the parties (stakeholders) for the community, which can be in the form of support to facilitate social forestry management by providing capacity building programs, for example training, mentoring, or just being a discussion partner with the aim of motivating the group.
There are people who are already able to access it, in the sense of meeting, discussing and getting support, but there are still many who don't have the ability to do that. Therefore, another party is needed to bridge them.
In addition to the ability of the community, the capacity of officials or parties who should be able to help, there are still many weaknesses, because they consider it not important. The task of the facilitator may also be to increase the capacity of officials or parties like this.
The market is also important and needs help. So far, people have only been spectators. When they were given permission to manage the forest, it turned out that the forest products that were allowed to be used were non-timber forest products. This is a problem because so far they have not utilized NTFPs let alone market them.
