West National Park and the surrounding local communities – collaboration towards community development co-existing with the nature

March 2013 Makoto Nagahata / Rie Yamada (Board members of i-i-network – Research and Action for Community Governance, Japan)

West Bali National Park and its surrounding villages West Bali National Park (WBNP) is located in the western part of Bali Island, . The total area of the park covers 19,000 ha of land and the surrounding sea. It is one of the smallest among 50 National Parks in Indonesia in terms of its size, however, the Park includes various landscapes from a coastal area with Menjangan Island famous for its diving spot up to the mountain area of 1,400 meter above sea level, and it nurtures a variety of eco-systems such as forest, tropical monsoon forest, tropical rain forest, tropical savanna. 175 species of flora is observed (among them, 14 species are rare), and various faunas inhabit such as seven mammals, two reptiles, 105 birds, 120 fish. Among them, Bali Mynah, one of starling, is an endemic bird in Bali Island. Because of degradation of forest and illegal hunting of the birds for selling them as pets, there are only around twenty individual birds living in wild at the western part of the park, thus it is designated as endemic species by IUCN. This area had already been designated as game reserve in 1947, then it formally became National Park in 1984. National Park in Indonesia is regarded as nature conservation area, and it has various functions such as protecting eco-system that maintains habitat of flora and fauna, conserving bio-diversity, and utilizing natural resources and ecosystem in a sustainable way. However, there are many cases that the designation of National Park is decided without having enough consultation with the residents surrounding the area and other stakeholders, and WBNP is not an exception. Around the National Park, there are six villages in total, two of them belong to Buleleng regency, and four villages belong to Jembrana regency as the Park itself extends to two regencies. Total population of those villages is about thirty thousand, mostly engaged in agriculture or fishery, and some of them work at tourism industry. Except for several hamlets, there is few rice fields. They grow chili, maze, and fruits trees, together with livestock such as cows or pigs. In the area, various culture and religions are practiced which is rather exceptional in Bali Island, and in most of the villages Muslim who transmigrated from other islands live together with Hindu people originated in Bali. There are villages where Christian Balinese live as well. Those villages had already existed long before the WBNP was established. The villagers took firewood for their everyday cooking from the forest, and the grasses for the feed of domestic animals were also taken from the forest. Fishermen freely caught fish at the sea around. At the villages located in dry area, valuable water sources were located in the forest. In such circumstance, suddenly the National Park was designated, thus, it was natural that conflicts have arisen between the villagers and the Park office.

Background of i-i-network involved in the Park Bali Mynah (Leucopsar rothschildi as scientific name, Curik Bali in local language) inhabits in the Park is in danger of extinction due to various reasons. Preservation and Research Center of Yokohama city (PRC) in Japan had succeeded in captive breeding of the bird in its center, and it has been implementing technical cooperation with JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) to transfer knowledge and technology of the captive breeding to the officials and staff of WBNP since 2003. In October 2004, one of Forest Ranger of the park, Mr. Wawan who visited Japan to participate in a training course arranged by PRC unintentionally expressed his worry, “even though we can successfully breed the bird, it is useless if the birds will not be able to survive after when they are released into wild”. Rie Yamada, then worked as a training coordinator (interpreter), heard his words, and it became the first starter for our NGO (i-i-network) to be involved in WBNP. At that time, Ms.Yamada was engaged in the NGO activities as a volunteer, and when Mr. Wawan continued to say “we need cooperation with the villagers surrounding the Park for the bird surviving in the wild, but we do not know how to do it”, she started to think that i-i-network might be able to help the Park. Some of the members of the NGO had been engaged in a JICA technical cooperation project in Indonesia which trained community facilitators who would facilitate community-based development. She thought that community facilitation method might be introduced in WBNP to create collaborative relations between the villages and the National Park. After that, from 2006 to 2008, the NGO implemented field studies several times at the Park, visiting surrounding villages, conducting observation and interview, and having discussion with the Park office. From the studies, it was revealed that the National Park seriously thought it very important to ask cooperation to the surrounding village for conserving natural resources and bio-diversity in the Park, not just for “Curik Bali” only. It was also found that the government of Indonesia had already started a new policy of “collaborative management” that intends to involve the stakeholders including surrounding villagers into the management of the Natural Conservation Areas. In WBNP, new activities to help the surrounding villagers for their livelihood improvement was about to start in two villages. In those situation, the Head of Park requested i-i-network to work with the Park, and MOU was concluded in May 2008 between WBNP and the NGO to start three years project titled “Creation of co-existent and collaborative relationship between local communities and Bali Barat National Park for conservation and management of natural resources and community empowerment” from 2008 to 2011. In December 2008, the project got support from JICA as a JICA-NGO partnership program.

