Komunitas 8 (2) (2016): 236-249 DOI:10.15294/komunitas.v8i2.5439 KOMUNITAS International Journal of Indonesian Society And Culture http://journal.unnes.ac.id/nju/index.php/komunitas Traditional Institution for Forest Conservation within a Changing Community: Insights from the Case of Upland South Sumatra Edwin Martin 1 , Didik Suharjito 2 , Dudung Darusman 2 , Satyawan Sunito 3 , & Bondan Winarno 1 1 Environment and Forestry R&D, Institute of Palembang, Indonesia 2 Faculty of Forestry, Bogor Agricultural University, Indonesia 3 Faculty of Human Ecology, Bogor Agricultural University, Indonesia DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15294/komunitas.v8i2.5439 Received : 15 March 2016; Accepted: 23 August 2016; Published: 30 September 2016 Abstract Referring to the studies on the success of community forestry, the proponents suggest reducing the influence of the state to the people who maintain traditional institutions in forest management. However, knowledge about the interaction of formal and informal institutions in the context of changing smallholder farmers is still not fully understood. Through a phenomenological approach assessing the differences of forest conserving institutions’performance across villages in Semende, South Sumatra, it is analyzed the process of how traditional institutions can survive or collapse. The main finding shows that traditional institutions gained support and legitimacy from government’s formal institutions to enforce the rules are able to survive until now. The key factor determining the success or failure of traditional institutions is the structure of community’s authority; whether it is based on inherited knowledge or not. It is proposed a new hypothesis for the concept of local institutions that successfully manage natural resources. Keywords: community forestry; phenomenology; protection forest; traditional institution; upland  Corresponding author : Address: Jl. Kol. H. Burlian Km 6,5 Palembang, Indonesia Email : abinuha1976@yahoo.co.id INTRODUCTION The proponents of community forestry re- fers to the results of studies describing the success of various communities in forest management (e.g.Lasco and Pulhin 2006; Pandit and Bevilacqua 2011). Meta-analysis of various research publications on case stu- dies of forest management indicates the rate of deforestation in community-managed fo- rest is lower than that of protection forest (Porter-Bolland et al. 2012). Research on 14 forested countries in Latin America, Afri- ca, and Asia concluded that countries that provide legal rights on forest tenure to in- digenous and local communities are more capable to control deforestation than if the forests belong to the state (Stevens et al. 2014). People who have interacted with the natural environment for a long time, such as Kerinci People at upland Sumatra (Helida et al. 2015), Osing people at Banyuwangi East Java (Sumarmi 2015), Kanekes Sundanese traditional community (Indrawardana 2012), were reported to maintain their tradi- tional forests successfully. According to the- se facts, countries are encouraged to create policies for legitimizing the rights of indige- nous people on land(Hayes 2010). The success of communities in mana- ging forest is inseparable from the existence of local (Brown & Sonwa 2015) or traditional institutions (Kajembe 2003). Forest conser- vation in Southern Madagascar is determin- ed by taboo informal institutions, in the form of trust and sanction system, without any formal institution (Tengö et al. 2007). However, it is questionable whether the lo- cal institutions do not require the presence © 2016 Semarang State University. All rights reserved p-ISSN 2086 - 5465 | e-ISSN 2460-7320 UNNES JOURNALS