Social aspects of CDM in forestry-focused on the results of feasibility studies in Indonesia

This study aims to identify the socio-economic and the institutional conditions leading to the success of a small-scale CDM project by comparing two case studies of plantation projects in a protection forest area in Lombok and a production forest area in East Java. It was not clear in Lombok who was involved in the project conducted by the local government, because the project site was located in an area remote from villages and the site was only temporarily used for pasturing and swidden cultivation before the projects started. The status of the protection forest increased the difficulty for achieving sustainable participatory forest management. The people have only been involved in the planting of trees with intercropping for a few years. In contrast, the Madiun district in East Java has had plantations since the Dutch colonial period, and activity had been focused on timber production with little emphasis on local involvement. The Forestry Enterprise (Perum Perhutani) has declared that in the 21st century it will manage forests with the cooperation of farmer groups. The local participatory forest management programs, including distribution of agricultural lands, benefit sharing, patrol of forests, farmer group meetings and so on have been implemented with the support of Gadjah Mada University as a facilitator. This forest management could help to strengthen local empowerment. These two cases imply that the degree of participation have to be critically evaluated before a project can be recommended as a small-scale CDM projects.