Com­mu­nity forests cer­ti­fi­ca­tion through an eco­la­bel scheme in Pac­i­tan Dis­trict, East Java is marked as the start­ing point to trans­form a bar­ren land into “Green Pac­i­tan”, sum­ma­rized by local forestry stake­hold­ers, Friday.

Sumiy­ati (51), a com­mu­nity for­est farmer, stated that an acknowl­edge­ment as ecolabel-certified com­mu­nity for­est brought about two benefits.

A state­ment made dur­ing the dis­cus­sion with the par­tic­i­pants of jour­nal­ist work­shop and field visit themed “My For­est is Sus­tain­able, the River is Friendly, the Com­mu­nity is Pros­per­ous” orga­nized by the Indone­sian Eco­la­bel­ing Insti­tute (LEI) in a com­mu­nity for­est in Ngasem Sub Vil­lage, Tinatar Vil­lage, Punung Sub Dis­trict, Pac­i­tan District.

“First, we gain an acknowl­edge­ment on our abil­ity to imple­ment sus­tain­able for­est man­age­ment. Sec­ond, we can also help save the envi­ron­ment,” she said while adding that the lat­ter was con­sid­ered very ben­e­fi­cial because land­slides and floods still occured up to the year 2000.

She also said that based on her par­ents’ expe­ri­ences back in 1960s, Pac­i­tan was a bar­ren area con­sist­ing mainly of karst, on which only hard­wood trees, such as aca­cias, could grow.

“Water sources were also dif­fi­cult to access, around 2 kilo­me­ters away. But now, many new water sources are found as the con­di­tion of the for­est are becom­ing bet­ter,” said this lady – who also works as Tinatar Vil­lage Secretary.

A more detailed state­ment expressed by Sapuri, an admin­is­tra­tor at the “Rimba Sari” Coop­er­a­tive For­est Man­age­ment Unit (FMU) from Pac­i­tan, which had been declared to pass the Indone­sian Eco­la­bel­ing Insti­tute Sus­tain­able Com­mu­nity Based For­est Man­age­ment (PHBML-LEI) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion with remark on March 3, 2010

“The com­mit­ment to achieve ‘Green Pac­i­tan’ will surely be strength­ened with the acknowl­edge­ment on eco­la­bel cer­ti­fied com­mu­nity for­est,” he said.

An out­reach offi­cer from the Pac­i­tan Dis­trict Office of Forestry and Plan­ta­tion, Luwarno, added that the process to reach the cur­rent state of Pac­i­tan forests and achieve LEI eco­la­bel cer­tifi­cate was not an easy and short one.

“It was surely not easy to build people’s aware­ness to a point where they vol­un­tar­ily per­form tree plant­i­ngs. How­ever, we have reached that point,” said the offi­cer who has been work­ing in Punung Sub Dis­trict since 1984.

Another out­reach offi­cer, War­doyo, added that in 1971, due to the dif­fi­cul­ties in mobi­liz­ing the com­mu­nity to plant trees, aero­plane seed­ing was per­formed to sow hard­wood tree seeds on steep karst.

Mean­while, the Head of Pac­i­tan Dis­trict Office of Forestry and Plan­ta­tion, Ir. Suy­atno, M.M. explained that his office has the vision to be the pio­neer in uti­liz­ing com­mu­nity forests and plan­ta­tions as the source of liveli­hood and econ­omy activ­ity of the peo­ple in the area.

In addi­tion to the above objec­tive, it is also to increase the con­tri­bu­tions of com­mu­nity forests and plan­ta­tions to the community’s and the local government’s econ­omy as well as to boost com­mu­nity empow­er­ment and par­tic­i­pa­tion in for­est devel­op­ment meovement.

It is also to enhance the func­tions of com­mu­nity forests and plan­ta­tions in sus­tain­ing the community’s liveli­hood through nat­ural resources reha­bil­i­ta­tion, con­ser­va­tion and preser­va­tion efforts, as well as pro­tect­ing and secur­ing com­mu­nity forests and plantations.