Starting from training for National Park staff The most important point focused by i-i-network in the project was to train field staff of the National Park to become community facilitators. In order that the Park will be able to create collaborative relations with the villagers and to facilitate activities of the villagers aiming at both nature conservation and livelihood improvement, it is most important to change the National Park staff themselves who had been taking roles of “prohibiting” the villagers to enter the forest and to destroy the nature for long time. National Park staff are not outsiders who may leave the village sooner or later, and they are the people who have to co-exist with the villagers forever. Thus, it is inevitable for the Park staff to be equipped with the skill to create good relation with the local community people continuously, i-i-network thought like that. In Japan, i-i-network has been conducting training programs for government officials and NGO leaders from all over the world, and alike those training courses, the first target of the training was to change the ways of thinking or the perspective of the participants. It was not only the National Park staff but also most of the government staff in Indonesia had been implementing various development policies and measures in a “top-down” manner under the highly centralized systems, and they thought that the villagers were the target of “teaching” or “guiding” who will receive assistance from the government according to the government plan. However, if the park staff stick to that perspective, it is not possible for them to facilitate initiative of the villagers to create collaborative activities. The motto of i-i-network is “without bringing any ready-made projects or fund, to make the community main actor by utilizing what there are in the community”. It is necessary to understand some important principles such as “everyone has rich experience”, “there are various wisdom and system in local communities that have been nurtured in their long history”, “a person can start to do only when he/she find it by himself/herself not by being given answers from the others”. In the training sessions, there were no one-way lectures. Workshops where the participants were encouraged to find something important through dialogue by reflecting own experience, were combined with fieldworks where the participants were asked to find facts in the field through practices. There were fourteen National Park staff who participated in the training at the beginning, they were field staff appointed by the Park Head, and named as “team 14”. The facilitators of the training were the members of i-i-network from Japan together with its Indonesian partners (mostly NGO practitioner) who had enough experience in community facilitation in Indonesia. The first training session started in January 2009, and total seven courses were implemented until August 2010. The course began with the topic of “partnership building” that is a base for facilitation, followed by community-based issue analysis based on facts, the most important essence of community facilitation. “Action plan making with villagers” and “implementation & monitoring” were the other topics of the training. At first, most of the participants were confused with the style of training that proceeded without any written materials and lecturers, however, gradually they became interested in practical contents of the training such as how to construct equal relation with the villagers, to explore facts through observation and interview, and finally to find out real issues of the village. As the course continues, some of the participants who could not practice what they learned in the field dropped out from the training, and as of August 2010, there were only 9 staff remained in the course, thus they are called “team nine”. Those nine staff started to express their interesting finding such as “after talking with the villagers, I came to understand that they are enough capable. Now, I do not think they are enemy, but they are my friends. I stopped thinking that we need to give them everything”, “I became able to collect information about the village and to analyze them more precisely and in detail”. Ok, they became ready for practice, and the first opportunity for the team 9 arose in July 2010.

