Since the downfall of Suharto, there has been increased political pressure to formulate policies to establish and protect conservation forest areas and national parks in Indonesia. At the same time there has been widespread criticism from NGOs over deforestation rates in the country. The politics of decentralisation and regional autonomy, has strongly affected local government at the district (kabupaten) level. Newly autonomous local governments have been under pressure to raise more local income to meet deficits in local budget previously financed entirely by direct grants from the national government. On the other hand, they have become involved in the management of natural resources that are part of their administrative territory whether for exploitation or for conservation (or both).

The District of Lebong in the Province of Bengkulu, on Sumatra’s west coast, was formed on 18 December 2003. The district has around 72 per cent of its area in protected and conservation forest areas, of which around 82% is part of the Kerinci Seblat National Park (TNKS, Taman Nasional Kerinci Seblat). The national park itself comprises around 58% of the total area of Lebong district. In the context of autonomous local administration (which also means the capacity of local governments to raise PAD), the Lebong district government is in the process of declaring itself as a ‘conservation district’ (kabupaten konservasi).

This means that all local administration and development programs should meet ecological and conservation goals, which include recognition of the district as a buffer zone of the TNKS. Attempts to establish a ‘conservation district’ in Lebong show how local government has trying to accept the idea of sustainable development—a balance between economic growth orientation and ecological protection. The local government also want to use the ‘conservation district’ as an economic asset in the age of market liberalisation and the ‘global village of the earth’, where the ecological destruction or preservation in one place is increasingly seen to have impacts on ‘the world as a whole’. So any effort to provide services to maintain and develop conservation and ecological preservation can be ‘exchanged’ for monetary compensation.

Challenges to this ‘conservation district’ policy in Lebong are not only coming from local people who need land and other natural resources usufruct for their livelihood, but who are now faced with the reality that the resources on which their livelihoods depend are going to be classified as a conservation area. Sustaining the continuing population growth in the district needs new cultivable land. The only way to have any land in Lebong is to occupy and cultivate forestry land. This can be forestland in conservation areas or in other forestry areas.

Download and read working paper from Dianto Bachriadi and Anton Lucas, “Trees, Money, Livelihood and Power: The Politics of Conservation in Bengkulu Province in the Era of Decentralisation”.

*) This paper is a paper that was presented in the “Decentralization, Land and Natural Resources in Indonesia” panel at the International Seminar “Ten Years Along Decentralization in Indonesia”, Jakarta, 15-16 July 2008, and the 15th International Conference of the Commission on Legal Puralism, Zurich, Switzerland, 31 August to 3 September 2009. For the publication of this working paper, the original version of the English-language paper was intentionally maintained, but the author has made a few improvements related to grammar and added a new reference.