Land Suitability for Community Forestry to Poverty Alleviation in the Border Area at Timor Tengah Utara District

Abstract

This study analysed the suitability of land use for community forestry in the semi-arid region on the Timor island, in the border between Indonesia and Timor Leste. The purpose of this study is to determine the most suitable location for community forest management. The analytical method used was the Multi Criteria Evaluation (MCE) that employing five variables, namely: rainfall, land slope, soil type, distance to local roads, and distance from the state border. Weight for each variables were determined using analitycal hierarchy process (AHP) with expert judgment, then integrated the results from AHP into GIS to determine the location of lands that eligible for community forest management. The results of analysis showed there is an area of 4,943 ha (6.7%) eligible to be managed by the community in the border region in North Central Timor. The lands spread across 43 villages and are in various size. Small-scale, simple and economical forest management can be introduced in these 43 villages. This projected can have significantly poverty alleviation effect. The initiative can enable people in 11 villages (27%) to move out of national poverty standard and people in 4 villages (12%) to move out of international poverty standard.