How the villagers started captive breeding of Curik Bali Sumberklampok is one of the surrounding villages of WBNP. It has around three thousand population mostly engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry. The area of the village was originally opened as coconut plantation, and the inhabitants were transmigrated from and Madura Island as manual labor of the plantation. There are also Bali people who migrated from Eastern part of the Island because of eruption of Mount Agung, and also who returned from East Timor after the independence of the area where they had transmigrated from Bali. From the perspective of ecosystem of the forest, this village is an enclave of the National Park adjoining with the original habitat of Curik Bali, and in the village, there used to be plenty of the birds co-existing with the villagers. However, because of economic reasons, there were many villagers who enter the forest to cut trees and grasses illegally for their livestock, and some of the villagers were even engaged in illegal hunting in the National Park. Thus, the existence of this village was really a heavy headache for the National Park. On the other hand, as their important natural resources that had been used for their life became part of National Park, the villagers could not trust the Park office. Therefore, for long time, the Park and the village have such a relation that is described in Indonesian language as “Dekat di Mata, Jauh di Hati” (although living near, the hearts are far away). Under such circumstance, one day, Association of Bali Minyh Conservation (APCB) at Bogor asked the Head of WBNP to implement a training of captive breeding to the villagers of Sumberklampok. The Park Head thought it a good idea to involve the villagers in conserving and rehabilitating the habitat of the bird, and he instructed the staff to start preparation. Then, the team 9 thought “the idea is good, but if we implement training, it is just the same activities we did to bring ready-made assistance to the communities”. They asked the Head to give them time for facilitating the villagers, and the Head agreed them to start facilitation. There is a tree called “Pohon Dadap” (Erythrina variegate tree) in the village since long time ago. The Bali Mynah (Curik Bali) likes this tree for taking feed. A member of Team 9, Mr. Sugiarto, thought that it might be a good starting point for the villagers to reflect the history of the village. Under the tree, when he heard various stories on the village, the villagers naturally started talking stories about Curik Bali. “When I was small, I saw Curik Bali on the back of cow that my father pulled in the field. The birds ate the fries coming to cow dung”. “I saw many Curik Bali frying over the tree”. One of the villagers even talked about the taste of the birds (sometime he tried to eat it, but it was not tasty, according to him). A lot of villagers told Mr.Sugiarto that they had good memory of the ancient times when there used to be many Curik Bali frying over the village. It was so beautiful. Finally, the villagers started saying that they wanted to increase the number of birds. After that, the Team 9 started their trials as community facilitators for realizing captive breeding by the villagers of Sumberklampok. a) In July 2010 at the assembly hall of the village, the team shared the information with the villagers about the fact that captive breeding by ordinary people becomes legal. b) The team visited the Village Government office. As the villagers expressed their will to have training on captive breeding of Curik Bali, the village office discussed with the team, and the details of training (participants, dates, venue, etc.) were decided by the villagers and village office. c) In November 2010, cap1tive breeding training was conducted by the village. The training was held at the assembly hall of the village participated by 18 villagers. After two days training in the village, the participants visited Gyanyar Regency of Bali Province to observe individual breeders who succeeded in captive breeding of Curik Bali. d) The team assisted the villagers to have meeting among them, and it was decided that the villagers would ask APCB to rent parents birds with a collateral of cows. They also discussed about construction of breeding cages, and rules and contracts between the breeders and the village office were discussed as well. e) The villagers established a breeder group. The name of the group is “Manuk Jegeg” meaning “beautiful bird” in Java and Bali language. The team 9 of the park supported the group to construct breeding cage, to conduct training for taking care of birds, and to prepare for application form of captive breeding. After that, Nature Conservation Office visited the group and all the members of Manuk Jegeg were acknowledged to fulfil all the conditions to be engaged in captive breeding. Late April in 2011, breeder candidates visited individual breeders in Jogyakarta and Nganjuk () together with their wives, and the Team 9 members went together. In Nganjuk, they visited a breeding facility managed by an ordinary village woman, Ms. Susirowati. She is a lady who loves Curik Bali, and hopes to see the birds flying in the sky over their original habitat. She promised to donate one pair of Curik Bali for Manuk Jegeg, and will help the activities of Sumberklampok villagers. “It is not like depending on others to do something, but it depends on ourselves whether something is achieved or not”, a member of Manuk Jegeg expressed, and Mr. Sugiarto was so happy to hear it as a facilitator.

Sumberklampok village now Several months passed; “We always had quarrels between husband and wife, and it was famous among the neighbors. However, it is quite calm now, we talk each other very quietly as Cikal is not frightened. My wife became really tender”. “My wife splashed out and bought a refrigerator finally. She says she is afraid that mango and papaya for Rudi will go off”. “In my house, the wife bought an expensive banana famous for its sweet taste from the market. Of course, it is not for me, but for Roni ”. Middle aged gentlemen talked each other over coffee (with full of sugar) and Pisang Goreng (fried Banana) at the daytime in Sumberklampok village. “Cikal”, “Rudi”, and “Roni” seem to be names of Curik Bali that they are breeding. They are the members of breeding group “Manuk Jegeg” in the village. The group was established by the villagers’ passion with three pillars of activities, nature conservation, livelihood improvement, and tourism promotion. In June 2011, they received 15 pair of parent birds from APCB through handing over ceremony attended by the Governor of Bali Province, and they started breeding activities since then. Presently, people of Sumberklampok village, centered by Manuk Jegeg, started tree plantation activities towards restoration and extension of the habitat of Curik Bali. The villagers reflect their old days at a workshop held with the assistance of Team 9, and they recall their memory about what trees were where. They studied what kind of natural environment is favored by Curik Bali, and finally made a map indicating what trees will be planted where in the village. According to their plan, they have a great vision to plant 217,500 trees in total, but now they have a target of 10,000 Dadap trees planted in the village. In September 2012, they established nursery bed for the sapling and planted cottage of hundred trees, but because of extremely dry weather, all of them dried up. In December 2012, when precious rainy season starts (that lasts only four months), they will challenge again for constructing nursery bed. There have been already 27 infant birds hatched from 15 pair of parent birds. A member of Manuk Jegeg, Mr.Rahbit told us; “What is the best thing I experienced after breeding Curik Bali is that I could make many friends. I am not a veterinarian or researcher, so I can not understand any theories, however, it is really good to share my own experience of breeding Curik Bali with many people visiting this village from outside”.

