Village Initiatives for Fire Prevention and Peatland Restoration in Riau After the Enactment of the 2014 Village Law

Abstract

Since Indonesia enacted the Village Law of 2014, fiscal transfers from the central and district governments to villages have increased markedly. As a consequence, high expectations are placed on villages to initiate local-level approaches to peatland restoration. Inclusion of a wide range of community stakeholders in the processes of determining these initiatives is assumed to produce sustainable development outcomes. To analyze village initiatives and determine to what extent villages have earmarked parts of their budgets for environmental programs, this chapter examines the case of Pelalawan District in Riau Province. To examine how local communities have been involved in the process of planning such initiatives, it focuses on one village, Rantau Baru. Our study found that villages have started to plan and execute low-cost programs for environmental protection. However, budgeted programs for environmental protection accounted for only a tiny proportion of total village expenditure; therefore, these initiatives represent only small and gradual change. Moreover, power in decision-making processes tends to be limited to a few village officials. Our quantitative survey on participation in village development meetings also indicates that such meetings are dominated by local elites, to be more specific, by peatland owners and educated people. Given that Rantau Baru completely complies with the existing rules for community engagement, more innovative arrangements beyond existing regulations are needed to engage a wide range of actors in budget-making processes.

8.1 Introduction

Since Indonesia enacted the Village Law in 2014 (Law No.6/2014), fiscal transfers to villages have markedly increased. The central government launched the Village Fund (Dana Desa, DD) scheme to provide grants to all villages in the country. District governments, the second tier of local government,¹ were also obliged to significantly increase their existing grants to villages, which are known as Village Fund Allocations² (Alokasi Dana Desa, ADD). These newly increased fiscal resources provided villages with more discretion to plan and execute development projects. In utilizing their own budgets, villages gained the ability to pursue policies in various sectors, including environmental protection. On the restoration of peatland and fire prevention, as with many other issues, villages have been expected to take the initiative to reduce problems on their own.

Such expectations are presumably based on the following three assumptions. First, villagers live near plantations and forests and thus stand at the forefront of fighting forest fires associated with peatland degradation. Being among the most vulnerable to the adverse impacts of peatland degradation, villagers are expected to have a compelling need to respond to the problems (Wahyudi and Wicaksono 2020) and one of the villagers’ demands is envisaged to be the sustainable use of peatlands (Hapsari et al. 2020, p. 3). Second, local communities are considered “more cognizant of the intricacies of local ecological processes and practices” than the state (Brosius et al. 1998, p. 158) and thus able to provide “local-level solutions derived from community initiatives” (Leach et al. 1999, p. 225). Third, when it comes to development planning, villages are considered more inclusive, or at least to have lower barriers to participation, than upper administration levels. One of the crucial arguments of participatory planning is that the inclusion of a wide range of community stakeholders in decision-making processes produces sustainable development outcomes (World Bank 2020, p. 12). All three assumptions point to local-level community engagement as the critical component to finding solutions to environmental issues and to achieving environmentally sustainable development.

Acknowledging the potential benefits of incorporating knowledge and opinions from villagers for peatland management, as well as the increasing importance of village budgets in terms of volume, the central government, international donors, and local governments have created various schemes to encourage villages to make development decisions for peatland restoration. The Peatland Restoration Agency (Badan Restorasi Gambut, BRG), the central government’s unit in charge of peatland restoration between 2016 and 2020, was one of the most active institutions in offering such incentives. BGR has highly touted the achievements of its incentives, as will be discussed later.

Encouraged by various schemes, not a small number of villages have indeed taken initiatives to implement programs for peatland restoration. Village governments have become increasingly indispensable actors in peatland management. These initiatives have received scant attention in the study of peatland management, however. Many studies discuss the role of local communities (Mizuno et al. 2016), but rarely address village governments as key actors. While some studies discuss government policies, they focus on the role of central and district governments (Januar et al. 2021). These oversights may be attributable to the well-known infamy of village governance in Indonesia as ineffective, inefficient, and corrupt (Lewis 2015). Such biases may only emphasize the limitations of village-based peatland restoration initiatives. As an opening for further understanding of current peatland management, however, village-based initiatives merit further analysis.

In order to fill this void in the study of peatland management, this chapter discusses how village governments have utilized their own budgets for peatland restoration and fire prevention since the enactment of the new Village Law. It then examines to what extent local communities have been involved in the planning of such environmental protection projects, with the aim of developing discussion of the sustainability of these projects.

