Social forestry was initially introduced as a response to the long-standing conflict between the state and the people in forest areas. On the island of Java, particularly in West Java, this conflict has persisted across generations, from the colonial era, the New Order, and the reform era. The Special Management Forest Area (KHDPK) policy emerged as part of the reforms' promise to expand community access and address the imbalance in forest area control.
From the outset, the KHDPK was never truly designed as a comprehensive agrarian reform. It emerged as a compromise between community demands and state interests. The state opened up space for community participation but simultaneously maintained a monopoly on control over forest areas and assets. Thus, social forestry did not change the control structures underlying the conflict, but only changed the state's management of those conflicts. Perhutani, as the primary actor in Java, retained a strategic position in controlling forest areas as a state economic asset.
However, the planned reduction of the KHDPK area to 583,629 hectares demonstrates that this commitment was never intended to transform the forest ownership structure. This narrowing is not simply an administrative correction or governance adjustment. It represents a withdrawal of community management space previously promoted as part of forestry agrarian reform. In other words, the state is demonstrating that access granted to communities can be reduced at any time, as it was never established as a legally guaranteed right from the outset.
To understand this, we must examine the actors behind the policy. The KHDPK emerged within the context of the previous Ministry of Environment and Forestry's policies, which continued after the restructuring of the Ministry of Forestry under President Prabowo's administration. Within this institutional shift, the direction of forestry policy maintained the old paradigm of the state as the primary control holder over forest areas.
On the other hand, Perhutani, as the state-owned forestry company that has historically controlled Java's forests, remains the dominant actor. From the New Order era to the present, Perhutani has not merely been a technical implementer, but also part of the political-economic structure that manages forests as state assets of high economic value. In practice, the KHDPK has not displaced Perhutani's dominant position. Instead, this policy allows Perhutani to maintain control over these high-value assets while sharing some of the management burden with the community. As a result, what has changed is not the control structure, but only the pattern of relationships between the state, Perhutani, and the community.
Communities are then incorporated into this system through a permit scheme. They are granted access, but not rights. They are recognized as managers, but not as owners. They are involved, but not given bargaining power. This is the crux of the problem. As long as social forestry remains permit-based, the state remains the sole owner of forest areas. Everything granted to communities is temporary, conditional, and revocable. With a single administrative decision, that access can be reduced, transferred, or even revoked.
The paradigm of state control underlying the narrowing of the KHDPK also contradicts developments in Indonesian constitutional law. Through Constitutional Court Decision No. 35/PUU-X/2012, the Constitutional Court emphasized that not all forest areas should be understood as spaces under absolute state control. This ruling paved the way for the recognition of community rights over their management areas. However, the current direction of forestry policy is moving in the opposite direction, namely reinforcing state dominance through licensing mechanisms. In this context, the narrowing of the KHDPK demonstrates that forestry policy has not fully followed constitutional developments that encourage the recognition of community rights over their management areas.
Policy developments over the past few years have shown a fairly clear pattern. In the initial phase of its implementation, the KHDPK was positioned as a corrective instrument to the Perhutani-centered forest management model. However, as it evolved, various evaluations emerged that actually led to a reduction in the area. The decision to reduce the KHDPK from approximately 922,769 hectares to 583,629 hectares marked a shift from limited expansion to a reconsolidation of state control.
What happened was not a technical failure, but rather a logical consequence of a forest management structure that, from the outset, positions the state as the primary controller of the area and Perhutani as the manager of the state's economic assets. Within this structure, expansion of community management space is always subordinate and vulnerable to retraction when deemed to conflict with larger institutional interests.
This is where the crux of the problem lies: the state has never truly shifted from an access-based paradigm to a rights-based one. From the outset, the KHDPK was built on the logic of access. Communities were granted permission to manage forests, but not rights to them. Access was temporary, revocable, and dependent entirely on state administrative authority. Rights, on the other hand, provided legal certainty, protection, and real control over territory.
However, the shift toward rights never materialized. By maintaining the access scheme, the state, through the Ministry of Forestry, retained full control, while Perhutani maintained its claim to assets, particularly high-value trees. Communities remained subordinate, managing without ownership.
Experience in Latin American countries such as Mexico and Bolivia shows that recognizing communities' collective rights to forest areas can strengthen local governance, reduce tenure conflicts, and increase economic benefits for communities. This distinction is important because it demonstrates that genuine reform goes beyond granting permits and must address ownership and control over resources.
This is increasingly evident in the issue of assets. In many KHDPK areas in West Java, forest stands, such as pine trees, are still recorded as Perhutani assets, even though in practice they are managed and maintained by the community. This demonstrates that redistribution never touches the means of production, and inequality remains perpetuated.
This structure is reinforced by centralized and closed governance. All decisions regarding the KHDPK, including the reduction of its area, are made by the central government through the Ministry of Forestry without equal community participation.
This vulnerability is not merely a theoretical issue. In practice, a number of social forestry groups in Bandung Regency have faced legal proceedings and accusations related to forest management activities, as experienced by members of the Gambung Farmers Group (Gapoktanhut) and the Amanah Sejahtera Community Forestry Group (KPS Amanah Sejahtera). Regardless of the dynamics of each case, these incidents demonstrate that when rights to management space are not firmly recognized, communities remain vulnerable to conflicts over authority, tenure disputes, and criminalization.
At the technical level, this situation is exacerbated by slow state services. Mapping, verification, and boundary determination are often delayed, leaving communities operating in a state of legal uncertainty and at risk of criminalization in unclear areas. The reduction of the KHDPK to 583,629 hectares highlights the true nature of social forestry in Java. The management space, long promoted as an empowerment instrument, was never designed to develop into a state-recognized right. This narrowing demonstrates that the state continues to view communities as permit recipients, rather than as rights holders over the territories they have managed and defended for decades.
Global experience shows that forestry agrarian reform only succeeds when the state fully recognizes community rights. Without this, access becomes merely a temporary instrument. Yet Indonesia maintains access. The state retains control. Perhutani retains assets. Communities remain users. Until this shift occurs, the KHDPK and social forestry will remain mere illusions of agrarian reform, granting access without rights and perpetuating inequality.
Ultimately, the narrowing of the KHDPK is not simply a reduction in forest area. It is a political statement that the state is not yet ready to distribute forest resource rights to communities. As long as forest management remains based on the logic of permits and not on the recognition of rights, social forestry will never become agrarian reform. It will simply become an administrative instrument to manage community demands without changing the control structure that has been the source of inequality from the start. Under these circumstances, the narrowing of the KHDPK must be understood not as a policy correction, but as a serious setback for the agrarian reform agenda in Indonesia's forestry sector. When community management space can be narrowed through administrative decisions, what is actually being narrowed is not just forest areas, but also the opportunity for agrarian justice in the forestry sector.
