On November 27th, ANGIN’s Advisory Officer Maria Olyvia Samosir attended Festival Pesona (Perhutanan Sosial Nasional or National Social Forestry), held by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry at Manggala Wanabhakti Building. The theme of this year’s festival was “Memakmurkan Masyarakat Kini dan Nanti”. Festival Pesona aimed to show initiatives and studies regarding social forestry held by the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to support community-based social enterprise in Indonesia. There were many forest commodities showcased at the festival, such as honey, tenun, coffee, and others.
The theme of the first day of the festival was Market-Driven Approach for Community Products. The talk show consisted of two sessions:
The first session was a journey sharing session by social entrepreneurs who were successful in both exporting forest commodities to overseas and improving the local community’s quality of life and the forest sustainability as a whole. There was a big crowd on the first session as the session was inspiring and motivating the audience who planned to do the same initiative in their respective areas.
The second session was a talk show on the current challenges of market-driven approach in community products. There was a discussion on the concerns about the lack of commitment from local community and local government in managing their region’s forestry area, the lack of infrastructure and the lack of knowledge in processing non-timber forest products. One of the speakers, Fajar Sumantri, emphasized that the open-mindedness of local community would be crucial in managing non-timber forest products.
The talk show session was insightful and inspiring as it revealed local community’s challenges in sustaining biodiversity while cultivating non-timber forest products. The takeaway from the talk show was that managing forest while preserving biodiversity needs to be supported by many stakeholders, ranging from local community to the government.