To examine the above points, this study adopts a case study approach and selects the case of Pelalawan in Riau Province. Pelalawan is in an area prone to forest fires and, as will be discussed later, is one of the pioneering districts attempting a new approach to encourage villages to implement environmental protection projects. To analyze community involvement, this chapter discusses the case of Rantau Baru village in Pelalawan, where our research team conducted a questionnaire survey of all households in the village on various issues, including their perceptions of peatlands and level of participation in village governance.

This chapter is organized as follows. Following an overview of the increased budgetary resources of villages and surrounding institutional arrangements³ to encourage community involvement in development planning under the current village law system (Sect. 8.2), Sect. 8.3 discusses the schemes and regulations enacted at different administration levels to encourage villages to utilize their budgets for peatland restoration. Section 8.4 analyzes the expenditures of village governments on environmental projects in Pelalawan District in comparison to the highly promoted achievements of the BRG program’s targeted villages. Section 8.5 examines whether Rantau Baru village communities are involved in the planning process for environmental protection and identifies three interrelated challenges the village faces in incorporating the opinions of a wide range of community members. Finally, this chapter concludes by considering some implications of this analysis for future arrangements encouraging community-based peatland restoration programs.

8.2 Overview of Institutional Arrangements Under the New Village Law

8.2.1 Increased Village Budgets

The Village Law of 2014 has established two major revenue resources for village budgets: DD from the central government and ADD from district governments. The central government launched the DD program in 2015 and allocated IDR 21 trillion to approximately 74,000 villages. The annual amount of DD has continually increased from IDR 47 trillion in 2016 to IDR 60 trillion in 2017 and IDR 70 trillion in 2019.⁴

Parallel to DD, ADD to villages has also increased considerably. The new Village Law obliges district governments to provide ADD, which amounts to at least 10 percent of the national balance transfers they receive (after deducting special allocation grants⁵). Within a few years of this newly imposed obligation, almost all districts began allocating the required amount of ADD.⁶

Together DD and ADD account for approximately 80 percent of total village revenue (World Bank 2020). From these two resources alone, on average each village receives IDR 1.3 billion annually (2017–2019). Before the enactment of the new Village Law, because of limited budgets, many villages spent little on development programs, with most of their budgets spent on administrative costs, such as the salaries of village officials. In contrast, under the new arrangement, more than half of village budgets are spent on infrastructure (World Bank 2020). This suggests that, whether in the form of infrastructure, agricultural training, or others, villages have sufficient revenues to fund environmental protection measures, if they choose to do so.

Thus, as a result of newly introduced DD and increased ADD, the prerequisite to act on restoring peatland and fire prevention was upheld for villages. Village heads and officials, in consultation with village councils, decide how villages spend their budgets. The extent to which local communities are involved in such decisions is another important topic.

8.2.2 Arrangements to Encourage Community Involvement

The new Village Law emphasizes participatory planning and institutionalized several new mechanisms to facilitate community engagement. The first of these is the village forum, or Musdes (Musyawarah Desa) in Indonesian, in which participants discuss a village budget plan. Villages are required to hold musdes in order to receive DD and ADD. They are organized by village councils each year around June (MoHA Regulation 114 of 2014).

Indonesia has had a similar village forum called Musrenbangdes (Musyawarah Pembangunan Desa, or village development planning meeting) in place since the 1980s. This pre-existing forum is organized by village officials each year around January (Law 25 of 2004 on National Development Plan). Previously, discussion in Musrenbangdes centered on which development programs village officials wanted the district government to accommodate in the district budget. After enforcement of the Village Law, participants of Musrenbangdes also began discussing village budgets.

The Musrenbangdes and Musdes thus overlap in many ways, even though they are organized by different parties at different times of the year. Nonetheless, at least twice a year, local communities can learn about village budgets and convey requests to their village government. Based on the outcome of discussions in Musrenbangdes and Musdes, each village government makes an annual village development plan called RKPDes, which eventually becomes a budget, called APBDes.⁷

The second new mechanism established by the Village Law is a requirement to organize a unit in charge of drafting a budget.⁸ Village governments are required to include a few community representatives in this unit, which must comprise 7, 9, or 11 members.⁹ The secretary of the unit should come from the community empowerment organization, known as LPM (Lembaga Pemberdayaan Masyarakat) (MoHA Regulation 114 of 2014). While the unit is headed by the village secretary and most members are village officials, one or two more community representatives other than LPM representatives are added to the unit in some villages.¹⁰

Despite these changes established by the Village Law, some studies question the “quality of participation” (e.g., Wijaya and Ishihara 2018). Examining Musrenbangdes, Damayanti and Syarifuddin (2020) indicate that community participation in village governance remains minimal, and only community leaders who tend to support the village government are engaged effectively. They charge that village fora are only formalities at which participants convey requests of programs in a one-way dialog and lack of transparency regarding the acceptance or rejection of their requests is noticeable.

