Deforestation as a catalyst for natural disaster and community suffering: A cycle in the socioecological system

Lore Lindu National Park (LLNP) is a conservation area that contains a lot of wood resources. Various illegal community activities have become widespread, such as illegal mining and illegal logging. So, this research aims to determine the involvement of communities around forest areas in material and wood theft from June to October 2021. To determine forest encroachment, we find explanatory variables, using qualitative description integrated with perceptual tests and Classification and Regression Tree (CART) analysis. Based on the results of the 10-fold cross-validation analysis with the smallest Rcv (x-Val relative error) value of 0.428, with a classification accuracy of 68.6%, a four-node optimum tree was obtained, which explained that as many as 86 forest encroachers were victims of a vast landslide disaster along with flood and whirlwind, due to which there was no longer any property left for them. Their encroachment affected the condition of land cover. The data on the land cover change, from 2010 to 2020, showed a reduction of 15,369.20 ha or 6.90%, which indicated a severe threat to the sustainability of LLNP as a biodiversity conservation area that should be protected. The involvement in illegal logging by communities living around the forest areas resulted from the loss of their agricultural land for their livelihoods due to natural disasters such as flood, landslide and whirlwind that destroyed infrastructure and community settlement facilities. As a result, these losses and destruction were a catalyst for forest destruction. Initially being in the frontline for preserving the forest, however, the community has now turned into silent partners with licensed wood businesspeople. The community eventually becomes a subsystem in the social ecology system (SES), which negatively affects the destruction of forest resources, production and conservation forests.