The Urgency of Tropical Studies Based Social Entrepreneurship in the Covid 19 Period

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has not only caused a health crisis, but has also affected Indonesia's micro and macro
economy. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has not only suppressed the manufacturing sector, but also
the UMKM sector since April 2020. Around 1.5 million employees have been laid off (1.2 million workers
are from the formal sector, 265,000 from the informal sector). The business sector that experienced a decline
was in the field of agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, which experienced a decline of 3.88%, and the processing
industry experienced a decline of 10.97%. In this crisis condition, attention is needed from the government to
revive the community's economy by carrying out various social-based economic empowerment programs,
especially in tropical forest areas. The tropical rain forest area is an area that has a very important role for life
on earth. The diversity of natural and human resources in it is a potential that can be utilized for human survival
and the environment. Various environmental and social problems arise due to economic exploitation in tropical
rain forest areas causing economic inequality for the surrounding community. People who originally depended
on the environment as a source of livelihood lost their livelihoods due to exploitation. Social entrepreneurship
is a social action that is integrated in economic activities that produces outcomes in the form of increasing
community welfare, eradicating poverty and increasing survival skills of a community. The Covid-19
pandemic which lasted for approximately 2 years caused various economic and social impacts, one of which
was the decline in people's economic income. The purpose of this study is to describe the importance of tropical
studies-based social entrepreneurship in the Covid-19 period. This research method is a literature review that
comes from various journals and relevant research results from various institutions that carry out social
entrepreneurship activities. The results of the study concluded that social entrepreneurship is important and
needs to be developed to improve people's living standards, be able to eradicate poverty and unemployment
through a series of activities that increase skills in community members or society. The development of social
entrepreneurship needs to be in synergy with the university curriculum so that it can provide opportunities for
students to carry out various social entrepreneurship innovations that are beneficial to society.