What is “sustainability” in the context of forest management?
“Sustainability” has become the new buzzword in our society in recent years, with more and more companies jumping on the sustainability bandwagon to market themselves as environmentally-conscious businesses who take their social responsibilities to indigenous communities seriously.
The same is true within Indonesia’s forest management, where the concept of sustainable forest management has been increasingly recognised as an important step towards bridging conservation goals with the needs of local communities. But what does sustainability mean?
Sustainability is a complex term to define by itself. Morelli (2011) proposes a definition of environmental sustainability as:
“meeting the resource and services needs of current and future generations without compromising the health of the ecosystems that provide them, and more specifically, as a condition of balance, resilience, and interconnectedness that allows human society to satisfy its needs while neither exceeding the capacity of its supporting ecosystems to continue to regenerate the services necessary to meet those needs nor by our actions diminishing biological diversity.”
In practice, different stakeholders within the forest industry focus on various aspects of sustainability, including economic development, managing resources within carrying capacities and social justice. This means that the perception of sustainable forest management of local forest communities may not necessarily align with those of other stakeholders.
How do locals and other stakeholders define “sustainable forest management”?
A study by Purnomo et al. (2005) examined the different perspectives of sustainability among locals, NGOs, governments and businesses in a forest management unit in East Kalimantan. The authors reported that locals favoured immediate benefits to their livelihoods as a critical aspect of sustainable forest management. Specifically, locals perceive a forest management scheme as “sustainable” only when they are able to perceive the economic and financial benefits that arise from it.
From a psychological standpoint, it appears that locals favour a more short-term perspective of sustainability, guided by immediate handouts of income and provisional resources, even though an immediate financial benefit arising from a new oil palm/logging operation may lead to costly results in terms of environmental degradation later.
While this could be due to the relative poverty of the region, it does suggest a temporal disconnect in forest communities to associate current actions with potential environmental risks in the future, especially when poverty is an immediate cause of concern for them to address. In other words, it is hard for these communities to plan how to manage their forests in the long run when they need to worry when their next meal might come.
How do local perspectives compare with the perspectives of other stakeholders? Interestingly, despite working closest with the locals, NGOs viewed sustainability as a means for equal allocation of forest resources and managing boundaries and concessions among companies and multiple local communities – a stark contrast to the short-term perspectives among locals. Other stakeholders from governments, companies and regional forest offices possess equally divergent perspectives, ranging from stimulating economic development, minimising conflict and maintaining healthy ecosystems.
What are the implications of these findings when it comes to engaging local communities to develop sustainable forest management policies?
Firstly, by recognising how local perspectives on sustainability may differ from other stakeholders, stakeholders and governmental bodies should remain sensitive to the concerns and needs of the locals residing in their respective areas and respond appropriately to address their needs.
Secondly, to convince locals of the need for long-term sustainable forest management and a consensus on forest management policies, NGOs and governments should engage with local agricultural workers to share information on proper land management and educate them on sustainable agricultural practices.