By Yi Ying Teh, moderator of the governance discussion at the youth session. Share your thoughts by commenting at the end of this blogpost!
What is good governance? Because the words ‘government’ and ‘governance’ sound similar, I used to think that forest governance was the task of the government only, and that good governance was the government doing its job well.
[For Indonesians, I don’t suppose you come across the same problem. ‘Pemerintah’ (government) and ‘tata kelola’ (governance) are quite different!]
After all, many of the laws passed by Southeast Asian governments have impacted the protection of forests.
However, such reforms have not always translated into good governance, or sustainable management of forest landscapes.
For example, the decentralization reforms of the Habibie Administration in Indonesia transferred power away from the central government to more local governments. As fiscal laws allowed local governments to retain 80% of forestry revenues, there was less incentive to protect the forests.
Similarly, the Royal Government of Cambodia passed some authority of the forests over to communities in Community Forestry sub-decree of 2003. However many communities claim that they were only given rights to low-value forests, and for only 15 years. As the communities have to wait 5 years before they can harvest anything other than non-timber forest products (NTFP), there is a likelihood that they maychoose to exploit the forests in the short 10 years that they have rights to them.
Transboundary issues – where the effects are felt beyond the borders of a particular country – pose a particular challenge for both governance and governments.
In 1997-98, forest fires in Indonesia reached intense proportions, covering 9.7 million hectares and resulting in the spread of haze across Southeast Asia. Blame was laid at the feet of many different actors, all the way from companies responsible for clearing forest land for plantations, down to local ‘slash and burn’ farmers.
The crisis prompted Southeast Asian countries to negotiate a transboundary agreement- The ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution of 2002. As haze is a transboundary issue, it is important for governments to come together at meetings like the annual ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on the Environment and to take collective action.
Yet, as I’ve realized, governance does not just include governments. When I am at the supermarket, the paper and palm oil products that I choose to buy impact a different form of governance- market-based forest certification schemes.
Certification systems tap into the market (including us, as consumers) to provide incentives for companies to protect forests. However, certification schemes such as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) have faced difficulties in helping companies to fetch a higher price for sustainable palm oil that fulfills RSPO requirements.
Maybe like me, you used to think that governance only involves governments? Or maybe you firmly believe in certification schemes, and the power and role of us, as youth and consumers, in encouraging good governance of our forest resources? Whatever it is, let us hear your thoughts!
- What do you think are the major forest governance issues in your country or within ASEAN?
- What do you think are some of the challenges and opportunities of managing these issues?
- What can we, as young people, do to encourage good governance of our forests in Southeast Asia?
- Are there any models of governance (certification, transboundary government agreements) that you think we should focus on?
Links:
It seems that we youth feel somewhat powerless at times to affect top-down forces (e.g., government policy), and so we focus on bottom-up change (e.g., social media campaigns, music, etc.). What about the cross-scale (i.e., organizations that connect bottom-up and top-down actors)? What unique qualities do we have as youth that can facilitate/strengthen cross-scale linkages in the forestry sector?
i would like to share experience to respond point 2 of Yi Ying question. I involved in project conducted in Jepara, Central Java. We work with small-scale furniture producers to improve their livelihood through making them closer to market and establish producer association. One of our strategy was to use local radio to deliver our message. We did regular radio talk where we also invited local policy makers, business association and furniture actors to discuss about forest and furniture issues. It was a success since most furniture makers listened to radio while they working and during the talk the audience responded actively through phone or mobile text.
– Can the youth affect forestry policy directly ?
1) By youth communities concerning to “save our forestry”, they can compile many supports and evidence from various actors concerning to same goal to induce (or coax) government/stakeholders in order to it issues policy for pro sustainable forestry. The youth can be a catalisator/bridge from the busy people/actors who are interested on forestry issues and they donot have much time to join with forestry communities. The busy people are consist of scientists, entrepreneurs, or governmental officials.
