Strategic Customary Village Leadership in the Context of MarineConservation and Development in Southeast Maluku, Indonesia

Dirk J. Steenbergen1,2,3

Published online: 6 June 2016# The Author(s) 2016. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com

Abstract This article critically examines engagements ofvillage leaders in an NGO-facilitated participatory conser-vation program in eastern Indonesia. It explores how theprograms implementation strengthened leadership legiti-macy of a dominant customary social group. Customaryleaders ensured distribution according to particular norms,and in organizing village governance upheld specific in-terests and claims over natural resources. Villagers outsideof the customary group remained marginalized in villagegovernance, despite being important stakeholders.Findings reveal complex relationships between leadersand villagers that were strongly framed by orders of pow-er and cultural history, which influenced how and to whatextent peripheral groups participated. The case study con-cludes that village leaders can form effective avenues todeliver on conservation outcomes. However, in their pre-occupation with maintaining leadership legitimacy, theymay inadequately address dynamic intra-community ten-sions that could jeopardize long-term outcomes. Co-management partners can play significant roles inadapting management and prompting more inclusive gov-ernance processes.

Keywords Customary leadership . Local governance .

Community-based natural resourcemanagement . Marineconservation . Eastern Indonesia

Introduction

Contemporary conservation and development practices in-creasingly recognize the importance of social justice and therights of local/indigenous groups (Peterson et al. 2008), andare progressively being implemented through moredecentralized management frameworks (Bardhan 2002). InIndonesia the political decentralization processes introducedsince 1999, with the enactment of the regional autonomy law,1

devolved formal administrative authority from central to pro-vincial, district and subdistrict levels in part to catalyze morelocal involvement (Hadiz 2004; Resosudarmo 2004; Hidayat2005; Yamazaki et al. 2015). Local resource user groups inIndonesia are assuming significant roles in terms of both thephysical implementation of conservation and natural resourcemanagement projects and the design of associated interven-tions and approaches (Hidayat and Antlov 2004; Fox et al.2005; Fritzen 2007). Although this is arguably positive, criti-cisms of community-based approaches often allude to sub-stantial discrepancies between projected outputs from inter-ventions and the reality of on-the-ground results (Cleaver1999), and contribute to perceived failure of community-based initiatives (Dasgupta and Beard 2007). Projects indeedare rarely implemented as stipulated in a-priori project plans;however this article is careful not to assume this as failure.Instead, it endeavors to show how local leadership strategiesare applied to access, or appropriate, project resources toward

1 Law No. 22/1999 on regional autonomy and later through the revisedLaw No. 32/2004 on local government.

* Dirk J. Steenbergendirk.steenbergen@cdu.edu.au

1 Charles Darwin University, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia2 North Australia Marine Research Alliance, Arafura Timor Research

Facility, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia3 Associate Fellow to the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University,

Perth, Western Australia, Australia

Hum Ecol (2016) 44:311327DOI 10.1007/s10745-016-9829-6

http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10745-016-9829-6&domain=pdf

community wide, dominant group and/or private interests incases where external frameworks are flexible enough to allowvillage leadership to adapt them. It thus critically examinesassumptions of self-interested leadership and elite capturein natural resource management (Platteau and Gaspart 2003;Persha and Andersson 2014).

