Impact of Social Forestry Programs on Village Community Welfare and Deforestation Rates

The social forestry program was established in 2007 with the aims of: (1) realizing equal distribution of the quality of life of the community at the rural level, especially in areas that have forests; (2) preventing and reducing the level of deforestation accompanied by forest utilization. To support this, in 2014 the government gave directions to the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to increase the social forestry area target, which by 2016 had increased to 12.7 million hectares (Cifor 2019).

This study aims to measure the impact of the social forestry program on the level of community welfare in villages that have large areas of forest as well as the level of deforestation in the area. Using socio-economic and spatial secondary data with the Two-stage Least Square model, a dependent variable was formed in the first equation, namely a dummy village that has social forestry followed by several independent variables which are indicated to be related to the dependent variable, namely the distance of the village to the nearest capital city, the distance of the village to the nearest highway, the slope of the village, the height of the village, and dummy sub-districts whose villages 30% have social forests. In the second equation, dependent variables are used that explain the level of welfare and deforestation, such as households using electricity, number of elementary schools, and households using LPG. Regarding deforestation, the deforestation rate sourced from Hansen data is used. The estimation results of the first equation show that the distance of the village to the nearest capital city and the village's altitude reduce the chance of a village getting social forest, while the slope of the village and sub-districts where 30% villages have social forest significantly increases the chance of a village getting social forest.

Using these estimation results, in the second equation there are results that villages that have social forests are able to increase: (1) the average household electricity user in the village; (2) number of elementary schools; (3) average household LPG users. However, contradictory results can be seen that social forestry has not been able to reduce the level of deforestation as seen from the positive and significant results on the level of deforestation in villages. These results show that there must be better management of areas that receive social forests so that improving the welfare of people in rural areas, especially forest areas, can be accompanied by a reduction in the level of deforestation.

Key words: Rural and urban inequality, deforestation, social forest