Out of the woods: social capital and smallholder dairy farmers' access to state-owned agroforestry lands in West Java, Indonesia

Most of the community-based forest management (CBFM/PHBM) literature has confirmed the role of social capital (SC) in helping forest-dependent communities access the state-forest areas, which includes its agroforestry lands. Nevertheless, the dynamics of SC to enable the smallholder dairy farmer (SDF) communities to access the agroforestry lands, including gaining, controlling, and maintaining the access, do not receive much attention. This research aims to examine the contribution of SC in promoting SDF communities in Indonesia to access agroforestry lands. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with 40 dairy farmers and 25 key informants, focus group discussions, field observations, and document analysis by using qualitative case studies of four SDF communities in West Java province. The findings reveal that SC plays considerable roles in enabling various mechanisms or collective actions, by which the smallholders acquire affordable and long-term access, as well as increasing the communities’ awareness of sustainable forest management. First, SC establishes various affordable options to access agroforestry lands, which include informal access through land-to-labor exchanges between authorities and communities, right-to-use transfer systems, hereditary access schemes, and information sharing among farmers. Furthermore, SC provides low-cost mechanisms for controlling and maintaining access via fenceless agroforestry patch border control and peer-to-peer land supervision. Second, SC contributes to creating mechanisms that lead to long-term access via institution-based systems in maintaining agroforestry land boundaries and function, including the village–forest border system, the land sharing and land sparing use system, the creation of renewable land tenure, and the gradual sanction system. Lastly, the knowledge shared by the forest authority and common knowledge fostered by communities reinforced the communities’ awareness of sustainable forest management.