2) The youth should join with research/policy institute (In Indonesia like CIFOR, SMERU, LIPI, etc) before they conduct a policy research. Organizations which youth join into are crucial for youth with an eye to youth’s research results for forestry can be considered by stakeholders/government to make a better forestry policy. Network between researcher organization and government is pivotal element to bring research results to on a government’s table.
— Do youth waste their enegy and time in business/non profit organization ?
Youth can conduct moderate business or non profit organization simply. Youth can utilize existing source (human and natural resource) in surrounding area to create new green business model or new persuasive-social organization to improve well-being and to preserve forest at a time. In Indonesia, exactly in Magelang City (Central Java), there is an innovator (one of Magelang townsfolk) invents “a newsqita”, a new product which functions to flourish a arid/barren forest. The product price is very affordable for all, in addition the product often utilized by Indonesian environment ministry to assist its programs to rejuvenate forest and land in Indonesia. This invention can be used by youth to kick off a new business model based on green concept. The youth can bring this product to wider area and to convert it to be a new way for saving forestry without mostly sacrifice their energy and time.
Great point, Anugerah, about the importance of youth becoming involved in a research or policy institute before conducting policy research. There’s a research program called the Response Forest Governance Initiative (RFGI) that’s creating a niche for young people in Africa to become involved in forest governance analysis in a way that is potentially quite powerful. RFGI is acting to empower people in Africa that rely on forest resources to have a voice in local governments’ decision-making. The group is also training young policy researchers with the intention of creating a continent-wide network of environmental governance analysts. What do you all think the potential is for an organization like this in SEA? How do we imagine that the degree of forestry decentralization (both at the national scale for the countries within SEA, and at the regional scale of SEA) would affect the success of a research program like this one in SEA?
Thank you everyone for your insightful comments! There are many issues being discussed here and I hope to summarize below so we can respond to each other.
Many of us have agreed that any governance system needs to involve local communities- regardless of whether they protect the forests (like the Suku Badui people that Sekar brought up) or exploit it. We also agreed that youth have many tools at its disposal to raise awareness about forest issues. My Hoang Hao Tra also raised a great point about how Southeast youth are best positioned to bring about change since these are our countries and our region that we are concerned with.
What are your thoughts on the following questions:
1. How can youth influence government policy?
Bisma raised a point that it is often difficult to directly influence government policy and suggests that perhaps it is easier for youth to work with other institutions such as non-profits and businesses to raise awareness. Anugerah’s 3 main recommendations for youth involvement also center around non-profits and businesses. Do you think youth can directly influence government policy? Or should youth spend their time and energy on businesses and non-profits instead? Why or why not?
2. How can youth promote forest protection? Ida mentioned that technology and music are tools that we can use to raise awareness. Dorin mentioned social empowerment programmes will help galvanize action. Binsar suggested that youth need to maintain an active presence in forest issues through the media. In your own experiences, how did you utilize these tools and what were the outcomes?
1. In my opinion, youth couldn’t do anything much to directly influence government policy, especially in SEA. There are two reasons: first, corruption. second, political culture (patronage). As youth, I have to say that I’m pessimist that they would see us as an ‘advantage’ for them regarding to this issue. They would be more interested to hear from someone who has more experience and has more money.
2. On this context, I agree with Ida and Binsar opinion. Media and music is the most powerful things that we could exploit. About the utilizing, I don’t have direct experiences. But if we see the outcomes from broad of campaign that conduct by, i.e. MTV, we could see that the outcome are very positive, especially to the increasing of public awareness regarding to specific issue.
Yeap, I used to confuse about the world “government” and governance’. As I have been studying in Chiang Mai Unviersity, I’ve learned that Governance need the cooperate betwwen stakeholders.
As I know, there are many innovations for sustainable forest management such as Reduced Emissions fromDeforestation and Degradation (REDD) and REDD+ Program, Payments forenvironmental services (PES), Forest certification and so on. These projectshave been conducted in many Southeast Asian countries but it could be said thatthese projects have not been effectively implemented although some good resultshave been booked. The question here is to come up with new innovations which
can be utilized on a nationwide scale or which can provide frameworks which
need to be adapted to the local and customary realities of a specific area. The
fact is that there are many ethnic minorities in each Southeast Asian country
and their livelihoods belongs to the forest for many centuries until now. They
have their traditional knowledge to control their forest but the Government
nowadays imposes their power to exclude local people from their land and their
forest by using formal laws and regulations. For example, the State claims that
shifting cultivation causes deforestation and REDD+ helps to regenerate forest.
