The excessive use of centralized command and control policies that specify inputs and 

reporting requirements and increase the cost of operating reduce the incentive and value 

of improving management.  These policies have excluded community ownership and 

reduced or stifled innovative management approaches.  The lower returns from forestry 

also result in  reduced ability to compete with alternative land uses, such as large scale 

conversion to pulp wood and oil palm plantations. 

If the quality of residual stand management is to be improved, pre harvest treatments 

and improved harvest techniques need greater attention, rather than the current set of 

post harvest planning and damage control activities.  Improvements include longer term 

management and planning beyond annual work plans, improved infrastructure, 100% 

cruising identification of trees, and lower impact logging.  There is also a greater need 

for more creative development of rapid assessment of key ecological, economic and 

social indicators of good management, and for devising a reporting and evaluation 

procedure that rewards outcomes rather than only compliance with prescriptions.   

Conservation Area Management 

Effective management of national parks and other conservation areas must be adaptive 

to on going ecological and socio economic change.  Indonesia has experienced rapid 

economic development and, more recently, dramatic economic, social and political 

upheavals, with serious consequences for natural resources utilization.  There is no 

blueprint for long term natural resources management that can be applied to all 

conservation areas.  Management planning should focus less on writing plans that 

adhere to strict central government mandated guidelines.  Rather, the emphasis should 

be on local level human resources development for decentralized planning and 

management. 

Managing national parks is about managing and empowering people.  The NRMP 

experience demonstrates the need to recognize the many stakeholders associated with 

a national park and to develop a multi stakeholder planning process that actively and 

equitably involves them in decision making.  The stakeholders represent a park's 

community, comprised of diverse groups often with competing interests. 

Participation in national park management is an important but vague concept.  The 

NRMP experience achieved a consultative level of participation, which proved 

acceptable only for basic information gathering.  For effective resources management, a 

much greater degree of participation, based on the reciprocity of rights and 

responsibilities, is required. 

Current national park management in Indonesia is weak.  The stakeholder role of PHPA 

as participant in park planing was not as significant as it should have been.  This is not 

entirely due to inadequate funding but rather to inadequate allocation of existing 

resources constrained by current organizational and institutional structures.  These 

central allocations and mandates restrict innovative and appropriate local level planning 

and implementation. 

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