Although one can easily find anecdotal accounts to support such arguments, it is necessary to examine community engagement yet again, given its significance to the sustainability of village development programs. The chapter will revisit this topic in Sect. 8.5.

8.3 Encouraging Villages to Initiate Environmental Protection

Recognizing the potential of dramatically increasing village budgets, central and local governments generally encourage villages to create different kinds of programs for environmental protection, peatland restoration, and fire prevention. The main promoters are the Ministry of Villages, Disadvantaged Regions, and Transmigration (MoV), BRG, provincial governments, and district governments (see Table 8.1).

Table 8.1 Regulations and schemes to incentivize village programs for peatland restoration

8.3.1 MoV

MoV, which supervises the spending of DD, has gradually revised its regulations to encourage villages to spend DD funds on peatland restoration, in part due to its consultation with BRG. Two years after the launch of DD, MoV included peatland restoration for the first time in its list of annual priorities for DD funds¹¹ (MoV Regulation 22 of 2016). In seminars co-organized by BRG to explain this regulation, MoV clearly sent the message that villages could spend DD to build infrastructure for peatland restoration.¹²

The Ministry’s 2019 priorities referred specifically to peatland restoration (MoV Regulation 11 of 2019). This document stated that forest fire prevention justified new infrastructure for environmental protection, as well as the purchase of fire extinguishing tools and new programs to increase community capacities for fire prevention. In naming these priority items, the MoV directly facilitated villages to spend DD on peatland restoration.

8.3.2 BRG

On another front, BRG initiated the Peat Care Village Program (Desa Peduli Gambut, DPG) to encourage villages to launch programs for peatland restoration. In the 5 years leading to 2020, BRG used its own budget to build more than 7000 canal-blocking facilities and 15,000 deep wells across the country¹³ (BRG 2021). Nevertheless, it had an eye on the ample funds in the hands of village governments available to complement its efforts and designed the DPG program for this purpose.

The DPG program began in 75 villages in 2017. The initial plan used the national government’s budget to target 300 villages during 4 years. Gaining support from international donors and private companies at the halfway point, the program eventually covered 640 villages. The main feature of the DPG program involved dispatching a facilitator to live in each village for 6–10 months. By interacting daily with the community, the facilitators were expected to persuade villagers to become “peatland friendly.” One of the key tasks was to advise and encourage government officials and other actors to include programs for peatland restoration in the village budget planning process¹⁴ (BRG 2017).

8.3.3 Provincial Governments

Provinces provide financial grants called Bankeu (bantuan keuangan) to villages. In Indonesia’s local governance system, provincial governments do not directly supervise villages, and are not obliged to provide villages with financial grants. The amount of Bankeu therefore varies among provinces and from year to year.

Provincial governments can encourage villages to restore peatland by providing guidance on how to use Bankeu. In the case of Riau Province, IDR 200 million was allocated to each village in its jurisdiction in 2019, with the stipulation that villages could use 10% of the allocation for disaster prevention, specifically to build guard stations for fire prevention organizations (known as MPAs¹⁵) and to purchase monitoring equipment for fire prevention, such as GPS devices, rubber rafts, transceivers, and binoculars.¹⁶

However, in Riau, this direction only lasted 1 year. In 2020, the amount of Bankeu was halved, and no stipulation was included regarding fire prevention. Although in many cases commitment from provinces was pliable, provinces occasionally play a role in guiding villages toward peatland restoration, as in the case of Riau.

8.3.4 District Governments

Districts can be key actors because of their supervisory role over villages in budget execution. Among more than 400 districts in Indonesia, Pelalawan District in Riau Province pioneered an innovative scheme to encourage villages to spend on environmental protection. In 2017, in addition to the conventional ADD, which is distributed almost evenly among the district’s villages, Pelalawan introduced a specific ADD to be distributed proportionally according to the extent of a village’s business development in oil and natural gas operations (hereafter referred to as oil) and forestry.¹⁷ This arrangement was made in response to village dissatisfaction with taxes from the oil and forest industries going directly to the central and district government, with no increases to village revenues. These specific ADD were named the oil ADD and the forestry ADD.

