R. Iwan

Facilitating Cooperation During Times Of Chaos: Spontaneous Orders And Muddling Through In Malinau District, Indonesia

Adaptive management has become increasingly common where natural resource managers face complex and uncertain conditions. The collaboration required among managers and others to do adaptive management, however, is not always easy to achieve. We describe efforts to work with villagers and government officials in Malinau, East Kalimantan Indonesia, where a weak, uncertain institutional setting and complex shifting political landscape made formal cooperation among these groups for forest management problematic. Through successive trials, the team learned instead to work with and enhance a “spontaneous order” of cooperation using four tactics: (1) continuous physical presence, (2) regular contact with the people who advised and were close to major decision makers, (3) maintenance of multiple programs to fit the needs of different interest groups, and (4) hyperflexibility in resource allocation and schedules.

Incentives to conserve or convert? Can conservation compete with coal in Kutai National Park, Indonesia?

Discussions on climate change and potential mechanisms to support conservation efforts have fixed the attention on incentives to conserve and protect forests. However, incentives alone will not do the job for forest conservation; what might? We use the case of Kutai National Park to examine the potential for incentives to boost conservation and the urgent need to simultaneously apply disincentives against conversion of the park. Kutai National Park is an extreme case: conservation values have to compete with the value of vast deposits of high-grade coal. The park management unit has tried to calculate the conservation benefits derived from the park ecosystem, but these values are miniscule compared to the alternatives of mining and logging. Incentives for encroachment and the conversion of the park are the easily accessible timber and enormous known coal deposits. These resources provide immediate tangible benefits for the settlers in the park and the local government to exploit the park, and affect local possibilities for conserving it. If we are to be serious about conserving important ecosystems, incentives alone are insufficient. Action is needed to ensure that all stakeholders support the national governments commitment to preserve representative examples of biodiversity and ecosystems; each stakeholder will have to make some sacrifices.

Bagaimana masyarakat dapat dilibatkan dalam perencanaan tata ruang kabupaten

Ketika wakil masyarakat Desa Sengayan (Kabupaten Malinau, Kalimantan Timur) ditanya bagaimana penggunaan lahan di desanya di masa mendatang, mereka memberikan gambaran yang jelas. Wilayah desa harus dibagi antara daerah pertanian (perladangan dan mungkin persawahan), hutan produksi, hutan kas desa dan hutan wisata. Mereka juga mengatakan tertarik akan pengembangan kelapa sawit di sebagian wilayah desa, walaupun pemerintah kabupaten merencanakan perkebunan kelapa sawit di wilayah lain. Selain itu masyarakat khawatir tentang rencana pengembangan perkebunan akasia di wilayah Desa Sengayan. Warta kebijakan ini melaporkan kajian tentang peluang dan keterbatasan perencanaan tata ruang desa di dua lokasi di Kabupaten Malinau Kalimantan Timur, sebagai landasan perencanaan tata ruang kabupaten. Pemanfaatan masukan dari perencanaan tata guna lahan desa untuk proses formal perencanaan tata ruang tingkat Kabupaten menghadapi beberapa tantangan, seperti kebutuhan waktu dan tenaga serta koordinasi antar desa. Meskipun demikian masukan dari desa akan sangat bermanfaat, baik untuk pemerintah kabupaten maupun masyarakat. Misalnya, pengetahuan lokal terinci tentang pemanfaatan lahan dan potensi sumberdaya alam yang ada. Melalui keterlibatan masyarakat dalam tahap perencanaan, tata ruang didasarkan atas mufakat mendukung penerapan rencana tata ruang. Pada bagian akhir kami mengajukan beberapa saran bagaimana pemerintah kabupaten dapat sungguh-sungguh melibatkan masyarakat dalam perencanaan tata ruang.

How can communities be included in district land use planning? Experience from Malinau District, East Kalimantan

When the village representatives of Sengayan (Kabupaten Malinau, East Kalimantan) were asked how they envisaged future land use in their village area they gave a clear picture. The village territory should be divided between agricultural use (upland rice and possibly irrigated rice and cash crop development), production forest and community forest and conservation of forest in the form of protected forest and forest for ecotourism. They have an interest in developing oil palm plantations in their territory, although the district government plans oil palm in a different area, the village is concerned about government plans to develop acacia plantation in their village area. In this policy brief we use the experience with land use planning gained in two locations in the Malinau district (East Kalimantan) to analyze the opportunities and the limitations to inclusion of village land use planning in district land use planning. Including inputs from village land use planning into the larger formal land use planning process faces several difficulties such as time and labor demand and inter-village coordination. We emphasize the potential benefits that can be achieved both for the local government and the communities from a better understanding of communities existing land use and resource potential and authority for enforcing agreements. By involving communities in planning, a district land use plan is based on a wider consensus supporting acceptance and implementation of the land use plan. We provide suggestions for ways to encourage local government to meaningfully involve communities in land use planning through mapping village land uses.