SENIOR FORESTERS CALL FOR A NEW PARADIGM IN INDONESIAN FORESTRY
From Managing Forest Areas to Safeguarding Indonesia’s Life-Support System
Yogyakarta, 31 August 2026 — After more than 25 years of Law No. 41/1999 on Forestry serving as the foundation of Indonesia’s forest management, senior Indonesian foresters are calling for a fundamental shift in the way the nation understands and manages its forests.
Indonesia, they argue, can no longer focus primarily on administering forest areas. Forests must be managed as a life-support system and as critical ecological infrastructure for the nation.
The call emerged from the Senior Foresters Meeting held at the INSTIPER Yogyakarta Auditorium on Monday (31 August 2026). Organized by the Center for Sustainable Landscape Science (PSLB), INSTIPER, the meeting brought together senior foresters, academics, government representatives, parliamentarians, practitioners, Forest Management Units (KPH), the private sector, and other forestry stakeholders to reflect on the implementation of Law No. 41/1999 and discuss the future direction of Indonesian forestry legislation.
The meeting produced the Senior Indonesian Foresters’ Key Policy Thoughts as strategic input to the ongoing process of revising Indonesia’s Forestry Law.
BEYOND REVISING ARTICLES OF LAW
Senior foresters emphasized that the context of Indonesian forestry has fundamentally changed. Climate change, habitat degradation, tenure conflicts, economic pressures, land-use change, disaster risks, and the growing demands of sustainable development have made a purely administrative approach increasingly inadequate.
The revision of the Forestry Law, therefore, should not be limited to improving individual legal provisions.
What Indonesia needs is a transformation of forest governance: from forest administration to forest governance—from simply managing designated forest areas to managing life-support systems across landscapes in an integrated, adaptive, transparent, participatory, and accountable manner.
Under this new paradigm, forests are not merely state assets, production areas, or spaces to be protected. They are the ecological infrastructure of the nation, supporting water systems, flood and erosion control, climate stability, biodiversity, soil fertility, food security, livelihoods, and a wide range of ecosystem services.
One of the strongest political messages emerging from the meeting was:
“Forests are not an obstacle to development; forests are the foundation of development.”
This perspective positions forestry not as a sector that simply asks development to be restricted, but as a sector that provides the foundation for development to proceed safely, resiliently, and sustainably.
KPH 2.0: A GAME CHANGER AT THE LOCAL LEVEL
Such a transformation requires institutional change, particularly at the forest-management level.
Senior foresters highlighted the strategic role of Kesatuan Pengelolaan Hutan (KPH), or Forest Management Units. KPHs are closest to the realities of forests, communities, tenure conflicts, local economies, and landscape dynamics.
Yet KPHs cannot become effective agents of change if they are given additional responsibilities without the necessary authority, institutional capacity, and financing.
The meeting therefore proposed KPH 2.0: repositioning KPHs from administrative units into orchestrators of forest and landscape management at the local level.
KPH 2.0 should be capable of coordinating sustainable forest management, protection of life-support functions, forest rehabilitation, social forestry, conflict resolution, partnerships, and the integration of rights holders and permit holders.
The principle is straightforward:
Mandate must be matched by authority.
Authority must be matched by capacity.
Capacity must be matched by financing.
And all of these must be matched by accountability.
FROM EXTRACTIVE ECONOMY TO ECOLOGICAL VALUE ECONOMY
The transformation also needs to reshape the economic foundation of forestry.
Conservation cannot rely solely on restrictions and enforcement. Keeping forests standing must become a rational and economically attractive choice.
Indonesia’s forestry sector therefore needs to move from an extractive economy toward an ecological value economy.
The public value generated by forests should be translated into sources of financing and income through ecosystem services, carbon, bioeconomy, biodiversity economy, circular economy, green jobs, nature-based solutions, payments for ecosystem services, ecological fiscal transfers, and benefit-sharing mechanisms.
The message is simple:
“Keeping forests standing must generate prosperity.”
This also broadens the meaning of the constitutional mandate of achieving the greatest possible prosperity for the people. Prosperity should not be measured solely through economic returns from forest products, but also through water, climate regulation, food security, ecosystem services, green economic opportunities, equitable access, and the long-term sustainability of life.
NO NET LOSS: A SAFEGUARD FOR DEVELOPMENT
Senior foresters also proposed No Net Loss as a key safeguard for future development.
Economic development should not generate gains by undermining the ecological foundations of life. Any change in the allocation, function, or utilization of forest areas should therefore be assessed against its impacts on life-support functions and the public value of forest landscapes.
The principle changes the fundamental development question.
It is no longer simply:
How much economic value will be created?
It must also ask:
What will be lost? What will be restored? And will the essential functions that support life remain intact?
FINANCING MUST FOLLOW PUBLIC VALUE
The meeting also highlighted a longstanding imbalance: forests generate enormous public value, while the financial resources returned to maintain and protect that value remain insufficient.
The senior foresters therefore proposed a clear principle:
“The greater the public value protected and generated, the stronger the financial support should be.”
Future forestry financing should combine national and local government budgets, non-tax state revenues, the Reforestation Fund, ecological fiscal transfers, payments for ecosystem services, carbon finance, green investment, and innovative financing mechanisms.
In other words, forestry financing should not follow only what can be sold as a commodity. It should also follow the public value generated by forest landscapes.
THE “2045 TEST”: DOES TODAY’S POLICY MAKE INDONESIA BETTER?
To ensure that transformation does not remain merely a normative aspiration, the senior foresters proposed a simple policy test: the 2045 Test.
The question is:
“Given today’s forestry baseline, will this policy make Indonesia’s forests and people’s prosperity better by 2045?”
The test can be applied to policies concerning forest areas, forest functions, institutions, KPHs, communities, utilization, rehabilitation, financing, and incentives.
At a minimum, decisions should be assessed across five dimensions:
ecological, economic, social, institutional, and national resilience.
The 2045 Test is intended to move forestry policy beyond short-term considerations and force every major decision to confront its consequences for future generations.
DECIDING WHAT KIND OF FORESTS WE WANT TO INHERIT
Ultimately, the Senior Foresters Meeting was not simply an exercise in reflecting on the past.
It was a call to answer a much larger question:
“What kind of Indonesian forestry do we want to leave for the next generation?”
Senior foresters believe that the revision of the Forestry Law must become an instrument of transformation—one that establishes forests as a life-support system; defines prosperity through the public value of forest landscapes; strengthens good and adaptive forest governance; empowers KPHs at the local level; protects ecological functions through the No Net Loss principle; clarifies rights and responsibilities; promotes a green forestry economy; establishes public-value-based financing; strengthens professional human resources and science-based information systems; and improves conflict resolution.
The resulting statement is intended to provide independent and constructive input to the Government and Parliament as Indonesia moves forward with the reform of its Forestry Law.
After 25 years, the question is no longer simply how to preserve Law No. 41/1999.
The more fundamental question is:
Are we prepared to build a new forestry architecture capable of sustaining Indonesia’s life and prosperity through 2045 and beyond?
The senior foresters have put forward the ideas. The next challenge is to turn those ideas into policy.