Mainstreaming Local Wisdom: Indigenous People Collective Action in Rainforest Management (The Case of Indonesia and Philippines)

Abstract

"Indigenous Peoples right of the land and its natural resources is one of inheritance rights gotten from a long social process. The right is not given by state, so that to accommodate the rights, state requires confessing their right of the land and its natural resources. The biggest problem relating to this community right in Indonesia and the Philippines this time is that there is too much constraint must be faced to accomplish the rights. Its caused by the overlap of the government regulation and measurable understanding to the Indigenous ancestral domain and its natural resources. In the case of Indonesia, the decentralization of forest resource management authority to local governments after the Soeharto regime was falling down in1998 has resulted in a situation in which district governments are neither accountable upward to the central government nor downward to the local people. The decentralization of authority without appropriate devolution processes or control mechanisms has resulted in the decentralization of opportunistic behavior that is in direct opposition to the development of good local forest governance. Meanwhile, in the case of Philippines, the outright disregard of the indigenous peoples collective right over their ancestral land and its resources have led affected indigenous people to mount protest actions. But instead of addressing their legitimate grievances, the Philippine government has more often than not deployed police and army troopers to meet the peoples protest. Instead, the key factor to manage forest resources are needed to build cooperation and collaboration between local government and local people in sharing local knowledge and local wisdom by applying Community-Based Forest Management (CBFM)as major strategy for the sustainable development and social justice that provides a stable legal framework to guide that smooth implementation."