SETAPAK Program
Since 2011, SETAPAK believes that good governance of forest and land is the key to environment preservation and sustainable growth for the weaker group. SETAPAK supports decentralization of Indonesian Government to ensure transparency and accountability in sustainable and fair management, protection, and distribution of natural resources benefits.
SETAPAK Activities
Policy advocacy
SETAPAK reviews rules and policies including issues of land planning, strategic environmental analysis, the moratorium on mining licenses, disclosure of information, etc.
Legal assistance
SETAPAK investigates and reports law violation that related to forest and land, supports paralegal lawyers and advisers, builds complaints center, resolve agrarian conflicts and land ownership, etc.
Conflict mediation
SETAPAK mediates all conflicts caused by various factors, including the acquisition of community land by commercial companies, forest exploitation without considering environmental sustainability, ambiguous or overlapping law, authority misuse officers, etc.
Capacity building
SETAPAK strengthens civil society capacity on investigating corruption, improving access to legal aid, case reporting to the court, understanding the context of human rights in natural resource-based industries, etc.
Gender mainstreaming
SETAPAK encourage women’s participation in the policy-making process, improving women representation, guaranteeing equality on budget allocation, raising awareness of gender issue, facilitating the peasant women who become important witnesses in lawsuits related to forest, etc.
Forest and Land Management
What?
All processes, mechanisms, rules, and institution to manage forest and land.
Why?
Good governance is vital for sustainable forest and land.
How?
1. Top-down approach
Through government organized rules and policies/program that are designed to regulate forest and land usage.
2. Bottom-up approach
Through various reports that are managed by the public, regulatory organizations, or policy-makers.
Transparency refers to government’s efforts in providing access to current and accurate information. It can strengthen trust; allowing citizens to understand how decisions about land are made and assess the appropriateness of the decisions. Through transparency, public can find where deforestation planned and banned, in any conditions. It generates public participation in policy debate and violations reporting. From the context of supervising public officers, transparency can measure the work effectivity; acquisition of goods and services; as well as public response rate.
Accountability occurs when all the government’s actions and decision are subject to supervision mechanism so that every effort reach the goals and commitments established. Accountability requires the government to provide information about all the decisions and policies and the reasons to the public and regulatory organizations. Accountability can also strengthen prevention and investigation of illegal deforestation, enforcement of public right over forest and land, as well as the reduction of deforestation caused by commercial industries.
Participation is involvement of stakeholders in the process of policy-making. This principle aims to reach a decision that based on mutual interest. Through participation, we can bear knowledge; opportunities; solutions; as well as a new hope, and anticipating conflicts that could arise in the future. To carry out the participation process, there are things that need to be addressed including availability of formal space, a standard mechanism, and the existence of laws or rules that become the official groundwork.
Based on findings of Indonesian Forest Management Networking, the heaviest challenge in coordination principle is the current rules only regulates the centralized authority division and yet provides authority for institution/agency. Therefore, coordination is important to ensure the work program and activities of stakeholders are heading to the same vision. Within professional coordination, we can monitor and ensure the realization of well-managed forest and land in Indonesia.
Where we work
The SETAPAK program currently has 8 national partners and 40 regional civil society partners and covers 8 provinces: Aceh, Riau, West Sumatera, South Sumatera, West Kalimantan, East Kalimantan, North Kalimantan, and Central Sulawesi. These are all areas with abundant forest resources and peatlands that are vulnerable to rapid land use change.