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)