The Challenges and Policy Support for High-Conservation Area Management in Indonesia

The pressures to protect the forest in a forest and non-forest areas has been increased recently. Even though, the stakeholders as the government and private sector have positive responses by taking initiatives, such as setting conservation areas with high-conservation value (HCV) in non-state forest areas. The HCV management faces challenges as the lack of a regulatory framework to protect forests in non-state forest areas, disharmony on land use regulations for HCV in plantations areas, disharmony between voluntary market-based mechanisms standard and existing regulations. Further, HCV management is compounded by a lack of forested land conservation awareness among stakeholders and incentive policies that promote HCV areas management. The study aims to assess national and sub-national policies, the regulatory frameworks, and examine challenges to implement HCV management effectively. The research was conducted in Kotawaringin Timur (Central Kalimantan) and Landak (West Kalimantan) district. The study applied several analyses, such as gap policy analysis, fiscal analysis, and institutional analysis. The research results recommend that several incentive policies and regulations be strengthened and harmonized. Furthermore, it is necessary to design fiscal incentives for HCV area managers to receive land and buildings tax deduction. Moreover, an incentive scheme and institutional incentive are needed to reward actors with good HCV management performance.