From fence-and-fine to participatory conservation: mechanisms of transformation in conservation governance at the Gunung Halimun-Salak National Park, Indonesia

Abstract

This paper addresses the transformation of forest bureaucracy, which has occurred in accordance with a national policy shift from “fence-and-fine” to “participatory” conservation, and its impact on resource users at Gunung Halimun-Salak National Park in Indonesia and analyzes causal relationships between this transformation and its outcome. The research suggests that the mode of conservation governance was transformed through the implementation of new ways of communication and interaction, learning processes and perceptional and behavioral changes. The result of this analysis indicates that while the dominant discourse of participatory conservation assumes a primary importance of satisfying local economic needs for conservation, what should be emphasized is the process of trust-building and learning between frontline staff and local resource users without which the durability of a conservation institution is questionable. The analysis also reveals both challenges and limitations of a trust-building approach: while the approach effectively functions to halt forest degradation, it might not lead to the rehabilitation of forest ecosystem.

Appendices

Appendix I: Data gathering

1. Outline of the semi-structured interviews at two pilot sites

(a) A set of questions in the interviews

Perception on frontline staff

• Do you know anyone from the national park office?

• Who is often coming to your village?

• When did you first meet him?

• What does he do when he comes to your village?

• Did you have a chance to talk with him?

• If so, what did you talk with him?

• Do you understand what he is talking about?

• Do you agree with him?

• What do you like in his saying? Why?

• What do you dislike in his saying? Why?

• Do you have any expectation on him to do in your village? If so, what?

Perception on frontline before and after the pilot experimentation started

• Did you know him (the field officer) before?

• Did you have a chance to talk with him before?

• Did you feel scared against the field staff before or just the same as now?

• Do you think the work of the field staff before is the same as now?

• If different, what did he do before?

• Did you like it? Why so?

• Do you remember when he started to change his behavior in your village?

• Do you know why he changed?

• Did you like that change? Why?

Group activities during the pilot experimentation

• Do you join group activities? Why?

• What do you do there? For what purpose?

• Do you think these activities are good? Why?

• Do you feel these are Gotong royong? Why?

• Do you think other villagers also feel so?

On forest resource management

• Do you think it is good idea to allocate some forest area for conservation? Why?

• Do you think villagers could agree if their farming is prohibited within conserved area?

• Under what conditions villagers might agree on it?

(b) Selection of respondents

Three criteria were used for selecting respondents: local leaders, economically difficult poor households and others (ordinary households). Local leaders were initially identified by the field officers and confirmed through discussions with them at respective sites. Poor households were identified through discussions with the local leaders. In case of site A, six leaders selected poor households based on the following criteria: (i) the self-sufficiency rate of paddy production; and (ii) duration of food shortage (i.e. procuring foods from relatives). In case of site B, three leaders mentioned there were no households under the category of poor households in their sub-village. The following table shows the breakdown of the respondents.

	Male	Female	Total
Site A
Leaders	6	0	37
Ordinary households	21	7
Poor households	3	0
Site B
Leaders	4	0	11
Ordinary households	3	4
Total	37	11	48

2. Outline of the survey for the scaling-up phase

(a) Participant observation of six frontline staff in 2005

Six frontline staff were nominated by the head of the office at that time considering factors of (i) regional balance of the national park area and (ii) activeness in their professional attitude. The observation of these frontline bureaucrats occurred over a period of 8 weeks in total.

Generally speaking, most of frontline staff (not limited to this six staff) are locally recruited in West Java so that they are Sundanese who speak local language. While they move field offices within the GHSNP area every 3–5 years or so, they are rarely transferred to other national parks except management personnel (there are five management positions at GHSNP). This enabled frontline staff to enhance good understanding of local conditions. Because of the nature of the work (i.e. patrolling of illegal logging and other practices), most of them are male staff and they basically work in the field as a team (mostly two staff in a team).

(b) Guiding questions in semi-structured interviews for 26 frontline staff in 2005–2006

• What do you think your duties are?

• How much percent do you think you have successfully addressed your duties in your daily operations? And which duties do you think you have successfully addressed?

• What is the other half, in other words, which duties you have not addressed sufficiently, or need further improvement?

• What do you think duties of the national park office are?

• How much percent do you think the national park office is addressing its duties successfully in daily operations? And which duties do you think the office has successfully addressed?

• What is the other half, in other words, which duties the office has not addressed sufficiently, or need further improvement? How should they be addressed?

• Which government laws and regulations are important for your daily works?

(c) Guiding questions in semi-structured interviews for 11 frontline staff in 2009

• What is current situation of land and resource use in your responsible area (forestland)?

