More from Indonesia

Here's another Indonesia update that Tim requested me to post on his behalf.

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To follow on from Jeneen’s description of Indonesia, the car trip to North Buton was completed at a painstaking 16 km/hour average over 100 kms along a road which in some cases is actually washed by the sea at high tide. Arriving there on the Friday morning meant that the offices of the KSDA and Forestry Departments were locked as staff had not returned following the national public holiday on Thursday. However we did find people at the district planning office (BAPPEDA) and the district Environment Office whose head was the ex-head of the Forestry Department. For him, we obtained a quite different impression on the state of pressure on the forest reserves from that of Lambusango.

Firstly, the north of Buton Island is relatively flat and access to the forest is relatively easy – quite the opposite of Lambusango. Secondly there are numerous landing/loading places for timber illegally extracted from the reserve and production forests. And thirdly, since the district was newly formed in 2007/8 by dividing one district into two, the local Government has been very much concerned in establishing new government structures and units. There has been a mini boom in construction which has given employment to many workers and contractors (and a demand for timber). However, the efforts in protection of the forest and law enforcement have been poor. Everyone seems to know that illegal timber extraction is taking place with either disregard or involvement on the part of authorities. In particular there is a black tropical hardwood (gito gito in local language) which only comes from the reserve and is in high demand from either Kupang or Surabaya. We actually passed three trucks loaded with this at night on our way to North Buton.

There is very little NGO activity relating to conservation per se, but a local NGO called APDK with whom we met described the AusAid support at village level under the Australian Community Development and Civil Society Strengthening Scheme (ACCESS Phase II) in the areas of small scale credit, education, health, water, sanitation, etc.

There has been little (if any) spill-over of the experience in Lambusango, the neighbouring district. There is a low perception of environment matters, and our Head of Environment knew nothing of the Community Forest Management Forum established under the GEF/Operation Wallacea project. However, there is no clear felling of timber in the reserves or forest areas, as trees are selectively felled (spotting), and there is no pressure on animal or bird populations due as there is no significant trade.

After repeating the 100 kms road journey and spending the night in BauBau, we returned to Jakarta on the Saturday morning.

This week is mostly concerned with meeting the main NGO actors in Jakarta. I received yesterday the full data from WWF on the RAPPAM exercise for all of the 50 national parks in Indonesia. This is useful for the evaluation since it compares the results of the 2010 survey with that of 2004, and thereby provides a great deal of insight on change in Indonesia on all aspects of the status, threats and management of the habitats and population in the National Park system. Whilst this is only a subset of the PA system (Indonesia has over 650 PAs), it gives a good view of the overall situation.

The plan for the next field trip starting Sunday for 6 days is North Moluku (GEF) and Ambon (non-GEF). As Jeneen has described, all travel in Indonesia is by air and expensive.

The week in Indonesia

While I was in Indonesia, Tim and I were able to interview one national-level stakeholder, who was from the Directorate General of Conservation Areas in the Ministry of Forestry, and also cover one GEF-supported PA. The week before, we had met with different groups to finalize the PAs to be visited. But it was only during the interview that the people who would be coming with us during the field visit from the Ministries of Forestry and Environment were finally identified so we could book the plane tickets. This was in the afternoon of Monday, and we were targeting to leave early Tuesday morning. To top it off, although Tim and I had decided over the weekend to do a PA that used a private-public partnership model,  the GEF unit staff said during the meeting that it would be better if we went to the sites where the stakeholders were already informed about the evaluation (in fact they were a bit upset that we were thinking of doing the other one that wasn't in the original project list that they received from us). So at that very last minute, we had to change our itinerary as well. I will not go into the sordid details of trying to book a flight for 5 people that was leaving in less than 24 hours, but suffice it to say, I finally got tickets at 930 am when we were supposed to be at the airport by 10 am. What makes the PA visits complicated in Indonesia is that because it is the world's largest archipelago,  you have to fly everywhere, and this particular PA entailed two flights plus a two-hour drive, which by Indonesian PA standards is not too far.

