Sixty-six percent of Indonesia’s poor live in or around the forest. This means that deforestation and poor forest management has a large impact on local livelihoods as well as globally important forests and biodiversity. Policy changes that better capture the costs and benefits of land-use decisions are needed, but have been slow to develop. Community forest management is championed as a way to benefit local livelihoods and forest conservation, and Indonesia recognises this as part of its efforts to reduce poverty, particularly as the country decentralises and undergoes policy reform. Since a 2012 Constitutional Court decision and subsequent ministerial regulations in late 2014 local governments are tasked with reallocating 12.7 Mha of state forest to poor rural communities.

These reforms support human rights and are a very positive step in alleviating poverty. Yet, counter-intuitively they could also exacerbate environmental problems in some areas. If forests continue to be lost or degraded under community forest management, the governments’ bid to improve rural livelihoods risks compromising the very ecosystems and biodiversity on which its people depend. This also jeopardizes Indonesia’s international biodiversity commitments and sustainable development goals under the CBD (Convention Biological Diversity) and UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). There is an urgent need to strengthen the land-use planning system with scientific data important for sustainable management.

By producing spatial datasets, developing case-studies with local people, and working with Indonesian scientific and advocacy organisations, we the MEPS programme aims to improve the capacity of local governments of Kalimantan to better incorporate environmental and developmental needs into their spatial land-use planning and commitments for forest protection.