• How do you work in communities and communicate with local people? How different compared with before?

• What messages and policies do you articulate and deliver to local people?

• What are responses from them? Are there any behavioral changes on land and resource use compared with before?

(d) Content of questionnaire survey for 23 frontline staff in 2009 (Original in Indonesian)

The questionnaire survey was conducted during the monthly meeting of the GHSNP office on April 1, 2009. The instruction was made to survey participants that (i) this survey was conducted for scientific research purpose so that please made sure to make honest responses, and (ii) this questionnaire did not include any questions that would help infer the name of the respondents. The questionnaire was pre-tested with three frontline staff members to ensure the quality and appropriateness of the questions.

• 1. In your routine work, you are visiting sub-villages, aren’t you!? In the last 3 months since the beginning of this year (January–March 2009), how many sub-villages have you visited?

• 2. Among sub-villages you visited, please identify one sub-village which you visited the most frequently during the last 3 months. The following questions are about this sub-village. (Variables that are used for the path analysis, as shown in Fig. 3, are marked with ‘*’.)

  • (a) How many times did you visit this sub-village in the last 3 months?

  • (b) About how many households are there in this sub-village?

  • (c) * Have you stayed over-night there? If yes, how many times did you stay over-night there?

  • (d) Have you ever walked through local forest with villagers?

  • (e) Have you ever convened a sub-village meeting inviting all the villagers? If yes, about how many villagers attended the meeting?

  • (f) In this sub-village, do you already have some villagers whom you can really trust? If yes, how many people?

  • (g) * How different are attitude and behavior of villagers on resource use and forest conservation if you compare them between now and the first time you visited? (scaling of 1–5 in the “Not different/Very different” continuum)

  • (h) How different are communication attitude and behavior of villagers with you if you compare them between now and the first time you visited? (scaling of 1–5 in the “Not different/Very different” continuum)

  • (i) * How often do villagers send mobile phone message to you and visit your office for information sharing, chit-chat or any other purposes? (scaling of 1–5 in the “Never/Very frequently (like every week)” continuum)

  • (j) * Can you already trust villagers’ attitude and willingness on forest conservation? (scaling of 1–5 in the “Never/Already reliable” continuum)

  • (k) Do you think villagers at this sub-village can understand the policy, concept and any conservation messages you delivered to them? (scaling of 1–5 in the “No, they do not understand/Yes, they fully understand” continuum)

• 3. Questions about your opinion on paddy and dry fields that are located within the park area

  • (a) Paddy and dry fields that have been cultivated since before the area became national park should be allowed to formally cultivate. (scaling of 1–5 in the “Disagree/Agree” continuum)

  • (b) Paddy and dry fields should be closed within the park area regardless of their history unless official tenure right is provided. (scaling of 1–5 in the “Disagree/Agree” continuum)

• 4. Questions about your opinion on forest resource harvest within the park area

  • (a) Harvest of non-timber forest products should be allowed if its purpose is limited to self-consumption (scaling of 1–5 in the “Disagree/Agree” continuum)

  • (b) Timber harvest should be allowed if its purpose is limited to self-consumption such as house construction (scaling of 1–5 in the “Disagree/Agree” continuum)

  • (c) I understand the needs of local people on forest products within national park for their daily livelihoods, but it is difficult to formally recognize it. (scaling of 1–5 in the “Disagree/Agree” continuum)

• 5. Others

  • (a) How many years have you already worked at GHSNP? (1–5 years; 6–10 years; more than 10 years)

  • (b) What is your opinion about the budget for field work? (Sufficient; Not sufficient but manageable; Manageable but hard; Very hard but still possible; Not feasible)

  • (c) What do you think are important factors for communities to become committed to forest conservation? (Choose first and second priorities)

    • * More intensive patrolling by frontline staff

    • * Trust-building with local people

    • * Recognition of paddy and dry fields

    • * Livelihood improvement

    • * Policy delivery and law enforcement

    • * Environmental education

    • * Else:

Appendix II: Result of path analysis

Two models were examined as shown in Fig. 5. Model 1 assumed that new ways of communication and interaction affected the transformation of conservation governance both directly and indirectly, and model 2 assumed only indirect path. The analysis was made by using the LISREL program software and Table 7 shows the result of the analysis for the models. Model 1 is not pertinent because the value of RMSEA is more than 0.1 and model 2 is obviously the better fit to the observed data (Revilla et al. 2001).

Fig. 5

Two models for path analysis

Table 7 Result of path analysis for two models (N = 19)