Main com­modi­ties
Accord­ing to Suy­atno, Pac­i­tan has a huge size of pos­si­ble com­mu­nity for­est area. Around 67,324 hectares (ha) or 97.1% of for­est in Pac­i­tan is com­mu­nity forests. “While only 2.9% or 2010 ha is state-owned forests” he said.

Com­mu­nity forests in Pac­i­tan yield around 250 m3 of wood per day; with teak, pine, albizia, aca­cia, and mahogany as the main products.

Suy­atno also explained that farmer’s aware­ness on tree plant­ing and main­te­nance had accel­er­ated the devel­op­ment of for­est area in the region. Fur­ther­more, the mar­kets for for­est and plan­ta­tion com­modi­ties are still as promis­ing as before due to the diver­sity of for­est plant species.

”The qual­ity of our wood prod­ucts is well-received by mar­ket. And local gov­ern­ment sup­ports are also avail­able, as shown by the achieve­ment of the Head of Pac­i­tan Dis­trict as the 1st National Win­ner in for­est admin­is­tra­tor com­pe­ti­tion,” he said.

LEI spokesper­son, Indra Setia Dewi explained that Rimba Sari FMU in Pac­i­tan Dis­trict – declared by the Deci­sion Mak­ing Expert Team to pass the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion with remark on March 3, 2010 – man­aged a total size of 1,073 hectares of com­mu­nity for­est in 13 vil­lages. The for­est is dom­i­nated by teak, mahogany and aca­cia trees.

This suc­cess is the result of a multi-party col­lab­o­ra­tion, from among oth­ers the com­mu­nity which man­aged the com­mu­nity for­est and also the Asso­ci­a­tion for Eco­nomic and Social Study and Devel­op­ment (Per­him­punan untuk Studi dan Pengem­ban­gan Ekonomi dan Sosial — PERSEPSI) as the guar­an­tor and partner.

“This serves as a proof that many com­mu­nity forests in Indone­sia are man­aged sus­tain­ably and that com­mu­ni­ties in Indone­sia are capa­ble of imple­ment­ing sus­tain­able for­est man­age­ment prac­tices,” Indra said.

Mean­while, LEI’s Accred­i­ta­tion Man­ager, Gladi Hardiyanto added that Maisons du Monde (MdM) – a French-based com­pany – had com­mit­ted to use wooden fur­ni­ture with eco­la­bel cer­tifi­cate from Indonesia.

The prod­ucts include those extracted from LEI-certified com­mu­nity forests in Gunung Kidul Dis­trict, Jog­jakarta Spe­cial Province.

Accord­ing to Gladi, PT Jawa Furni Lestari or com­monly known as “Rumah Jawa”, which had passed the chain-of-custody cer­ti­fi­ca­tion using LEI scheme and obtained the chain-of-custody cer­tifi­cate from PT TuV Inter­na­tional Indone­sia, is an indus­try that col­lected prod­ucts from com­mu­nity forests.

To pro­mote envi­ron­ment con­ser­va­tion, LEI invited local jour­nal­ists from var­i­ous provinces for a field visit to directly observe the field activ­i­ties, start­ing from the com­mu­nity forests to the man­u­fac­tur­ing of LEI-CoC-certified wooden products.

For three days (21–23/4), LEI held a serie of work­shops and field vis­its to com­mu­nity forests with the aim to pro­vide an insight for the par­tic­i­pants on sus­tain­able for­est man­age­ment prac­tice capa­ble of sup­port­ing com­mu­nity devel­op­ment and envi­ron­ment con­ser­va­tion efforts.

In addi­tion, this can also intro­duce LEI eco­la­bel cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in sus­tain­able com­mu­nity forests and LEI-certified wood prod­ucts in Wono­giri, Pac­i­tan, and Gunung Kidul areas.(T.A035)

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