Pelalawan District requires the forestry ADD to be used for environmental programs. The guidelines stipulate 11 valid uses of the forestry ADD (District Head Regulation 7 of 2017); two of these are directly related to peatland restoration and forest fire prevention. Others include community forest development, afforestation, protection of water resources, cultivation of terraced rice fields, and river clearing.¹⁸ This allocation scheme is groundbreaking in institutionalizing arrangements to guarantee that a certain amount of money from each village budget is spent on environmental protection annually.

The introduction of this scheme owed much to the lobbying of Fitra Riau, a non-governmental organization (NGO) in Riau. Supported by international donors,¹⁹ Fitra Riau was inspired by a scheme in Bojonegoro District in East Java Province, which introduced a specific ADD of oil for the first time in Indonesia. Fitra Riau delivered tenacious presentations on this subject to several districts in Riau beginning in 2014, eventually attracting Pelalawan to its proposal. Pelalawan district government and Fitra Riau even enhanced Bojonegoro’s original scheme by introducing the forestry ADD for environmental protection. ²⁰

Inspired by this initiative of Pelalawan District, other districts have since attempted to develop their own allocation schemes with various approaches. In 2019, Jayapura District in Papua Province introduced a scheme called “the index of ecology” to examine the extent of villages’ environmental protections.²¹ The district allocated part of the ADD to villages based on this index to incentivize environmental improvements. Of the innovative district attempts discussed above, this chapter chooses Pelalawan as a case study.

8.4 Analysis of Village Budget Spending for Environmental Protection

Encouraged by various actors to spend funds on peatland restoration and fire prevention, how have villages changed their spending so far? Since there are few studies on this topic, BRG’s report on its DPG program is valuable. Before analyzing Pelalawan’s case, it is helpful to examine this report to make a comparison.

8.4.1 BRG’s Analysis of Village Budget Allocations

Although BRG did not regularly collect detailed data on village budgets, in 2020 (its final year) it presented an analysis of the DPG program to the media (Tempo.co. 2020). According to this analysis, 143 out of 525 villages covered by the DPG program (until that time) had allocated some of their budget for peatland restoration in fiscal year 2020. The total allocation of the 143 villages amounted to IDR 9 billion.²² In detail, IDR 5 billion was allocated for building and managing infrastructure, such as canal-blocking facilities and deep wells; IDR 2.2 billion was allocated for improving capacity of community associations; IDR 1.4 billion was allocated for MPA activities; and IDR 0.5 billion was allocated for pilot farms of peatland-friendly crops. This published data may give hope for improved peatland management in the future.

Supporting this data, BRG presented several villages for their demonstration of good practices. Especially regarding canal blocking, BRG frequently promoted Tri Mandayan Village in West Kalimantan Province. The BRG facilitator of the DPG program in this village helped villagers build several canal-blocking facilities, with a portion of the cost covered by the village budget. In 2018, BRG sent this facilitator to the Katowice Climate Change Conference in Poland (COP24) to convey the achievements of the Indonesian government.²³

There are two points to consider when analyzing BRG’s data, however. First, BRG used data from village annual development plans (RKPDes) and not from final budgets (APBDes). Frequently, items budgeted in the RKPDes are dropped from the APBDes in the course of consultation with village councils. Second, BRG analyzed data of the 2020 fiscal year. To alleviate the economic damage from the COVID-19 pandemic, however, in that year, many initially budgeted expenditures were diverted to support urgent new needs, such as cash handouts for the poor.

Thus, there are good reasons noted above to be wary of accepting BRG’s claims at face value. At the least, analysis of more detailed data is needed, but BRG has not yet released it. Programs for building and managing infrastructure should be examined with particular care. Given that there have been abundant funds from the central government and international donors to support villages to build such infrastructure as canal-blocking facilities and deep wells, it is reasonable to assume that villages usually do not bother to use their own budgets for this kind of expenditure. As will be described below, our analysis of Pelalawan supports this view. Unfortunately, the famous Tri Mandayan Village case trumpeted by BRG as a central achievement seems likely to be rather the exception than the rule.

8.4.2 Analysis of Village Budget Allocations in Pelalawan District

The following subsection discusses the allocation of village budgets on environmental protection in Pelalawan District. The district is a pioneer of the innovative ADD forestry scheme. Our analysis uses budget (APBDes) data from all 104 villages in the district between 2016 and 2019.²⁴ The author collaborated with Fitra Riau to analyze the data.²⁵

Looking at the general trend of village budgets in Pelalawan, total revenue per village in 2016 averaged IDR 1.5 billion, rising steadily to an average of IDR 2.2 billion in 2019. Compared to the national average of IDR 1.4 billion per village in 2019, the villages in Pelalawan, a district rich in natural resources, were financially comfortable. As for revenue resources, DD accounted for 47% of total revenue and ADD for 44% (2016–2019). From 2012 to 2014, prior to enactment of the Village Law, the primary available revenue resource was ADD; it amounted to only IDR 0.4 billion per village, most of which was spent on administrative expenses. From 2015 onwards, villages spent an average of 30 percent of their budget on administrative expenses and 70% on development programs. In terms of fiscal structure, villages in Pelalawan have had considerable leeway to implement environmental programs in this period.