A primary objective of community-based conservation ini-tiatives, as well as centrally coordinated rural development pro-grams, is to achieve equity in benefit distribution and allow afair allocation of resources so as to gain maximum breadth inbeneficiaries and efficacy of interventions (Klain et al. 2014).However, in establishing collaborative partnerships, often toolittle is understood of the local processes and politics of partic-ipation, or how roles of leadership are enacted, by whom andwhy. The influx of external resources into villages through suchprograms, in cases where different understandings and culturesof governance meet, may well produce contextually relevanthybrid practices (Cinner and Aswani 2007). As a result, newgovernance and decision-making processes form that draw tovarying degrees from official project-driven governing tools,administrative government, as well as customary law andnorms (Cohen and Steenbergen 2015).2 Projects, and the localgovernance landscapes within which they are implemented, areactively transformed by local leaders roles in implementation,despite the defined objectives, methods and outputs stipulatedin management plans (Morgan-Trimmer 2013). New collabo-rations develop through negotiations, amalgamations and con-solidations at the interface between local and outsiders inter-pretations of the roles and functions of leadership in a particulargovernance context. Critically examining how external re-sources are channeled through social groups in a communitywill reveal what structures and interests influence the directionof a project. This in turn can more accurately determine thevalue and sustainability of conservation project outcomes, asmeasured in terms of environmental change as well as theirdifferent impacts on various groups and individuals.

Elite Capture, Leadership and Participation

Much of the attention in conservation and development pro-gram design is dedicated to creating systems that minimizefree-rider behavior, corrupt practice or elite capture, and thatmaximize fair and targeted allocation or equitable benefit dis-tribution (Bodin and Crona 2008).3 Although program

designs often assume action by elite groups or individuals tobe rationally driven by self-interest over collective goals(Gugerty and Kremer 2008), in fact these groups may employstrategies tomaximize collective benefit in ways that adhere tolocal dominant culture and/or overcome contextual challenges(which may not have been accounted for in formal programdesign). In his review of approaches addressing elite capture,Wong (2010: 2) identifies counter and co-opt strategies todeal with elite capture. The former involve approaches thatsuggest a need to counteract elite tendencies through theirexclusion from project management and design, based on as-sumptions that elites operate purely out of self-interest andthus are by definition impediments to collective good out-comes. The latter approaches suggest that cooperation withelite individuals or groups may provide opportunities to useexisting leadership legitimacies constructively to incorporateotherwise disenfranchised and marginal groups. This alignswith more nuanced understandings of behavior by elites orleaders as being subject to complex relationships with, andaccountabilities to, a wider society (Platteau and Abraham2002). In the context of this study, local elites are identifiedas those customary leaders of a community, whose privilegedpositions are defined by family networks, land holdings, reli-gious affiliation, personal history and personality (followingDasgupta and Beard 2007). These elites hold significantvillage-wide governing power and represent a majority groupin an administrative village which also includes a minoritygroup outside the customary (adat) network that despite itsmarginal position forms an important stakeholder group inconservation management contexts.

Studying impacts of collaborations across the interface be-tween community leadership and external actors requires in-depth inquiry into the social and political complexities withina village leadership constellation, and between leaders andmembers of other social groups. This in turn reflects howand why particular individuals, as elites or otherwise, appearas community leaders. Relations between different leadershipconstellations that flow from underlying social divisions, byno means suggest that the social groups identified here arehomogenous and without internal contestation. In focusingon current dominant leadership constellations of the villagescustomary (adat) core families the study highlights potentiallycontentious problems of representation at village level(Baland and Platteau 1997, 1998; Lund and Saito-Jensen2013) so as to understand how different groups operate undercurrent leadership conditions. To make sense of village lead-ership, the study acknowledges that leadership materializesfrommore than simply the actions of individuals in leadershippositions; aligning with Case et al.s (2015: 3) understandingof leadership that argues for more Bcomplex, rounded, andnuanced interpretations of leadership practices, which are sen-sitive to cultural contexts, plural perspectives, andcontestation^. The dynamic nature of these constellations,

2 In the Indonesian context discussed in this article, local governancetypically involves some combination of state-based administrative village(desa dinas) government and customary village (desa adat) norms, rulesand values.3 This is also reflected in the considerable body of literature devoted toaddressing issues of elite capture in propoor natural resourcemanagementand development initiatives (Platteau 2004; Dasgupta and Beard 2007;Persha and Andersson 2014)

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and the changing relationships which predispose various alli-ances or oppositions, thus warra