Mangroves are an important ecosystem that provides valuable social, economic, and environmental services. Indonesia has placed mangroves on its national priority agenda in an important effort to sustainably manage this ecosystem and achieve national climate commitments. However, mangrove management is faced with complex challenges encompassing social, ecological, and economic issues. In order to achieve the government’s commitments and targets regarding mangrove restoration and conservation, an in-depth study on and critical review of mangrove management in Indonesia was conducted herein. This work aimed to provide a comprehensive analysis of the challenges and strategic recommendations for sustainable mangrove management in Indonesia. SWOT analysis was carried out to understand the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to mangrove management in Indonesia. To address these gaps, we reviewed the existing policies, current rehabilitation practices, environmental challenges, and research and technology implementations in the field. We found that strategies on mangrove ecosystem protection, such as improving the function and value of mangrove forests, integrating mangrove ecosystem management, strengthening political commitments and law enforcement, involving all stakeholders (especially coastal communities), and advancing research and innovations, are crucial for sustainable mangrove management and to support the national blue carbon agenda.

The increasing need for forest resources and cultivated land requires a solution in forest management to realize sustainable land use. Smart agroforestry (SAF) is a set of agriculture and silviculture knowledge and practices that is aimed at not only increasing profits and resilience for farmers but also improving environmental parameters, including climate change mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity enhancement, and soil and water conservation, while assuring sustainable landscape management. SAF, a solution for land management systems to reduce the rate of deforestation, is a smart effort to overcome the food crisis and mitigate climate change that is prospectively applied mainly in the social forestry area. Optimized forest land utilization could be achieved by implementing SAF and applying silvicultural and crop cultivation techniques to optimize productivity and meet sustainability and adaptability goals. This paper reviews the existing conditions, opportunities, and challenges in the mainstreaming of SAF in social forestry implementation to support the Sustainable Development Goals in Indonesia. Mainstreaming SAF should include policy innovation and regulation implementation, the use of appropriate technology, and compromises or trade-offs among benefits, risks, and resources. SAF is a strategy to revive the rural economy and community prosperity through the optimal use of local resources as well as a form of smart landscape and land-use management that has significant roles in soil and water conservation, bioenergy, climate change responses, and enhanced biodiversity conservation.

Social forestry (SF) has long been implemented in production and protected forests in Indonesia. SF is considered to be a win–win solution for occupied and cultivated forest areas. The aim of this paper was to review the implementation of social forestry in Indonesia and its strengths and challenges. The secondary purpose was to synthesize the lessons learned and recommendations for the government about designing SF that can integrate the objective of forest biodiversity conservation and the social welfare of the surrounding communities. The study used a systematic literature review (SLR) of international and national peer-reviewed articles. The results of the study indicate that SF is intended to achieve benefits in three main areas: social, economic, and ecological. However, the review found that the ecological aspects of biodiversity conservation often receive less attention compared to the social and economic goals. A strong point of SF implementation is increasing community access to forest land use, while a challenge that must be resolved is that including communities in forest management can result in fragmentation and changes to animal habitats; thus, there is the potential for population decline and extinction. This study advises policymakers to pay more attention to ecological functions to ensure forest sustainability in SF development.

Given the huge impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the food and agriculture sectors, rapid measures are needed to reduce the risk of food crises, especially among the poor and the most vulnerable communities. The government of Indonesia planned to establish the Food Estate National Program to ensure food security. Most of the area will be on peatlands, and as such, the program still faces pros and cons as it might open up opportunities for deforestation, threats to biodiversity, and loss of community livelihoods. We conducted the present research in Central Kalimantan to formulate a food estate (FE) development strategy by taking into account the potential benefits and risks to ensure increases in the local community’s welfare and the sustainability of biodiversity. Data were collected through field surveys, interviews, focus group discussion (FGD), and literature studies. The results show that the operation of a food estate on degraded peatlands has a moderate to high level of risk of negative impacts. Community activities and changes in farming methods through using more inputs and mechanical equipment are the most risky activities in FE development. The low substitutability of peatlands requires mitigation efforts as part of risk management. The operation of food systems on peatlands must be based on a strong sustainability perspective with a main principle of complementary resources. The main strategy is to protect natural resources and replace cultivated exotic plants with potential native peat plants with minimal risk. In addition, the policy and capacity building of farmers towards a business-oriented direction will maximize socioeconomic benefits. Utilization of biodiversity and low-impact cultivation techniques can ensure sustainability.

Indonesia is the largest archipelagic country in the world, with 17,000 islands of varying sizes and elevations, from lowlands to very high mountains, stretching more than 5000 km eastward from Sabang in Aceh to Merauke in Papua. Although occupying only 1.3% of the world’s land area, Indonesia possesses the third-largest rainforest and the second-highest level of biodiversity, with very high species diversity and endemism. However, during the last two decades, Indonesia has been known as a country with a high level of deforestation, a producer of smoke from burning forests and land, and a producer of carbon emissions. The aim of this paper is to review the environmental history and the long process of Indonesian forest management towards achieving environmental sustainability and community welfare. To do this, we analyze the milestones of Indonesian forest management history, present and future challenges, and provide strategic recommendations toward a viable Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) system. Our review showed that the history of forestry management in Indonesia has evolved through a long process, especially related to contestation over the control of natural resources and supporting policies and regulations. During the process, many efforts have been applied to reduce the deforestation rate, such as a moratorium on permitting primary natural forest and peat land, land rehabilitation and soil conservation, environmental protection, and other significant regulations. Therefore, these efforts should be maintained and improved continuously in the future due to their significant positive impacts on a variety of forest areas toward the achievement of viable SFM. Finally, we conclude that the Indonesian government has struggled to formulate sustainable forest management policies that balance economic, ecological, and social needs, among others, through developing and implementing social forestry instruments, developing and implementing human resource capacity, increasing community literacy, strengthening forest governance by eliminating ambiguity and overlapping regulations, simplification of bureaucracy, revitalization of traditional wisdom, and fair law enforcement.