There are two points to be noted in this analysis. First, all programs related to agriculture, including purchase of farming equipment and training for farmers, are considered environmental programs.²⁶ The area of Pelalawan is primarily covered with peat soils, and as BRG strongly advocated, revegetation is essential for peatland restoration. Given the increasing pressure from the international community and the central government to improve peatland management, we here assume that most of the government agricultural programs take an environment-friendly approach, even though some specific programs may degrade the environment. Second, programs to build deep wells are not listed in this analysis because of the difficulty in the dataset in differentiating wells for drinking water and wells for rewetting peatland.²⁷ In any case, according to district government officials, villages rarely spend their budgets on building deep wells for rewetting peatland.²⁸

As Table 8.2 shows, villages did not allocate any of their budgets to environmental programs in 2016. They began to modestly budget for these programs in 2017 and continually increased this spending thereafter. The abrupt increase in funding environmental programs in 2017 was likely due to the introduction of the forestry ADD.

Table 8.2 Village environmental expenditures in Pelalawan District (2016–2019)

The forestry ADD is an extremely small part of total ADD²⁹ (conventional ADD plus the forestry ADD plus the oil ADD), however. During 2017–2019, it accounted only for an average of 1.5%. On average, each village received IDR 13 million from the forestry ADD per year. Furthermore, it should be noted that the total amount budgeted for environmental programs amounted to only approximately 60% of the allocated forestry ADD (2017–2018). This suggests that many villages did not comply with the district’s guidance, partly because of the hesitance of district officials to strongly urge villages to follow the rules regarding the forestry ADD.³⁰ As a result, budgeted expenditures for environmental programs remained at an average of 0.6% of total expenditures.

Examining expenditures in detail, the figure that stands out is for MPA activities, which comprised 60% of total environmental expenditures in 2017. While this percentage gradually decreased over time, the total amount of expenditures for this item remained the same. The amount of funds provided for planting trees, seedlings, and flowers, which includes planting trees in the community forest and flowers for beautifying living areas, comprised an average of 15% of total environmental expenditures each year. Funds dedicated to agricultural training were small in comparison to the two items above, but again, training was also consistently funded each year. As for guard stations and devices for disaster countermeasures, spending increased considerably in 2019, in large part due to the guidelines provided by the province (Bankeu).

No villages have used their budgets to build canal-blocking facilities in Pelalawan. This is in line with the trend in Riau Province, where only a few villages did so.³¹ The same applies to the building of deep wells for rewetting peatland, as discussed above.

Examining individual cases, the five villages in the district with the biggest spending on environmental protection budgeted an average of IDR 45 million per year. On the other hand, 14 villages in the district allocated zero funds for environmental protection during the 4 years of analysis. There is no indication that villages located in areas prone to forest fires tend to budget any more for fire prevention and peatland restoration than villages in other areas. For example, in Kuala Kampar Subdistrict, where most of the area is prone to forest fires, only three out of all eight villages budgeted for environmental programs in 2017 and 2018.

Village-based initiatives for environmental protection in Pelalawan therefore seem less impressive that those described in the self-promoting BRG report touting the DPG program. The change triggered by Pelalawan’s new allocation scheme deserves attention, however. Mainly due to the introduction of the forestry ADD, villages gradually began to earmark certain funds for environmental programs. While these program budgets are modest in total amount, their significance should not be underestimated. Among the programs for MPA activities, one village has continually secured a sufficient budget not just for emergency operational costs in the case of forest fire, but also for daily fire monitoring activities.³² Among programs for planting trees, seedlings, and flowers, one village secured a budget for daily activities of the organization to manage a community forest.³³ In this way, by virtue of the district’s incentive, some villages became better able to address environmental issues by using their budgets.

Still, it is fair to underscore again that total village expenditures for environmental programs remained considerably small in Pelalawan. Even in the pioneering districts such as Pelalawan, the patterns of spending village budgets have changed only gradually toward environmental protection.

