Community Aspects of Forest Ecosystems in the Gunung Gede Pangrango National Park UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesia’s forest has high biodiversity in flora and fauna. The government has tried to maintain this biodiversity through managing the forest in accordance with the existing functions and conditions. Population is increasing, which affects demands for land and wood consumption. Statistics of the Ministry of Forestry (2010) recorded several disturbances of forest areas. The disturbances include land occupation by the community, which had reached 52,972 ha of forest ecosystems. This research has the main objectives to assess the level of dependency on forest products and to identify which factors are affecting the level of dependency on forest products in the transition zone of Gunung Gede Pangrango UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Detailed demographic and economic household information was collected using the stratified random sampling method from 210 respondents in six villages. Statistics reveal that 361,002 people live around the area (Mulcahy and Mc Carthy, 2010). The statistical results show that about 58 % of the population respondents depend on forest products for about 0–20 % of their total monthly income and only 10 % of the respondents highly depend on forest products (more than 80 % of total monthly income). In average, the community level of dependency on forest products was 28 % of their total income. From nine independent variables, only five variables such as gender, household size, policy, off-forest income, and elevation, are mainly responsible for determining the level of dependency. It is statistically proven that off-forest income and elevation of the household have a strong effect related to household forest dependency; gender and policy are significant at 5 % level and household size at 10 % level. Simply, the household with low off-forest income, large number of family members, and located in a remote area is more dependent on forest products compared to other households.