Cattle, Cockatoos, Chameleons, and Ninja Turtles: Seeking Sustainability in Forest Management and Conservation in Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

Abstract

"During the past three decades, Indonesia's forest lands have been mapped, classified, and utilized to meet increasing demands for commercial exploitation, watershed protection, recreation, and biodiversity conservation. Throughout the archipelago, previously isolated forest areas have been opened up through rapid development of roads and the extension of government administrative units. Shifting demographic and economic trends have hastened the pace of change and the interest in these forest areas, intensifying resource management conflicts. Rural communities living in and around these protected areas have been gradually marginalized from decision-making processes and disenfranchised from important forest resources.

"Recent Ministry of Forestry policies and programs have attempted to reconcile growing conflicts over forest management through a variety of approaches to social and community forestry (Kartsubrata, Sunito, and Suharjito, 1994). These efforts have also been expanded to encompass conservation areas, with emphasis on approaches which can broadly be identified as integrated conservation and development programs (ICDPs) (Wells, Brandon, and Hannah, 1992; Brown and Wyckoff-Baird, 1992). International agencies such as the World Wide Fund for Nature, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank have promoted these approaches in a variety of sites in Indonesia and throughout the region with mixed results (Wells, 1997). Assessments of these programs have pointed out the need for an eco-regional approach, the importance of information gathering and adaptive management strategies, and emphasis on securing economic benefits for local people, and the value of consensus building and collaboration (Larson, Freudenberger and Wyckoff-Baird, 1997).

"This paper draws on the experiences of the Nusa Tenggara Uplands Development Consortium, an inter-agency network which seeks to address key technical, institutional, and policy issues related to poverty alleviation and environmental conservation in the Nusa Tenggara region of eastern Indonesia. In the past three years, the Consortium's Conservation Working Group has catalyzed and monitored the emergence of new collaborative alliances addressing the challenges of forest and conservation management in several priority conservation sites across this unique region. Key interventions developed to facilitate these multi-stakeholder approaches to forest management have included community organizing, coalition building, joint fact-finding, and participatory research, training, and capacity building, along with a variety of innovative strategies for convening diverse stakeholder groups at both the local and the regional level.

"The paper and presentation summarizes the evolution of this network and the lessons learned in mitigating conflicts and building collaborative approaches to forest management. The analysis draws on experience from site- based interventions in eight forest conservation areas in Nusa Tenggara, and seeks to draw on this broader regional approach to offer insights for program and policies related to forest and conservation management."