8.5 Case Study of Rantau Baru Village

8.5.1 Environmental Programs in Rantau Baru

Of the 104 villages in the district, Rantau Baru ranked eighth in the amount of spending for environmental programs from 2017 to 2019, and therefore could be considered environmentally conscious. Table 8.3, however, which shows budgeted items in detail, indicates there was no funding for environmental protection in the village for more than 1 year. For example, a program for MPA activities, the main budgeted item for environmental protection in Pelalawan, was only funded in 2017. Moreover, each of the projects is relatively standard and has not yet acquired a reputation from villagers for being effective in protecting the environment.

Table 8.3 Environmental protection projects in the Rantau Baru budget (2017–2020)

Meanwhile, Rantau Baru has received plenty of support for peatland restoration and fire prevention from external agencies, such as private companies and the central government. A global company, Asian Agri of the Royal Golden Eagle Group, which operates plantation businesses in the village, has consistently offered corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs.³⁴ The company implemented its Desa Bebas Api (the Free Fire Village Program) from 2016, providing an annual reward of IDR 100 million to villages in which no forest fires occurred for 1 year.³⁵ Using this grant, which it has received almost every year, Rantau Baru Village purchased a motorbike for patrols, a diesel fire pump, and, in 2020, three small fishing boats with outboard motors. The village planned to generate profits for MPA activities by renting out these fishing boats, establishing a village-owned enterprise (BUMDes) to this end. Asian Agri also strongly supports the activities of fire prevention patrols by hiring a villager for daily patrol. The chief of MPA assumed this position, thus becoming the only MPA member to receive a monthly salary for fire prevention activities, while all other MPA members serve as volunteers.³⁶

BRG has also implemented several programs in Rantau Baru. The DPG program targeted the village in 2019, and a facilitator was dispatched to stay for 6 months. In the same year, BRG built 13 canal-blocking facilities and 50 deep wells, temporarily employing a group of villagers for each project. In the following year, BRG bore the operational costs for local management and maintenance of the facilities. This abundance of external support may partially explain why Rantau Baru Village has not yet launched consistent and innovative programs for environmental protection using the village budget.

8.5.2 Participatory Planning for Environmental Programs

It is important to examine to what extent communities were involved in decision-making process regarding spending for environmental protection measures and acceptance of programs to be implemented by external agencies, and to what extent implemented measures and programs reflect villagers’ actual wishes. In terms of the institutional arrangements that encourage community engagement, Rantau Baru Village complies completely with regulations issued by the central government. It holds open fora on village development twice a year: Musrenbangdes around January and Musdes around September. The 11-person budget-drafting unit includes three community representatives. In addition to welcoming a representative from the LPM as the secretary of the unit, as stipulated by the MoHA regulations, the village government invited two additional community representatives to this unit: one from PKK, a nationwide women’s group, and one from the youth community.

Beyond simply abiding by regulations regarding participatory planning, Rantau Baru shows a relatively high level of community participation, as evidenced in the responses to our questionnaire survey conducted in 2020.³⁷ It asked how frequently villagers interacted with key players in the village government. The same question was asked to villagers on Java Island in a survey conducted by Nishimura Kenichi’s team at Osaka University during May–June 2018.³⁸ Table 8.4 presents a comparison of survey responses in the two sites, illustrating the closeness of villagers with government officials in Rantau Baru. The Rantau Baru figures differ markedly from those from the survey in Java, particularly regarding contact with village council members.

Table 8.4 Frequency of contact with key players in the village government in Rantau Baru and on Java Island (percent of total respondents)

Our survey also asked villagers how often they attended annual village development planning meetings. In exact terms, the survey asked how frequently villagers had attended Musrengbangdes during the past 6 years. To avoid confusion, our survey did not ask about Musdes. As with the previous question, the same question was asked to villagers on Java Island. As shown in Table 8.5, residents of Rantau Baru village attend Musrenbades more frequently than those of Java Island. In Rantau Baru village, approximately 30 percent of the villagers attend the forum at least once every 2 years.

Table 8.5 Frequency of attending village development meetings among Rantau Baru and Java Island villagers (percent of total respondents)

These differences presumably result partly from Rantau Baru’s smaller population size and the compactness of the residential area. Rantau Baru has a population of only around 1100 people, smaller than in Riau Province, in which village populations average around 3900, and much smaller than on Java Island, where the average is around 5500. Community engagement is also likely facilitated by the relatively dense and long-established residential settlement alongside the Kampar River. A new residential area was developed around the village office building after 2005, but since it is located far from the river and most villagers’ livelihoods traditionally depend on fishing, most local people, including village officials and community leaders, still prefer to live near the river. It is assumed that such living conditions facilitate a communicative environment among villagers and lower the barriers for villagers to engage in the village development meeting, Musrenbangdes.

