From 30 November – 1 December 2011 a workshop on Capacity Building in Community Empowerment Programmes took place at the Forestry Training Centre of Samarinda. This event was a collaboration of GIZ FORCLIME, the Forestry Training Centre of Samarinda and WWF West Kutai Programme. The objectives of this workshop were to identify the capacity building needs in the Community Empowerment Programmes at various levels (system and policy level, network, organisation and individual levels). The event was attended by approximately 35 people from government agencies, private companies, academics, NGOs, ad hoc forestry institutions and representatives of local communities.

Some focal issues discussed in this workshop were: (a) The need of deregulation or decentralization of licensing for the development of Village Forest (Hutan Desa) / Community Forest (Hutan Kemasyarakatan) considering that the current licensing bureaucracy is felt by the community to be too long-winded and complicated; (b) the need to prepare a roadmap for the development of Village / Community Forest and to establish an Acceleration Working Group that involves national and regional stakeholders; (c) the need to establish an incentive system for regional governments and the communities to support the development of Village / Community Forest; (d) the need to establish an acceleration mechanism for the determination of both forest zone and village boundaries and to resolve tenurial conflicts; (e) the need to develop standardisation and synchronisation of data (including spatial data) between national and regional levels; (f) the need to develop a learning network for information sharing and capacity development, mainly for training; (g) modification of curricula for Village / Community forest training in accordance with the local context; (h) institutional strengthening of forestry extension services; (i) increasing the quality and quantity of forestry extension workers; (j) pushing for the allocation of budget in central and regional government to support the development of Village / Community Forest Programmes.

At the end of the workshop, participants agreed to reactivate the Discussion Forum on Community Based Forest Management (CBFM), which had been idle during the last 2 years. In the future, the CBFM Forum will be handled by the East Kalimantan Working Group on REDD+ and the Regional Forestry Council of East Kalimantan in collaboration with the Forestry Training Center of Samarinda. The first meeting is planned to be held in January 2012. The CBFM Forum will be directed to discuss in a step-wise manner various issues and solutions for problems related to capacity development in Village / Community Forest Programmes as identified in the workshop.

For more detail, please contact:
Edy Marbyanto
Senior Advisor for Sustainable Forest Management
E: edy.marbyanto@giz.de