For domestic flights, we had to contact BCD Travel instead of AmEx. Thankfully they had a 24-hour service which was very functional (much more than I can say for AmEx). Instead of getting an interpreter at very short notice, we decided instead to have one of the staff in the GEF coordination unit to translate for us during the trip. This turned out to be a good idea as he had enough background to interpret things in context, and we didn't have to bother with getting a contract done, etc. Below is a summary of my impressions of what we found out during my week in Indonesia:

1) At the national level, GEF seems to be irrelevant as far as terrestrial PAs go. First of all, there is no GEF project at the national level supporting the PA system. The government is very keen to fund their own way as much as they can, but still depend on donors, especially WWF, to do wildlife monitoring and research. International NGOs and other countries have been very influential in shaping how the PA system is managed.

2) At the GEF-supported PA, while nobody knew what GEF was, and this was an MSP so the funding was really very small, the community leaders did say that people became more aware about the importance of preserving the forest because their water supply improved as a consequence of rehabilitating the areas surrounding the PA. Now nobody even uses firewood for cooking. They have started planting nutmeg which both discourages illegal logging and provides income to the communities. A common theme, though, seems to be that the NGOs that have been executing GEF projects do things that are counter to the government's way of doing things. So while the over-all outcome in terms of biodiversity and socioeconomic improvement has been good, the NGOs have ended up being kicked out of the area due to these unresolved differences.

Tim went on another 6-hour drive to visit the comparable non-GEF PA, Buton Utara, while I went back on the two-hour drive and then two flights (6-hour trip) to get back to Jakarta and catch my plane to Uganda.

Below are some of the photos I took to document the evaluation.

Power outage during meeting at Ministry of Forestry while we were deciding where to go

Interview with one of the kecamatan (very local level of government) that was part of the community  forum supported  by GEF

Welcome sign to the protected area of Lambusango in Buton Island, South Sulawesi

Community leaders in another kecamatan, owners of the house we stayed at. Communities have been benefiting from scientific tourism activities that were part of the GEF project run by Operation Wallacea. 

Pearl culture was one of the forms of livelihood introduced  to relieve pressure from timber harvesting.

Choosing protected areas to visit in Indonesia, and itinerary starting to come together in Uganda

Today we had a good meeting with the GEF coordination unit at the Ministry of Environment and a few other people to finalize the selection of the PAs. They had a complete list of possible sites and matching non-GEF ones, including the travel time and route to get to each one. It seems, however, that we essentially only have two choices. However, both of them are relatively successful and being carried on beyond the GEF project. Both are also MSPs. The other two choices are unsuccessful GEF projects, and yet their circumstances are so different that they would probably not provide a good comparison. One is a very old MSP in Aceh, which has since been overwhelmed apparently by the Asian financial crisis, decentralization policies, and the tsunami, among other things. The other one is an FSP that is more of a rural development project by the Bank, with the PA management portion of it funded by GEF. Apparently it is such a failure that according to the TE, the areas that received more funding saw higher deforestation. It seems like a good case to investigate, and yet it's so different from the other choices that it would not be comparable. What do you think?

We will hopefully see the Ministry of Forestry tomorrow (still waiting for confirmation) and find someone who can go with us to one of the PAs next week at short notice. It seems if we can bring only one person, it would be from there, because they are in charge of the protected areas and would need to connect us with the provincial-level Ministry of Forestry. Also still looking for an interpreter to come with us at short notice, since we don't want the forestry people to be doing it for us and risk a conflict of interest. We also went to the World Bank to try to get the administrative things sorted out. Apparently there is no longer a visiting missions unit that can assist us, so an official email from HQ would need to be sent to the Environment unit asking them to assist us with cash advances for the flights, accommodations and per diem of the people who will be coming with us to the PAs.

Today I also got a draft day-by-day itinerary for the Uganda visit. They will be having a meeting on Friday to finalize it with everyone who is involved in scheduling interviews and arranging the trips to the PAs and such. All in all, that is progressing well as they are very much on top of it, and I will continue to keep in touch with them as I count down to my trip to Kampala.  I will strive to post regular updates like this, and perhaps we can all do it so we can share any issues that come up that others may be able to learn from or help with.