In addition to population and settlement patterns, cross-tabulation analysis indicates that two other variables positively correlate with increased participation in Musrenbangdes. The first variable is the ownership of peatland. The cross tabulation in Table 8.6 indicates a statistically significant positive correlation between ownership of peatland and frequency of participation in Musrenbangdes (Cramer’s V = 0.429).

Table 8.6 Correlation between peatland ownership and frequency of attending village development meetings in Rantau Baru

It stands to reason that peatland owners, whose properties are vulnerable to threats of forest fire, have increased incentive to demand budgetary allocation for environmental programs. On the other hand, peatland owners can be categorized as village elites, and thus the correlation indicated above may merely reflect the fact that the meetings are dominated by elite. It should be noted that most households in this village have received 3 ha of peatland from the village office in the past 15 years, but many households sold their peatland for various economic reasons.³⁹ Therefore “peatland owners” in our survey are those who could afford to keep the peatlands until the day of our questionnaire survey.

The second variable affecting public participation is level of education. To simplify the cross tabulation of this analysis, categories regarding the frequency of attendance in Musrenbangdes were reduced to two groups: people who attended at least once every 2 years and those who attended less frequently than that. Table 8.7 presents this cross tabulation, indicating a statistically significant positive correlation between educational background and the frequency of attending Musrenbangdes (Cramer’s V = 0.329). Although the correlation is less significant than in the first variable analysis, it does appear people with higher levels of education are more interested in attending development planning meetings.

Table 8.7 Correlation between educational background and the frequency of attending village development meetings in Rantau Baru

In Chap. 9 of this book, Prasetyawan indicates that educated people tend to be more concerned with peatland degradation, and therefore more actively demand environmental protection programs. But as with ownership of peatlands, those with higher education levels can be categorized as village elites, and the correlation indicated in Table 8.7 may merely reflect elite dominance.

As will be discussed later, according to interviews with villagers, villagers rarely call for environment protection programs in development planning meetings. Instead, elite dominance in public meetings —to be more specific, dominance of peatland owners and educated people—seems like a more plausible interpretation regarding the two correlations discussed above. This dominance may hinder a wide range of villagers from expressing their requests in community fora, and therefore appears to explain why the relatively high participation rate of villagers in development meetings in Rantau Baru has not yet resulted in positive impacts on environmental protection.

8.5.3 Problems in Participatory Planning in Rantau Baru Village

After analyzing the results of the survey, our team conducted online interviews with 15 villagers between November 2020 and January 2021. In these interviews, the author focused on examining the quality of community engagement in the decision-making process and tried to determine why environment protection projects in Rantau Baru did not have significant local impacts and lacked continuity. Interviews identified three closely linked barriers to community engagement.

First, the budget drafting unit of Rantau Baru village, which is supposed to act as a mechanism for receiving requests from community members under the new village law, seemed not to function successfully. According to a section chief of PKK, her section never thought of conveying budgetary requests to the group’s representative in the drafting unit when it planned to buy seedlings of peatland-friendly crops. Abandoning a plan to get funds from village budget, her section eventually decided to cover the costs on its own.⁴⁰ Thus, despite the arrangement to include community representatives in the budget drafting unit, these representatives rarely heard the opinions of community groups on whose behalf they were supposed to serve.

The second barrier is the difficulty of disseminating information regarding district policies to village residents. Surprisingly, none of the villagers interviewed knew about the specific ADD of forestry. These included two seasoned village officials in charge of drafting budgets and two village council members.⁴¹ It should be noted that forestry ADD expenditures are stipulated annually in the district head’s regulation on guidelines of spending ADD, one of the most basic regulations that all persons engaging in drafting village budget should ideally read through. Lack of knowledge about forestry ADD within the village government seems to suggest that dissemination of information from the district on budget regulations might be targeted to a select few in the village office. Even though the ADD scheme is innovative in encouraging villages to launch environment protection programs, its effectivity is limited since its very existence is not known by all village government officials.

Third, top-down decision-making is notable in village decisions regarding receipt of external support for peatland restoration. Generally, villages do not need to hold public fora to hear villager request for external support, as they must do in the process of budget planning. Ideally, the decisions regarding external support should be in line with the six-year village development plan (RPJMDes) and annual development plan (RKPDes), both of which are made through the development planning meetings (Musrenbangdes), in which communities are encouraged to participate.⁴² However, in the case of Rantau Baru, it seems that the village office did not consider RPJMDes or RKPDes in these decisions. Usually, only the village head and village secretary have the final word on whether a certain external project is accepted or not.

