Mamberamo, Papua, Indonesia

In developing a Biodiversity Conservation Corridor in Mamberamo watershed (Papua, Indonesia), Conservation International (CI) recognises the need to find suitable means to allow local communities to participate in decision-making processes, and to build capacity of locally based researchers and government staff to assist in planning and developing this conservation programme. CI-Papua therefore requested CIFOR to jointly develop a capacity building project for implementing a MLA approach in Mamberamo. The project took place in 2004 and had three phases: theoretical, field and analysis training.

CI, in collaboration with CIFOR, selected two villages for the pilot fieldwork: Kwerba, an “unofficial” traditional village in the hills, and Papasena-I, a registered village in the plains, comprising a total of 134 households. The main objectives of the project were the identification of key local sites, species and resources; the identification of local conservation concerns and priorities; the identification of possible threats to biodiversity; assessment of importance of species from a local perspective; and training of CI and government staff in the process (CIFOR, 2004).

CIFOR and CI organised the training and planned the survey. The trainees collected and analysed the data supervised by a botanist from LIPI and CIFOR staff. All the elements of the published methods were used for the purpose of the training. Adjustments to questionnaires were made to fit local terminology, conditions and context. The villagers of Kwerba and Papasena-I participated as respondents and helpers during the fieldwork. CI staff; students, teaching staff and alumni from Universitas Negeri Papua and Universitas Cenderawasih; and civil servants from the Provincial Environmental Impact Monitoring Agency and the Provincial Nature Resource Conservation Agency participated in the training events.

This was the first time that CI did a biodiversity assessment from a local perspective in Indonesia, and it prompted them to extend the cooperation with CIFOR through a follow-up project to define the specific needs of each stakeholder, adapt the methods, propose new conservation related activities, and identify new project locations in the Mamberamo area. This took place in late 2006 in Kwerba, Papasena and Kay villages, with three major activities: a socioeconomic survey including a family inventory in terms of land-ownership, ground-checking activities to relate observed land-use to local people’s perceptions, and traditional monitoring for high economic-value and critically threatened species.

The strength of this approach was its ability to build trust between villagers and the team (including CI). This is not a trivial achievement, as people were inherently suspicious and wary of outsiders who have interest in their natural resources. Both villages especially appreciated the participatory maps, and youths in Papasena spent many hours preparing drawings. People quickly adopted the idea of making a map of their own territories and claimed the maps as part of their identity, so they not only helped researchers to build common understanding of the survey area, but also raised people’s commitment to participation in the project.

Villagers also expressed enthusiasm for a continued relationship with CI, supporting conservation activities that concur with their hopes for sustainability of the forest. Such synergy is an important component of locally driven conservation and will help to avoid conflicts. Local people would like use the participatory map for discussing land conflicts and rights to resources (e.g. crocodile hunting, logging). Due to the positive impact of this project, CI was allowed by local land owners to conduct a biodiversity survey in the Foja Mountains, highly valued and strictly protected by Papasena villagers (Yance de Fretes, 2006; Sheil and Boissière, 2006).

In 2006, the necessity of a follow-up became rapidly obvious, as the 2004 survey was limited to two villages only. It was decided that the new activities would include follow-up in the two former villages of the training, more focused on conservation aspects, and an adaptation of the MLA tools to other villages in the Mamberamo region.

As part of the new set of activities, a kick-off workshop was held in Jayapura the 10 and 11 May 2006. One goal of the workshop was to bring together different stakeholders, at the provincial, district and local levels. A list of activities was proposed as result from the group discussion during the two days workshop. Based on the recommendations of the workshop, CI and CIFOR continued to conduct field activities in Mamberamo Biodiversity Corridor (MBC) in November and December 2006. In result we present the main findings, after analysis, from our survey (socio-economic data and mapping), and discuss about the way such information can be used by Conservation International (CI) to achieve conservation in Mamberamo that considers the local perspectives on land management (CIFOR, In prep 2008).