Image: a view of Kenyabur as framed between an oil palm and areca nut tree, two commodities that communities are investing in for the future (Photo by Paul, 2026)
Fara and I have an appointment with Mr and Mrs D., hoping to learn more about the Village Forest (Hutan Desa), for which the community of Kenyabur has recently obtained management rights through Indonesia’s Social Forestry Policy. Arriving at their house, we are welcomed with an offer of lunch and four bags of newly harvested rice to bring back home tomorrow, when our first visit to Kenyabur comes to an end. Nevertheless, we initially don’t learn much about the Village Forest. Even though Mr D. is part of the village forest management group, his answers to our questions are short and vague. We soon allow the conversation to drift to easier topics, such as the collapse of jengkol (dog fruit) prices. (Last year, they made good money selling jengkol. This year, most trees are left unharvested and the fruits rot on the ground.)
Then, as often happens in ethnographic fieldwork, the topic of the Village Forest returns of its own accord. After lunch, a village government official drops by. He and D. start complaining about the Village Forest, which they feel is controlled too much by external parties, “in the name of the community” but without proper consultation or transparency. On the one hand, it’s a relief to find out that D.’s apparent discomfort with our questions did not signal a refusal to share with us. He now admits that, actually, he didn’t know the answers. On the other hand, this conversation puts Fara and I in a difficult position. As representatives of a conservation organisation that supports Social Forestry, we feel an obligation to defend the policy. As researchers, however, our first obligation is to listen and try to understand their critiques.
The experiences of D. are disappointing but not surprising. Evaluations of community forestry programmes often find that they entail more responsibilities than rights. In Indonesia, Social Forestry permits provide limited rights, cover only a fraction of customary territories, and require communities to navigate complex bureaucratic processes. More fundamentally, as we shall see below, recognition can itself feel like a burden, especially if it’s not accompanied by efforts to address the structural conditions that would make custodianship viable.
This does not mean that recognition is worthless. Many community members in Kenyabur remain committed to Social Forestry, and so are we. But it does raise a question that this research project takes seriously: what would it actually take for recognition to deliver on its promise?
“What is the benefit of a Customary Forest?”
Fara takes the opportunity to probe: do they feel any different about the plans to apply for a Customary Forest (Hutan Adat) permit? Among Indonesian and international civil society groups, the Customary Forest permit is widely seen as a stronger form of recognition than the Village Forest, providing communities with permanent ownership rather than temporary use rights.
For the village government official, however, the question remains: “what is the benefit of a Customary Forest?” NGOs, he feels, are always pushing Social Forestry schemes, claiming that the permits will enable the community to manage their own forests. But what, exactly, are communities supposed to manage with those permits? “For my whole life, we have never had permit”, he says. Yet they have always been able to manage and profit from the natural resources there.
Instead of benefits, he anticipates new expectations and responsibilities. The village territory is large, and while village residents depend on the river for transportation, people from other districts can access much of the forest area over land, crossing the border from the far end of the forest, using the dirt roads of logging companies. “So long as this is state forest, then it is the problem of the state”, he notes. However, with a permit, “we will be ordered to guard the forest, and if it is destroyed, we are the ones who will be scolded”. He concludes that it is better to have no permit at all than a permit that you can’t do anything with.
Being respected as humans
During our two weeks in Kenyabur, Fara and I have learned that this is a controversial conclusion. Many community members argue that this rejection of Social Forestry stems from a short-sighted desire for extracting instant and individual benefits, in the form of direct payments from conservation organisations or illegal resource use. Leaders of the local PUMK – a community-led conservation governance organisation supported by Planet Indonesia – told us that obtaining permits is part of long-term efforts to become effective custodians. They know that external recognition comes with expectations and responsibilities, but they do not reject these out of hand.
When we go to say goodbye to Mr Heru, he expresses strong support for our research, asking us to inform the world about the conditions in Kenyabur. He claims he has long understood the importance of conservation and wanted to protect the forests and rivers, but used to not know how to. That’s why he joined the PUMK as soon as it was established. However, he thinks that progress could be much quicker with increased financial compensation for PUMK leaders. Currently, he said, conservation work is done on the side, because their immediate priority is feeding their families. In his words, fair compensation is a matter of “being respected as humans” (dihargai sebagai manusia).
Additionally, Heru argues, the community needs to get access to roads and electricity in order to be able to abandon environmentally harmful livelihoods. While the PUMK is helping villagers establish agroforestry gardens, they will not be able to benefit economically without a way to market their products. We are reminded of the Jengkol rotting in the forest gardens, a pungent illustration of Heru’s point.
While Heru hopes that the PUMK can help, the absence of roads, electricity, and communications infrastructure, are symptoms of a wider condition of being “left behind” (tertinggal). Many community members blame the state for failing to provide the basic facilities they feel entitled to as citizens. Strikingly, none of the free school meals that are a centrepiece of the national government’s agenda have ever reached the village. This absence of dignified citizenship limits both the capacity and the willingness of many community members to remodel their lives around the demands of custodianship.
Partnerships for transformation
On this first field trip, we learned that the protection of nature is not a self-evident priority for everyone in Kenyabur. Some community members hold that, given the structural challenges they face, their best option is to continue livelihoods that they themselves acknowledge are environmentally destructive. Formal recognition of custodianship, many fear, would only bring additional burdens in the form of new restrictions, expectations, and responsibilities, without providing tangible benefits.
Crucially, however, other community members remain eager to take up these burdens. In return, they hope that government actors, companies, NGOs, and other outside actors will support the transformational changes required to become effective custodians of biodiversity. These partnerships are challenging. Past experience has left a deep-seated suspicion that outsiders are likely to trick and exploit the community, driven by ulterior motives such as winning votes, extracting valuable resources, or appropriating global funding for conservation. To regain their trust, partners will need to provide concrete and sustained results while simultaneously addressing the structural challenges faced by communities. Over the coming months, our research project aims to explore more fully the practices and partnerships through which communities across our four study locations take on the challenges of becoming custodian.
