Indonesia links REDD+ benefit sharing with local forest governance Leveraging existing forest management units in Indonesia’s Papua and West Papua Provinces is playing an important role in advancing rights-based approaches to REDD+, sustainable forest management, national climate plans, forest tenure reforms and the country’s green growth strategy.

Ensuring customary communities are key players in REDD+ As is the case in many countries, top down planning in Indonesia and the undue influence of economic and social elites at the district level have historically contributed to the marginalisation of customary communities from forest-related planning and negotiations. To help address this, Indonesia has set up forest management units (FMUs) that function as decentralised entities run by local governments, and charged with the planning, management,

Indonesia (Papua and West Papua Provinces)

No. 8, August 2016

Photo: Intu Boedhihartono

investment, monitoring and evaluation of forests under their authority. FMUs are an effective framework for the promotion of the role of communities as the main actors in managing forest resources.

FMUs are now a priority for Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry. The country’s newly developed national strategic plan has set a target of creating 600 new FMUs by the end of 2019. Following the closure of the country’s REDD+ Agency, FMUs are providing the platform for all local low-carbon forest initiatives, including REDD+ implementation. Also, Indonesia’s Law 23 on local governance recognises FMUs as the central forest development mechanism at the district level. Backed by all of this political and legal commitment, FMUs are providing a well-established entry point for discussions on integrating local rights, equitable benefit sharing and other aspects of REDD+ implementation.

Strengthening FMUs and district conservation policy as collaborative, rights-based forest management frameworks in Papua Provinces IUCN is working with The Samdana Institute in Indonesia’s Papua and West Papua Provinces to enhance community land rights within key FMUs, and in low emissions development plans. These REDD+ focused initiatives include customary boundary mapping, promotion of livelihood-enhancing options, advocacy for regulatory changes, locally-controlled forest management, and capacity building in partner organisations. Implementation sites were chosen to represent different ecological areas found across Papua-Indonesia: Baliem Valley is a high-land ecosystem, 1,500 metres above sea level; Balik is a typical small island of Papua; and Tambrauw is a low land, coastal mountains landscape. Work has expanded to new forest and land development issues including the protection of local rights, and benefits for local peoples.

Rights and livelihoods are enhanced; national and local institutions are empowered to lead rights-based approaches to REDD+ IUCN and Samdhana have supported a wide range of initiatives in Papua and West Papua Provinces to further integrate rights-based approaches in local forest governance activities inside FMUs and conservation districts.

02 | IUCN Forest Brief, No.8

Customary boundary mapping plays a role in enhancing community land rights. Photo: IUCN

● Customary boundary mapping: Maps that identify customary boundaries and ownership of land are proving essential tools for land and resource planning, resolving disputes, and educating community rights to younger generations. In Papua Province, 24 communities now have customary boundary maps that cover almost two million hectares. Nineteen customary community groups have produced boundary maps covering 192,000 hectares in the Baliem Valley, and on Biak Island, mapping has started among five villages in the Awur forest. In West Papua Province, the work by IUCN and Samdhana enabled the mapping of 1.1 million hectares of customary rights boundaries among five tribes. Three clans in Tambrauw have finalised their boundary rights maps, covering a total of 5,000 hectares. This has allowed them to negotiate integrative conservation development with local rights in mind. Also in Tambrauw, a methodology for indicative customary boundary mapping has been tested and endorsed. This methodology is providing a new and rapid approach to mapping tribe and sub-tribe boundaries in order to accelerate legal recognition, and secure the rights of indigenous people. These customary boundary maps are catalysing discussions on how the community’s current activities affect the forest and what changes could be made to reduce emissions, and protect and enhance carbon stocks.

● Proposing livelihood-enhancing options: The Biak Island FMU is applying to the customary community partnership scheme for support to implement community-based eco-tourism and operate a timber concession. Given Indonesia’s problem with illegal logging, IUCN’s REDD+ activities are exploring how sustainable commercial management of timber can lead to community-based forest enterprises that would enable better forest management and control, while enhancing livelihoods and incomes to communities. Two pilot efforts on customary boundary mapping and eco-tourism are now seeking to test livelihood-enhancing options through FMUs. In Baliem Valley, three customary communities are developing detailed land and forests management plans that will guide agroforestry practices to restore degraded landscapes while supplying sustainable firewood.

● Improving indigenous peoples’ rights: National and sub-national progress has improved the ability to register indigenous peoples’ rights at the province and district levels with the national registration body. IUCN’s REDD+ work plans to deepen partnerships with organisations working on mapping, community-based forest management and FMUs to strengthen indigenous rights recognition. Tambrauw district has advanced two local regulations on conservation development and the protection of customary rights. Linking these two regulations is important to ensure local forest governance is working within a set of clear, local rights.

