Biodiversity Conservation Network
7. Community Logging in the Rain Forest of West Kalimantan
Location: West Kalimantan, Indonesia
Partners: Harvard University Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology (LTFE)
Government of Indonesia, Ministry of Forestry (GoI-MoF)
Local Community GroupsProject Title: Developing Community Forest Management in Buffer Zones for the Conservation of Biodiversity in Gunung Palung National Park BCN Funding: $586,650 Partner Contribution: $76,604
Grant Period: November 15, 1995 - November 30, 1998
Project Overview
Gunung Palung National Park (GPNP), a 90,000 ha national park in West Kalimantan, Indonesia, contains a complete gradient of tropical rain forest habitats ranging from mangrove forest through swamp and lowland forest up to montane and cloud forest on the top of Mt. Palung. The park also contains a full complement of vertebrates including proboscis monkeys, which are endemic to Borneo, and the largest population of orangutans on the island. The forests surrounding the park are rapidly becoming degraded. Major threats include corporate mechanized logging, conversion to agricultural uses, and legal and illegal hand logging by local villagers.
To counter these threats, the project will set up a small community managed and operated logging enterprise in a 5000 ha buffer zone area bordering GPNP. In the new enterprise, villagers will not only receive better wages for their work, but will also share in the value-added to the wood through a locally owned sawmill. The LTFE project, the first of its kind in Indonesia, also has enormous potential to affect policies regarding community resource management and forestry practices throughout the country.
1996 Accomplishments
The year has been marked by the slow process of working out cooperative arrangements for implementing the project with the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry. However, in retrospect this slow pace is not surprising. Contractual relationships between Harvard and BCN/WWF were not finalized until March of 1996. We are also painfully breaking new ground in so many areas of interinstitutional collaboration in the project both within the Ministry of Forestry, and between local communities, government agencies, and ourselves. This process is made all the more complex as we do not fit the usual model of collaborating bilateral development agencies.
The several months in Jakarta did lead to developing excellent market outlets for sawnwood from the project, both for the greenwood international market and local Jakartabased wood products. This is a major achievement, as we needed to identify agents who we could trust to market products and were genuinely interested in the success of the project.
During this process of getting permits in the cities, we have also tried to develop activities in the field. From January through May, Hikma Lisa, our socioeconomic specialist, worked with local Gunung Palung National Park management staff (KSDA) to signpost the borders of the proposed Community Forest Area and the Park and to initiate patrols of nearby Park borders. Simultaneously, Lisa has been developing the socioeconomic database, ready to initiate baseline monitoring. However, in June, we pulled back from these field activities because as negotiations over the MOU and detailed Project Plan of Operation heated up, we thought it wiser to maintain a low profile a position we currently maintain. Ronnie Cherry, our Field Manager, commenced work in June, and moved to West Kalimantan in late July. Within a few days, Ronnie was initiated into both fieldwork and the confusing, and at times rancorous, meetings with local government agencies. Community members remain committed to the project, but we have been prevented from engaging them in the project until the MOU and Plan of Operation are done, which is frustrating for all of us.
Success Stories
Thanks to our long history of good working relations with hand loggers in the site, their own keen desire for the project to be implemented, and the work coordinating park and community forest signposting activities, logging came to a complete halt along the Meliya river system by late 1995. Ironically, at a July meeting in Jakarta, the government Parks expert for Gunung Palung then presented his opinion that project location should be changed because illegal logging is not a problem there! Apparently, it seemed inconceivable that local people would organize themselves to begin managing and protecting forest resources because the conservation based enterprise linkage makes sense to them.
To illustrate the serendipity of enterprisebased conservation: the Indonesian passenger across from me on an August flight from Jakarta to Pontianak strikes up a conversation with me by asking me where I am from. For amusement, I reply that I am from Sukadana, the small town and district on the west of Gunung Palung National Park, where the project is to be based. Catching my drift, he jokes that he is from America, and it turns out that he spends a lot of time in the US where his son is going to college. We talk some more and it turns out that he is from Sukadana and is now a wealthy businessman! Further, because of his strong commitment to his poor roots and his love for the enchanting small village where he grew up, he just obtained a license to build a paper pulp mill to provide employment. I gave him a quick discourse on conservation biology, and the likely horrific effects of this pulp mill for the National Park, and of course described the option that our proposed sustainable forestry project might provide. This led to my presenting the project to he and his staff that night in Pontianak in a long seminar and discussion which resulted in his sincere commitment to back the project.
Challenges
Coordinating national, provincial and district government agencies in the face of staff turnover and a complex project in both its rationale and implementation remains our greatest challenge. We are frequently caught in the vice of tensions between these hierarchical levels of government, each of which can feel left out. While central authorities admonished us to avoid giving presentations to or updating provincial authorities, this then led to recriminations by local authorities. We need to develop better means of disseminating information among these agencies on a faster time frame. This is part of a broader problem of identifying a good set of relationships.
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