It is believed that REDD+ is good but the government should apply it to their
own society and context because each country has its own unique ecology,
economic, and social aspects. In addition, gender issue is the hot topic for ethnic
minorities in which the role and position of women has not been addressed enough.
They are directly involved in production but in the training sessions they have
never been represented because of some cultural reasons. Perhaps the
sustainable forest development projects and new innovation have not been as
effective because of a gender bias.
I think the main challenge comes from the authority who follow these innovations and second one comes from local people also because of some cultural barrier. However, we still have opportunities to solve this problem by using young generation, not only the academics one, but also young local people. It is belived that young local people can be a good imediator who connect authority and local community.
As a young generation, I think we should accumulate our knowledge first and try to apply it to reality in our country because we are the one who understand our country norm quite better than the outdsider. Of course, DO IT by joining project, activites.
To me, transboundary is an important problem which we should focus to. For example, the MRC agreements amongs Mekong country should be act clearer. Nowadays more and more hydropower has beenconstructing which causes forest destruction more than ever. it is need to take into account as soon as possible.
The think that youth should do to encourage good governance is “being an active commentator” and criticize the policy or regulation which has been decided. We can write an article and publish it in all media such as blog, Facebook, Twitter, local or international newspaper etc. Objective in all aspect is important! We need to know deeper about the issues first and we can make massive comment after that. selective and filtering the information and issues are also crucial.
Benz (2007) says that
“governance usually refers to collective action without the authority
to make final decisions. Moreover governance is mostly
associated with policy-making beyond the state, with cooperation between
public and private actors, or cooperative private self regulation”.
Role of the youth within governance of forestry in developing countries is
depicted by three ways:
1) The youth can conduct many forestry researchs related to policy making. By a
research, the youth can be directly/indirectly expected influence stakeholders
within a policy making in forestry sector.
2) The youth can become an entrepreneur based on green business. This aims to
affect other businessmen to emulate green business model.
3) The youth can estabilsh a non profit organization. Functions of this
organization are to educate society who live in surrounding forest area and to
persuade society in order to quarry new economic income (not only from forest).
The important note that, forestry issues in Indonesia is not new, many actors
(academician, environmentalist, government) has struggled to cope with this
issues, but they meet various constraints. Implementation of forestry
governance, in developing countries (ASEAN Countries) highly need the youth as
a trigger to kick off a innovative way for saving forestry early. The youth can
generate intelligence thoughts to make governance style more appropriate in
ASEAN countries (considerating endogenuous and exogenous factors).
“Whatever are styles, whoever is strongest actor, whenever it conducts,
wherever it implements, and why it happes, governance is a way about how to
problems can be solved well, how to organization can grow well, how to quality
of life can increase well, and how to each of actors can
coordinate/collaborate/cooperate mutually” . Thus, governance in forestry
will be different in one countries to other countries relying on huma resource,
regulation/institution/policy, social norms, geographic area, and various factors.
Governance is not government itself, it involves society and business sector
to cooperate mutual and to achieve a particular goal. Governance is not only
balance among government, society, and private sectors, more than it,
governance can be understood as a virtuous effort to undertake/operate an
organization/a program well. Many actors (government, private, society) are
involved with this process, even they mutual collaborate to achieve a common
goal. Benz (2007) says that
“governance usually refers to collective action without the authority
to make final decisions. Moreover governance is mostly
associated with policy-making beyond the state, with cooperation between
public and private actors, or cooperative private self regulation”.
Practically, governance is not only government task, eventhough in several
countries (Singapore, South Korea), the role of government is very strong to
develop economic development. In forestry issues, governance can be assumed as
a way to preserve and keep an eye sustainable forest in particular area which
it conducted by various actors (government, academician, and private sector).
