Policy on locals' rights urgent for conservation
Policy on locals' rights urgent for conservation
JAKARTA (JP): Environmentalists urged the government on Monday
to formulate policies on the rights and responsibilities of
people who live near protected areas.
Speakers at a workshop on conservation agreed yesterday that
policies are needed to ensure the local population's support for
conservation efforts, and to protect their rights when they are
caught in the middle of a conflict of interests between the
government and the private sector.
"We need a policy which determines the rights and conservation
role of communities whose livelihood depend on forest resources,"
said I Ketut Djati of the Jakarta office of the United States
Agency for International Development.
Unless such policies are established, "there are concerns that
community awareness to maintain and use natural resources will
decrease or even disappear," he said. The workshop was held by
the Indonesia office of the World Wide Fund for Nature.
Effendy Sumardja, the assistant to the Minister of Environment
for program planning, said the International Convention on
Biodiversity, which Indonesia ratified last year, mandates
community participation in conservation efforts.
Djati said a number of government rules already touch on the
recognition of the rights of inhabitants. However, the rules
disappear as soon as private concessionaires enter an area
because the locals lack bargaining power, he said.
Godwin Limberg, a WWF official in charge of a conservation
project in Kayan Mentarang, East Kalimantan, said people living
near private forest concessions are often unsure whether they can
harvest and enjoy their own crops.
Competition from outside interests in extracting resources has
often forced people to exploit the environment in a destructive
way. This is despite the fact that local people "often have
customs to never destroy the environment they live in," Limberg
said.
The problem also emerged from a lack of clear policies, he
said.
Djati later told reporters that local people are often treated
as mere objects in conservation projects.
"They are often included in conservation projects...but we
often don't think about their interests from their perspective,"
he said.
The expert named several conditions that should be met, the
first of which is the willingness of locals to be involved in the
programs. The government has launched the "primary environmental
care projects" to raise local peoples' awareness and involvement
in conservation.
Another condition is the support of the local administration,
Djati said.
"Non-governmental organizations often forget the importance of
the government's role in conservation efforts. Neglecting this
factor can boomerang," said Gillian Dias, the WWF coordinator of
primary environmental care projects.
The workshop explored how well the WWF projects met the
conditions.
Nurchalis Fadhli, who works on a WWF project in the Kerinci
Seblat National Park in Sumatra, described through slides how
locals removed boundary markers between the park and the cinnamon
plantation where they work.
One sign post was made into a bridge, Nurchalish said.
Wawan Ridwan, the head of the park, questioned how far
community demands should be tolerated in negotiations when
setting up boundaries between protected areas and the locals'
resources.
"If we tolerate them too much the protected areas could be
destroyed," Wawan said.
Other speakers gave examples of community roles in conserving
the protected areas of Arfak mountain in Manokwari and Wasur
National Park, both in Irian Jaya, and in Tangkoko-Duasudara in
Bitung, North Sulawesi.
The government has secured 19 million hectares of protected
land, 30 million hectares of permanent forests and 2.8 million
hectares of marine protected areas. The areas include 31 national
parks. (anr)