This top-down decision-making process is clearly illustrated by the adoption of BRG programs.⁴³ In the interview survey introduced above, no senior village officials or council members could explain how the village decided to accept the BRG program to build infrastructure for rewetting peatland: construction of canal-blocking facilities and deep wells. Each of these individuals claimed that only the village head determined whether this program is significant to village development or not.⁴⁴ Since such infrastructure, especially canal blocking facilities, have been known to be scapegoated as a cause of floods and drag on village economies, it is important to achieve some consensus among villagers before they are implemented. The RPJMDes and RKPDes do provide good opportunity to discuss and reach consensus on all kinds of assistance programs. However, neither Rantau Baru’s six-year development plan nor annual development plan mentioned construction of these peatland rewetting facilities at all. Although our questionnaire survey showed that villagers were not generally against those facilities,⁴⁵ the village office apparently skipped the community involvement process regarding the BRG program.

Thus, even in villages like Rantau Baru, where the village office complies with the regulations of central government to facilitate participatory planning, only a limited number of persons have been aware of important budgetary regulations and these few persons have tended to dominate the decision-making process, often making decisions without regard for what has been discussed in the development meetings. In this way, a wide range of community members have not yet been empowered to wield influence in the decision-making process regarding environmental policies and programs.

8.6 Conclusive Remarks

Enactment of Indonesia’s 2014 Village Law placed much expectation on the villages to initiate solutions to peatland degradation and forest fire problems. In Pelalawan, the innovative forestry ADD scheme had an immediate effect on villages, as the spending for environmental programs in village budgets rose from zero to a certain amount. Although very few villages have spent their budgets on building infrastructure to rewet peatland, villages have begun to take initiative to launch various programs of modest cost, such as those for MPA activities, agriculture training, and management of community forests. Starting with such small programs may lead to local-level solutions for environmental issues, which attaches a positive value to the ample funding the villages have received.

However, given that budgeted programs for environmental protection never exceeded 1% of total village expenditure as in Table 8.4, it is fair to say that these village initiatives represent only gradual and small change. Since Pelalalwan is a pioneering district in encouraging its villages to spend part of their budgets on environmental protection, the progress in other districts is likely to be slower, although the situation may vary in other provinces. The disheartening progress in Riau Province casts a doubtful eye on the much-publicized data of the BRG on the achievements of the DPG program. It calls for further careful analysis to determine whether BRG used lenient criteria when identifying spending on peatland restoration.

Whether it is encouraged by this touted achievement of the DPG program or not, the central government has decided to continue this program, recently retitled as the Self-sufficient Peat Care Village (DMPG). The successor organization of BRG, the Peatland and Mangrove Restoration Agency (BRGM), will manage this program. The program was listed in the national five-year development plan from 2020 to 2025 and is to cover 675 villages for 5 years. This program ensures that village initiatives will receive a certain level of attention in years to come.

This study indicates that, to date, however, Indonesia still faces daunting challenges in the endeavor to engage and empower local communities in the restoration and sustainable management of peatland. This study highlights some of the difficulties in engaging a wide range of villagers in the processes of determining village initiatives for peatland restoration. Our quantitative survey on participation in village development meetings, complemented by follow-up interviews with villagers, indicates that development meetings are dominated by elites, specifically, peatland owners and people with higher levels of education. Examination of decision-making processes reveals that power and information regarding budget-making tends to be limited to a few village officials. Although Rantau Baru enjoys a higher rate of villager participation in development meetings than villages on Java Island, as a result of elite dominance, community engagement is not so different from other villages.

This picture raises concerns about the sustainability of village initiatives for peatland restoration, particularly since one of the key assumptions inspiring these initiatives is that the inclusion of a wide range of actors in the decision-making processes will lead to sustainable development outcomes. Our analysis also raises questions about the appropriateness of local-level solutions, as these initiatives may come from a less diverse point of view.

Given that Rantau Baru complies with the existing rules for community engagement and yet has not made substantive progress in environmental programs, more innovative arrangements beyond the existing regulations are needed to guarantee the engagement of a wide range of actors in budget-making processes. It is widely believed that people in general are reluctant to participate in development meetings because they reduce time available for livelihood activities. New policy schemes may therefore need to incorporate arrangements to compensate participants for participation. Such arrangements must also be in line with local practices and contexts. In any case, new arrangements to empower a wide range of people in development meetings are key to achieving community-based sustainable peat restoration.