Each of actors contributes in rejuvenating havoc forest and in preserving
natural forest from vicious people who want to damage forest. In this case,
governance style is different from one country to other countries. Canada
government is very strong to preserve forest in its area, while in Skandinavian
countries, society is more appreciate to sustainable forest, so government role
is only supporting.
Role of the youth within governance of forestry in developing countries is
depicted by three ways:
1) The youth can conduct many forestry researchs related to policy making. By a
research, the youth can be directly/indirectly expected influence stakeholders
within a policy making in forestry sector.
2) The youth can become an entrepreneur based on green business. This aims to
affect other businessmen to emulate green business model.
3) The youth can estabilsh a non profit organization. Functions of this
organization are to educate society who live in surrounding forest area and to
persuade society in order to quarry new economic income (not only from forest).
The important note that, forestry issues in Indonesia is not new, many actors
(academician, environmentalist, government) has struggled to cope with this
issues, but they meet various constraints. Implementation of forestry
governance, in developing countries (ASEAN Countries) highly need the youth as
a trigger to kick off a innovative way for saving forestry early. The youth can
generate intelligence thoughts to make governance style more appropriate in
ASEAN countries (considerating endogenuous and exogenous factors).
“Whatever are styles, whoever is strongest actor, whenever it conducts,
wherever it implements, and why it happes, governance is a way about how to
problems can be solved well, how to organization can grow well, how to quality
of life can increase well, and how to each of actors can
coordinate/collaborate/cooperate mutually” . Thus, governance in forestry
will be different in one countries to other countries relying on huma resource,
regulation/institution/policy, social norms, geographic area, and various factors.
Hai I am Yuka
I think governance have a flexible definition, relying on the context. Forestry governance is important to preserve sustainable forest in Indonesia
I just want to giving an additional comment related the forest problem in ASEAN especially my country Indonesia. The major problem regarding the forest condition in Indonesia might cause by the landscape management system. Indonesia government have arrange the forest governance about the role to manage forest area in government law number 41 /1999. This is show about the definition of forest , zoning area for utilize and , the maintenance area for sustainability, and the rule of harvesting forest. On this forest governance have arrange forest landscape management, but the degradation and deforestation in Indonesia still happen . It cause by the illegal logging, land conversion, and one of the highlight issue about forest fire.
There’s no reason to fully blame the government law. In the first point, people awareness is one of the important thing to do the regulation of forest landscape management. The people can classified into community (local people), and industries as the actor in forest condition. They used to think that forest is public goods what can exploited to livelihood or industrial benefit. That’s might cause of the forest degradation and deforestation still happen. But If they have another mindset that we have to wisely utilize forest for sustainable production and ecosystem condition. It will change their knowledge of understanding to maintenance the forest.
The other hand any destruction happened in utilization of forest e.g. the forest fire because of land burning for forest conversion. It can be emerge because there isn’t any concept to arrange the sustainability for managing the landscape.
The youth can be involve in mainstreaming across community related to gain people awareness for sustainable forest and landscape management. The youth in framework of organization can promote in community about the concept of forest utilization to reduce any destruction and address the sustainability of forest Eg. held a social empowerment program to socialize the damage in forest destruction. That’s why the collaboration between government, across community and especially youth really needed to make a good governance.
Because the good governance need the participation and coordination from many sectoral.
i think that the good governance to create sustainable landscpe not only task for goverment. but it is assignment for many stakeholder for example young people, companies, government, and community around the forest. many young people not interested to discussion about forest and environment, they more choose to discusion about technologi, music, and mode. i think that technologi, music, and mode can be tool to enter about the importance of forest and environment to them. so they will more understand about the importance of forest and environment and they will keep sustainablity our forest and environment. companies must manage their company landscape to keep sustainablelity forest, so government must be clarify about law of company landscape. for example 30 % of their company must become forest. community around the forest must keep the sustainability forest. many of them use forest produst as their food. so need illumination to them to use forest as policy as they can.
That’s a great idea! How do you think we can use technology and music to raise awareness about the forests? Have you seen any campaigns that successfully grab the attention of youth?
