No abstract

The hopes of customary communities in Indonesia have recently been bolstered by Constitutional Court assurances that they have the right to control customary forest. There are, however, several obstacles to making successful claims, and there are also many situations in which forest users and customary land claimants do not stand to benefit from the recent rulings. This policy review analyses the court decisions, politics around their implementation, and considerations of types of land claimants who are excluded from the current process. We highlight groups of forest and ex-forestland users that are excluded from benefiting from the Constitutional Court decisions and are adversely affected by land use change and re-designation of land. These groups include those with claims over land in conservation areas, allocated to concessionaires for resource extraction, on land already issued to them through forest management rights, and those whose land has already been removed from the State forest land. Highlights:• Contestations around claims by customary groups on forest areas in Indonesia have been rejuvenated by 2011 and 2012 Constitutional Court decisions.• There remains significant confusion around how to apply the laws, however both State and customary community rights groups are actively advancing their preparations • The Constitutional Court decisions are specific to 'customary communities' with claims over State forest land.• Communities with claims over gazetted national parks, land issued for forestry concessions, land removed from the State forest, and migrants remain without legal basis for claiming forest land.

Policy makers, academics, and conservationists often posit that poor coordination between different land use sectors, and between levels of governance, as an underlying challenge for reducing deforestation and forest degradation. This paper analyzes this argument using data from interviews with over 500 respondents from government, nongovernmental organizations, private companies, local and indigenous communities, activists, and individuals involved in 35 diverse land use initiatives in three countries: Peru, Indonesia, and Mexico. We find that while there is strong evidence of widespread coordination failures between sectors and levels, more fundamental political issues preclude effective coordination. We argue that political coalitions act to oppose environmental objectives and to impede their opponents from participating in land use governance. Moreover, we find that where coordination between actors does occur, it does not necessarily produce environmentally sustainable and socially just land use outcomes. Where we do find successful initiatives to reduce deforestation and benefit local people, effective coordination between well-informed actors is often present, but it does not occur spontaneously, and is instead driven by political organizing over time by activists, local people, nongovernmental organizations, and international donors. We suggest that the global environmental community must recognize explicitly these political dimensions of land use governance in order to successfully collaborate with local people to reduce deforestation.

Although REDD+ was conceived as a national approach to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, many of the early advances have been at the subnational level. It is critical to link these subnational efforts to emerging national REDD+ frameworks, including with respect to finance and benefit distribution, setting reference levels, measurement, reporting and verification (MRV), land policy and safeguards. We use evidence from interviews with proponents from 23 subnational REDD+ initiatives in six countries to characterize the multilevel governance challenges for REDD+. We analyse the differences in perceived challenges between subnational jurisdictional programs 910 Ashwin Ravikumar et al.and project-based initiatives, and then analyse proponents' perceptions of the relationship between government policies at multiple levels and these REDD+ initiatives. We find important multilevel governance challenges related to vertical coordination and information sharing and horizontal and inter-sectoral tensions, as well as concerns over accountability, equity and justice. Though the shift to a nested, jurisdictional or national REDD+ is sometimes approached as a technical design issue, this must be accompanied by an understanding of the interests and power relations among actors at different levels. We outline challenges and suggest priority areas for future research and policy, as countries move towards a national REDD+ system.