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The reorganization of the State Forestry Corporation of Java (Perum Perhutani or SFC), under Soeharto's New Order and the economic growth thrust of the New Order state, characterized Forestry's initial reappropriation of the forests of Java. The key questions examined in this chapter are whether and to what extent Indonesian forestry is new and different under the New Order. It considers the persistence of colonial characteristics in their Indonesian form: the composition and role of the SFC, the role of forestry in the political economy of Indonesia, and the misconnection between scientific forestry and the social and economic needs of local people. The chapter also looks at how the SFC has tried to address these constraints through repressive and preventive approaches to forest security. The conclusion is that the persistence of colonial forms of forest management is legitimated by three “old” ideologies: (1) that state forestry serves the greatest good of the greatest number of people; (2) that scientific forestry is an efficient and rational form of resource use; and (3) that promoting economic growth through forest production for the state is the key component of the forester's role. These ideologies neither match local people's views of the forest, nor contribute to forest villagers' development.

This chapter considers some of the prospects for a program of constructive change in the management of Java's forest. The most recent social forestry program in Java aims to release some of the state's traditional controls and to engage forest-based communities in the management of the forests. The ultimate question is: Can it work? The chapter discusses the role of the state in developing the social and natural environment; the structure of access to the “new” social forestry program; problems within the access structure; structural factors precluding the involvement of the poor; ideological obstacles to successful social forestry projects; and the potential for an administrative solution to the development of a forest village.

This chapter presents a theoretical framework for the confrontation between state and peasant interests in the forest, exploring the ideology, or “culture,” of state authority and legitimacy (in managing forest resources) as an outgrowth of political-economic strategy and structures originating in Europe. The nature of rural people's responses to state policies that restrict forest access derives from local sociocultural and political-economic circumstances, including local interpretations of the cultures and mechanisms of resource control. Both forest-based peasants and the state have constructed ideologies intended to justify their own rights to control forest access. Each side resists structural changes or concepts of management that would confer legitimacy on the other. At a broad level, the dynamics of state forest management and local forest use are constrained by the layered structures of resource control and access, and contemporary repertoires of resistance. Outcomes—in terms of the ability of the center or the periphery to control the forest—vary according to historical period and geographical location. The final section of the chapter describes the contemporary setting of the forests where this study of forest-based conflict began.

This chapter examines forest decline and the importance of forest resources for the Lao economy. It first considers forest degradation and fragmentation in Laos and goes on to discuss two contrasting themes concerning forest resources that can be discerned in both rural and urban narratives: one depicts decline, and the other depicts continued abundance. It argues that these contrasting descriptions of forests essentially constitute debates about the state and its achievements. It then discusses some practices of illegal logging of luxury timber in Nakai, along with attempts to institute forms of community forestry in Laos that facilitate active involvement of villagers in forest management. It also explores how the state's role as forest manager for the nation is implicated in official and unofficial discourses about forests. Finally, it analyzes how forest resources signify the interrelations between prosperity and social hierarchy in Laos.

This chapter discusses the issue of sustainable rattan harvesting from a local perspective. Defining and implementing sustainable use of tropical forests and its products have been the subject of considerable debate for decades. Academics and conservationists have argued over the meaning, potential paths, obstacles to, and the viability of sustainable resource use. Drawing on conversations with a number of rattan gatherers, this chapter asks whether rattan harvesting can be sustained and what ecological effects are associated with cane harvesting. It also examines what institutional arrangements and governing capabilities are required at national and local levels to manage harvesting; the role of market demand, financial returns, government policies, and resource tenure in sustainable harvesting of rattan and other nontimber forest products (NTFPs); and how community forestry, and community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) more generally, can help promote the sustainable management of natural resources.