Abstract
Tropical forest policy based on the view of foresters, who intended to control and steer the forest with strong sense of responsibility as experts, has failed to manage forests in sustainable way. Even though participation of the local people has been tried since the late 1970s, foresters have confronted difficulties to cooperate with the local people in sustainable forest use and management, because conventional concept of forest policy, or autocratic forest governance by experts, had been retained.
Recently West Kutai district of East Kalimantan, Indonesia, tried to establish collaborative local forest governance where various stakeholders such as the local people, private company, governmental officials, NGOs, and academics have discussed the problem, proposed 52 actions to be taken, and drafted district regulations. This effort could give us important implications and hints to consider how forest policy should be in the future.
Collaborative governance of the forests can be regarded as a new concept of forest policy. The new concept could be enriched by both of “open-minded localism” under which the local people intend to collaborate with outsiders, and “principle of involvement/commitment” under which the more a person (even outsider or the local people) is involved in foresee use and management, the stronger rights the person have to speak and decide.