Hi all! I’m Bisma.
Regarding to those question
I believe that lack of concern by communities, especially
youth, is the major issue. Unlike other issue, communities tend not to give
special concern to this issue.
Communities are more interested in economic and political issue, not
because they understand it well but because the media and people all around us always talk and exploit it. However, this is the main challenge that we faced
in SEA region. In spite of it, there is an opportunity to managing this issue. Let
be realistic, we (as youth) couldn’t change the policy or just tell the
government directly what is wrong and what is right, that would be utopic. As ‘Youth’ we could exploit this issue and transform it to be a ‘hype’ movement through communities via festival or music concert with a ‘catchy’ branding. On this context, I believe that SEA’s youth, especially on the big cities will interested.
On the other hand they’ll gain more knowledge, try to get to know more, or at
least they would be more familiar to this kind of issue. This type of approach
going to have a massive effect, as an example you could see how MTV try to
campaign HIV issue through their music festival. I’m aware that this approach
is hard to measure, but let’s being realistic, this is the best thing that we
could do instead of telling the government to make a good-governance.
However, this is just the first step, as soon as people getting more concern, we could get easier to encourage them to guard how government, MNCs, and NGO dealing with this issue.
furthermore, I’d like to hear more from other discussion participant. Thanks!
Hi all! I’m Bisma.
Regarding to those question
I believe that lack of concern by communities, especially
youth, is the major cause. Unlike other issue, communities tend not to give
special concern to this issue.
Communities are more interested in economic and political issue, not
because they understand it well but because the media and people all around us always talk and exploit it. However, this is the main challenge that we faced
in SEA region. In spite of it, there is an opportunity to managing this issue. Let
be realistic, we (as youth) couldn’t change the policy or just tell the
government directly what is wrong and what is right, that would be utopic. As ‘Youth’ we could exploit this issue and transform it to be a ‘hype’ movement through communities via festival or music concert with a ‘catchy’ branding. On this context, I believe that SEA’s youth, especially on the big cities will interested.
On the other hand they’ll gain more knowledge, try to get to know more, or at
least they would be more familiar to this kind of issue. This type of approach
going to have a massive effect, as an example you could see how MTV try to
campaign HIV issue through their music festival. I’m aware that this approach
is hard to measure, but let’s being realistic, this is the best thing that we
could do instead of telling the government to make a good-governance.
However, I’d like to hear more from other discussion participant. Thanks!
I really hope the government really serious in implementing laws that have been created on the ground firmly without compromise in order to maintain the proper function of the forest.
I agree, that in order to achieve the goal of forest sustainability, the government should be collaborating with various parties. Cooperation can be do at the policy-making with the end result in the form of legislation. Cooperation can also be do at this stage of the implementation and evaluation of policies
I think we need to learn more about good forest governance from local wisdom in Indonesia. For example is suku
Badui. People of suku Badui are unintentionally very protective toward forests and they
have strong belief to conserve nature, especially forest. Why I said unintentionally? People of suku Badui are presuming forests as ancestor’s heritage, a sacred place, and that they have to always keep the forests because they’re afraid to be cursed. They have strict rule regarding to forest areas allotment, and utilization. Conserving
forests is the pillar of their religion, lives and custom. For those who dare to cut trees carelessly and illegally will get heavy punishment from the head of tribe. They strongly
hold on their hereditary statement “Gunung ulah dilebur, lebak ulah
dirusak” which means “Do neither destroy forest nor rice field”. Even though they’re still seen as primitive people, many forests scientists and forestry experts are acknowledging them to have good forest governance.
Hi Sekar! Communities and cultural norms play such a crucial role in protecting the forests. How do you think we can apply the lessons we learn from these communities to other types of governance?
In developing countries, all sectors of the field shall cooperate, to improve forest governance system, they should work together with other areas of the sector, they should not act on their own. As in the issue map, the forest department with one of the other departments have different actual distance on the ground.
Youth does not have any strength, but if youth together and united it has a power that can even destabilize the great powers of government..
