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Interactive Land-Use Planning in Indonesian Rain-Forest Landscapes: Reconnecting Plans to Practice

Eva Wollenberg, University of Vermont
Bruce Campbell, Center for International Forestry Research
Edmond Dounias, CIFOR
Petrus Gunarso, Tropenbos
Moira Moeliono, Center for International Forestry Research
Douglas Sheil, Institute of Tropical Forest Conservation

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Abstract

Indonesia’s 1999–2004 decentralization reforms created opportunities for land-use planning that reflected local conditions and local people’s needs. We report on seven years of work in the District of Malinau in Indonesian Borneo that attempted to reconnect government land-use plans to local people’s values, priorities, and practices. Four principles are proposed to support more interactive planning between government and local land users: Support local groups to make their local knowledge, experience, and aspirations more visible in formal land-use planning and decision making; create channels of communication, feedback, and transparency to support the adaptive capacities and accountability of district leadership and institutions; use system frameworks to understand the drivers of change and resulting scenarios and trade-offs; and link analysis and intervention across multiple levels, from the local land user to the district and national levels. We describe the application of these principles in Malinau and the resulting challenges.

Key words

land- use planning; adaptive management; Borneo; decentralization; local knowledge; spatial planning; systems frameworks

Ecology and Society. ISSN: 1708-3087