6/20/14 10:44 PMPrivatizing Indonesia Conservation Efforts - The Jakarta Globe

Page 1 of 3http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/privatizing-indonesias-conservation-efforts/

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Privatizing Indonesiaʼs Conservation EffortsBy Erik Meijaard & Gabriella Fredriksson on 11:33 am Apr 06, 2014

Category Commentary, OpinionTags: conservation, Indonesia environment

The Indonesian conservation authorities have been quietly experimenting with the privatization of conservation management, aplan announced by the Forestry Minister in 2010. There is an urgent need to expand this experiment.

Presently, not much is working well in Indonesiaʼs protected area and threatened species management. A study in theIndonesian Journal of Conservation showed that Indonesiaʼs protected areas lost an additional 2.6 percent of their forest coverbetween 2000 and 2010. Other studies show protected areas all over Indonesia are losing species, such as orangutans, and amyriad of fish and corals, at very high rates.

People living in and around Indonesiaʼs protected areas often tell us that the legal monitoring of the area has no relevance tothem. Communities habitually ignore regulations, and use the land for agriculture, hunting, uncontrolled fishing or other purposes.For all they care, protected areas might as well not exist.

A 2012 study in the journal Conservation and Society shows that communities are often supported by local politicians andopportunistic schemers who consider the protected areas to be a constraint on economic development. In doing so, they ignoreor are oblivious to the often vital environmental services that these areas provide.

In short, protected area management in Indonesia is in serious trouble.

There are various reasons for this state of affairs, but an important one is the inadequate management put in place by theconservation department (PHKA) within the Forestry Minister and other responsible authorities, such as police and the judiciary,for dealing with the conservation challenges. There is a lack of capacity in planning and enforcing conservation management,and without effective enforcement, rules are habitually broken.

Fair enough; Indonesia has 496 terrestrial and 40 marine protected areas, covering 282,342 square kilometers of land and sea.Managing all this is certainly a challenge. But, why not share the burden with others?

Not all is doom and gloom in Indonesian conservation, and there are good examples of effective management implemented bydedicated individuals, local leaders and environmental groups, but with limited or no involvement of the national conservationauthorities.

The Sungai Wain protection forest in East Kalimantan, managed by an independent organization supported by local governmentand stakeholders, has retained its rich forests that maintain a constant water supply to nearby Balikpapan and its oil refinery. Thishappened despite rampant illegal logging and fires that threatened to wipe out the forests in the 1990s.

The Wehea area, also in East Kalimantan, is managed by highly committed local communities and financially supported by localgovernment and industries. Again, it has effectively managed to terminate all threats to conservation, including illegal logging,poaching etc.

The Tambling Wildlife Nature Conservation project in Sumatra obtained an agreement from the Forestry Minister for aconservation management lease of 45,000 hectares of forest and marine areas. It seems that illegal logging, hunting and fishingin Tambling are under control and wildlife populations are bouncing back.

The Begawan Foundation achieved what government-led projects could not: a significant increase in the wild population of theBali starling, a nearly extinct bird species. Before the program started, the estimated number of these birds in the wild had fallento about five. Effective breeding and safe release programs have now boosted the wild populations to over 60 birds.

It is important for PHKA to recognize under which circumstances such conservation efforts are working. This would help strategicdecision-making on where privatization of conservation should be encouraged and officially endorsed. The recipe for success

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6/20/14 10:44 PMPrivatizing Indonesia Conservation Efforts - The Jakarta Globe

Page 2 of 3http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/privatizing-indonesias-conservation-efforts/

includes ingredients such as strong, long-term commitment to conservation, law enforcement, leadership, and organization.Adequate funding is also important, but effective conservation is more about how money is spent rather than how much.

So letʼs expand PHKAʼs conservation privatization experiment. This could happen in formally protected areas in which allmanagement responsibilities and rights, including revenue collection, are passed on to a private sector group. PHKA can thenfocus its efforts on meeting conservation targets, and developing new policies. The previously mentioned Tambling is anexample.

Privatization could also happen outside the formal protected area network, where non-government groups (NGOs, communities,businesses) take responsibility for conservation management.

Law enforcement is a tough one though, because it cannot easily be privatized under Indonesiaʼs legal system. It appears thatprivatized conservation would work best when there is limited need for law enforcement. This could be in remote areas wherethere are few threats to conservation. It could also be in areas where local communities or government strongly supportconservation, or are willing to help enforce laws. Wehea and Sungai Wain are examples of this.

Indonesiaʼs conservation management is bad enough, so why not scale up an experiment that has been proven to work quitewell, to see if Indonesiaʼs presently negative conservation trend can be reversed? After all, Indonesia still has some of the mostoutstanding wildlife resources on the planet, and it is the governmentʼs legal mandate to ensure those resources are maintained,not wasted.

Erik Meijaard and Gabriella Fredriksson are conservation scientists and practitioners with long-term conservation experience inIndonesia.

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6/20/14 10:44 PMPrivatizing Indonesia Conservation Efforts - The Jakarta Globe

Page 3 of 3http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/opinion/privatizing-indonesias-conservation-efforts/

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• Reply •

billy • 2 months ago

conservation needs to be supported by the government 100 pct!!!!

it should be heavily funded by the government also...

without conservation there will be no indonesia left... no tourists!!! just a load of muslims praying on there

knees for forgiveness that they will never get !!!!

• Reply •

suki • 2 months ago

wow, so if public care-taking fails we should let the privatizers? seems an aggravation of the difficultly here.

the core-problem being the inadequate governmental protection. (i am a scientist and practitioner with long-

term public-private partnership criticism experience) privatization is a neoliberal concept and the root of all

evil. this will happen with failed states: http://www.truth-out.org/news/...

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