Kebun-Ghepang: Ecological and institutional reference for social forestry at highlands of Sumatra

Abstract

The government has granted Social Forestry (SF) management licenses since 2014, in the Village Forest and Community Forestry scheme, for communities around the forest in the highlands of South Sumatra. However, until early 2019, most of the SF groups still did not have a concept or vision of what was to be designed. The work area of SF is generally a stretch of monoculture coffee plantations. Within the frame of a sustainable forest management system, they are confused about making plans and actions. We conducted action research at two Village Forest groups in Muara Enim, South Sumatra, to encourage the implementation of independent SF. We use Vayda's progressive contextualization research approach. We found the desire of farmers to make Kebun-Ghepang in the SF work area, not just tree planting activities, as requested by the forester. Ghepang is a term of the Besemah ethnic people for fruit gardens that resemble forests, generally dominated by durian trees. Ghepang is a legacy of ancestors. Kebun-ghepang is an imagined forest by both the local community and foresters. The formation and conception of Kebun Ghepang would be an ecological and institutional reference in managing and building SF work areas, as analyzed in this paper.