Religion, traditional wisdom and deforestation in Indonesia : case study on illegal logging in Wates village, Semarang, Indonesia

Abstract

Wates vilage citizens utterly realized the important of forest fiuction for Semarang and vicinity city such as to avoid flood danger, and to manage temperature. But they perceived that they have nothing to face the strong force of network of the organized wood business. People see that teak wood forest around Wates vilage should be managed by government and they go along to protect it. Forest reinstalling shall be endeavored. But people note that security party shall have super ordinate consciousness in order to not become the facilitator or even supporters in prcesses of teakwood theft. Forest rehabilitation movemeent is not sufficient if they still keep on their exploitative mentality and repudiate the environmentally-friendly mentality. In some previous years they did forest rehabilitation. But then, before it was growing, those woods were hewn back by people and sold, since teakwood deficit at the timber market made it highly saleable even at its still age young. Therefore, it was very important to revitalize the traditional wisdom such as through folklore's wisdom to villagers through generation and reviving custom ceremonies that enable their consciouness-raising on the importance of forest conservation as one of prerequisites for a sustainable village.