Jambi (ANTARA) – Indonesia’s social forestry program has improved livelihoods for 1.4 million families through sustainable forest management, while expanding conservation efforts from government policies to communities, Director General of Social Forestry at the Ministry of Forestry Catur Endah Prasetiani said.
“This is an extraordinary lesson showing sustainable conservation is not built only through decisions at the top, but also grows from villages and communities living alongside forests,” Prasetiani said on Thursday.
Speaking at the 2026 Strategic Summit organized by Indonesian Conservation Community Warsi in Jambi, she said social forestry now covers 8.41 million hectares, against a national target of 12.7 million hectares.
About 1.4 million families across 36,095 villages have joined programs to improve livelihoods through agroforestry, non-timber forest products, environmental services and economic opportunities from carbon trading.
Prasetiani stressed social forestry’s role in supporting environmental sustainability while improving the welfare of communities living around forest areas.
About 36.7 percent of people living around forest areas are classified as poor, she said.
Social forestry, therefore, forms an important part of Indonesia’s poverty-reduction and extreme-poverty eradication efforts under Presidential Instruction No. 8 of 2025.
“The challenge is to overlay our social forestry locations with existing deciles and assess whether households have moved from decile one toward higher levels, especially through economic opportunities,” she said.
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Translator: Agus, Kenzu
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
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