IUCN Forest Brief, No.8 | 03

Efforts to encourage sustainable commercial management of timber can lead to community-based forest enterprises. Photo: Intu Boedhihartono

● Empowering government to take the lead: In Tambrauw, the process of mapping and legal recognition occurred through the joint support of the Samdhana Institute and the local government. At the national level, IUCN and partners continueto build synergies with the Ministry of Villages and increase communication with the Social Forestry Directorate at the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. This work is aimed at increasing access to the village fund and social forestry fund available for local government and communities. Another notable example is in the highlands of Wamena, where the local government took a lead role in the customary boundary mapping process, and has planned to integrate these maps into the long-term forest management plan of its newly-formed FMU.

● Developing land-use and forest management plans: Local NGO partner, LSPK, has conducted a series of community assessments in the Baliem Valley to produce three customary community land use and forest management plans, along with establishing an authority body to implement these plans. One community group has started by building nursery plots for forest and land restoration in parts of their territory that have been deforested. On Biak Island, the FMU has a long-term forest management plan that gives the community a central role in forest governance. Part of this work has involved teaming up with two local NGOs (RUMSRAM and MNUKWAR) to establish an eco-tourism management body, and revitalise a customary-based timber concession. Both initiatives are in the process of developing a business plan to implement sustainable eco-tourism and timber concessions on the island.

● Bridging national and local-level efforts: Regional discussions of indigenous community conservation areas conducted in Papua provinces has brought together conservation authorities from government, customary communities, conservationists, civil society, NGOs and the private sector to discuss and promote customary communities living inside conservation areas. Key findings, meeting minutes and recommendations have been compiled and discussed at the national level with the Ministry of Environment and Forestry. This working group is now a strategic platform for IUCN’s REDD+ initiatives to mainstream the rights-based agenda into national conservation development policy and programmes.

04 | IUCN Forest Brief, No.8

Combining customary and modern mapping techniques helps bring generations together. Photo: IUCN

New knowledgeFMUs have been praised as an innovative and comprehensive framework for clarifying and securing community rights, as well as supporting sustainable economic development, biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation. However, they do face several key challenges moving forward, especially in the areas of protecting local economic growth and forest function, as well as reducing poverty.

Historically, the government has given concessions to private sector projects because they have been able to create fairly rapid income in the provinces. FMUs will need to find a way of successfully competing with these private initiatives for future concessions, while continuing to be inclusive of local forest management institutions. FMUs will need to prove their economic viability and comparative advantage, especially to central and provincial-level governments that remain focused on extractive models of development.

REDD+ and other livelihood-enhancing forest management approaches, such as payments for ecosystem services (PES), hold the potential to increase the economic and livelihood value of forests beyond logging. Enhancing PES and REDD+ initiatives can help FMUs and any other related intermediary institution to play a role in shifting Indonesia’s economy away from extractive forestry approaches. It will also be important to find innovative ways of engaging and building capacity among young Papuans, to involve them early in rights-based approaches to REDD+.

IUCN Forest Brief, No.8 | 05

Engaging young Papuans in rights-based approaches to REDD+ can play a role in a more sustainable future. Photo: Intu Boedhihartono

WORLD HEADQUARTERSRue Mauverney 281196 Gland, SwitzerlandTel: +41 22 999 0000Fax: +41 22 999 0002www.iucn.org

Further reading ● IUCN (2015). ‘Indonesia’s Papua Provinces link REDD+ benefit sharing with local forest

governance efforts’. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. https://www.iucn.org/content/indonesia’s-papua-provinces-link-redd-benefit-sharing-local-forest-governance-efforts

06 | IUCN Forest Brief, No.8

Global Forest and Climate Change Programme

IUCN Forest

@IUCN_forests

iucn.org/forest

forests@iucn.org

IUCN and REDD+Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) can improve lives, protect forests and biodiversity, and mitigate climate change. Forests serve as natural storage for carbon, and deforestation is the second leading cause of carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. Furthermore, more than one billion people depend on forests for their livelihoods, and tropical primary forests are particularly high in terrestrial biodiversity.

IUCN’s REDD+ work focuses on the integration of rights-based approaches as the foundation for the design and deployment of landscape, sub-national and national climate change mitigation and forest management strategies. A pro-poor orientation delivers tangible environmental, economic, social and cultural benefits to the poor. In this regard, IUCN works with partners and REDD+ stakeholders in tropical countries to ensure that by 2020, national climate change mitigation policies and initiatives have incorporated and are implementing the tenets of right-based approaches and pro-poor principles.

With support from the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) and Germany’s Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB), IUCN is engaged with partners in Cameroon, Ghana, Guatemala, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru and Uganda to pilot and upscale frameworks and mechanisms that support and deliver rights-based and pro-poor outcomes.