Collaboration among governments, companies and NGOs is so important, I agree! The issue of different actors having different maps is a problem because concessions on the same piece of land can be given out on both national level and district levels, creating competing land claims for the same piece of land… Do you see this happening in your home country?
One of the solutions I’ve seen so far is the Global Forest Watch 2.0 (http://www.globalforestwatch.org/), which is a recent initiative by World Resources Institute to create an online mapping applications that provides real-time data on what is happening in forests worldwide! Do you think something like that could work for the forests in Southeast Asia?
Adding to previous comments, youth are characterized by passion and creativity. Having identifying stakeholders on each layer of governance, the solution offered by youth should be creative.
Hi Sekar, I like that you pointed out the strengths of youth! What kind of creative solutions do you see arising from youth?
Hi Yi Ying Teh, youth can influence other youth to care about the environment. It is then youth can influence consumer especially youth customers to reduce consumption of products that coming from the irresponsible companies. Using social media is a powerful tool to spread the news.
Hi Sekar, youth form a large consumer base so what we decide to consume can definitely influence the decisions of companies! If we demand sustainable forest products, perhaps companies will try to obtain certification labels and be more sustainable. Have you seen any social media campaigns that youth have successfully organized?
I guess we can start discussing with local communities in the forest. By asking locals one simple question Eg: What you think of conservation?, we can get multiple perspectives from different people. Probably they can give us alternative idea to overcome forest governance. They may offer thoughts that may look ‘simple on surface’ but could be pivotal for young people to mainstream forestry project.
For example: Building research station in local communities village. People in the village can be empowered in the cultivation of traditional herbs. When the program is ready, students or interested participant can go to the forest, learn traditional wisdom, and cultural immersion follows. A home stay program in later part of the program may be taking shape by the time local sees the benefit of empowerment. Of course, this is not free. A fees basis project, definitely.
The entire point is to transfer knowledge about forestry from one generation to another. As a start up, we can seek for assistance from NGOs and other actors to decide how much land can be parcel out to communities, for the cultivation project.
My two cents.
Muhammad
Hi Muhammad, you hit on a important issue here- the involvement of local communities. Many governance issues tend to be directed top-down from governments or and through the market. I like your idea of trying to understand how local communities view forest governance. Do you know of any successful case studies built on this model? Also, you mentioned that NGOs and other actors need to be involved, do you think that they always need to be involved or is it possible for the projects to be sustained after they leave?
As a *very* general response to get things started – I think that one of the major challenges for forest governance is that, despite the various market (or even community) based governance structures that exist, in the end these are still often largely driven by governments or high level institutions.
Eg. a community/customary forest governance system may be strongly impacted by government determined or allocated land tenure (and associated rights/responsibilities), and companies involved in certification still tend to obtain original concessions from national governments and operate within particular regulatory frameworks.
So, perhaps the critical first step in addressing particular issues is identifying the different layers of governance, and the different stakeholders who influence or play a key role in this (and what their role is!) – then trying to identify where and how we, as youth/communities, can best gain access and advocate for change.
Hi Sarah, you hit the nail on the head when you mention these issues. It does seem that other layers of governance are embedded in structures created by governments. Do you think then that we should mainly focus on improving the regulatory frameworks of governments since they yield additional benefits for the other types of governance systems? Also, do you see the exercise of mapping out stakeholders occurring among youth of Southeast Asia or in youth networks within individual countries?
On your first question – while it’s important to advocate where and how we can for high level policy/government change, as we all know this process is both slower and (often) harder to influence.
However stakeholder mapping – in particular identifying which stakeholders play a driving role for particular management issues/development processes – could lead to identifying other key stakeholders/institutions etc (particularly non national government level) which we (youth, the public etc) can access, influence, work within etc.
On your second question, I’m not aware of this occurring in youth networks in SE Asia, but that’s not to say it isn’t! As I’ve commented on other discussions, I see power in networks and numbers! So if a major youth network undertook this in the context of a particular issue this could also result in networks with similar aims or skills coming together and targeting areas where we see we can best work for change