What happened in the other villages? There are six villages surrounding the West Bali National Park. Being encouraged by the successful collaboration with the villagers in Sumberklampok, Team 9 started facilitation in the other villages. At first, in Blimbingsari village adjoining to the Southern part of the Park. Here, there is an area called “Grojogan Water Fall” where the villagers used to walk around for relax and refreshment. A few years ago, some of the villagers voluntarily started construction of a small park around this area, and they installed playground equipment and toilet facilities. However, the National Park stopped them saying that the area is inside the Park and without any permission, it was not possible to do such things. Since then, the relation between the village and the Park became worsen. A member of Team 9, Mr.Yudi, thought that it is necessary to start with partnership building with the villagers, and he began visiting the village frequently and having chat with the villagers at the garden of the houses or in the fruits plantations. This village is a Balinese Christian village which is very unique in Bali Island. There is a church with traditional Bali style design, and Western tourists sometimes visit the church to see unique mass with traditional Bali music and costume. However, the village had not took any initiative to promote tourism, just receiving the tour organized by a tourism company outside. Mr.Yudi found it to be a potential, so he started process of changing zoning of the Park at the area of Grojogan waterfall to become “Utilization Zone” by getting approval of the Ministry of Forestry through the Head of the Park. Then, when a young intern from i-i-network visited the village, he held an “Arumonosagashi” (exploring what there are in the community by using outsiders’ eye) with the villagers, and made a “local resource map”. After those facilitation, some of the villagers became positive and active to promote village tourism utilizing nature and culture, and a tourism committee was established in the village in 2011. After that, preparation of homestay, training of village guides, construction of trekking road in the Park were implemented by the initiative of the committee and the Park helped them. In late of 2011, the village participated in village tourism exhibition organized by Bali province, and it was selected as one of the seven villages in Bali Island designated as “tourism village”. Mayor of Jembrana Regency visited the village, and he declared that Blimbingsari village to be “Village Tourism Center” to be collaborated with the local government for promotion of tourism. The next movement emerged in Gilimanuk village. In this village, there is a ferry port that connects Java and Bali, thus there are a lot of residents, shops, and hotels. However, at the opposite side of the port, there is a calm small bay with virgin mangrove forest. The surrounding sea is a good for fish catch, so there are many fishermen live in the village, and fishermen’s groups had been formed. Mr. Sugiarto, then, started to think how he can try to facilitate initiative of the village where he himself lives. He applied the way of entering the village a la i-i-net, becoming friends of the villagers. Mr. Sugiarto began talking with a member of fishermen group at the coast, then, the villager started to say, “now we can not expect good catch of fish as we had before. Maybe because we continuously did bombing fishery, coral leaf died, and the number of the fish decreases. However, we can not do anything other than activities related with the sea as we have been engaged in fishery”. After that, one by one, the member of fishermen group “Karang Sewu” came to him, and finally all the members of the group assembled every night and talked each other. What can be done by us to live with the sea in cooperation with the Park? They started to think that they need to rehabilitate the sea that once destroyed by bombing fishery, and to improve livelihood by protecting mangrove forest that still remains. Mr. Sugiarto who is acknowledged as a “partner” by the villagers, made an action plan with the villagers, and took the first step for promoting “mangrove tour” towards livelihood improvement utilizing what there are in the village. They started constructing a pier with the villagers’ initiative. All the actions from material collection to construction were done by the villagers with all the expense and labor provided voluntarily by the villagers themselves. And within a very short time, the pier was completed. After that, the other village surrounding WBNP got interested in the group’s activities, and the number of visitors who came to Gilimanuk Bay increases. If you cruise mangrove forest in the Bay by a small fishermen boat with the capacity of 10 persons, it is only 10,000 Rupiah per person with the guide of a fisherman.

Lessons learned and the next challenge One of the lessons from the activities until now is that the National Park field staff who are belong to government can be good community facilitators. There were some field staff in-charge of managing eco-system of the forest who had just been confused at the beginning not understanding what was going on. They were in some sense “skeptical” when we started the activities. However, when they learned method of i-i-network and practiced facilitation in the field, and when they were satisfied with what they did and how the villagers took initiative, those staff totally changed. “When I go to a village, I take off my uniform, and it means I expose myself to the village”. “I need to search for what there are in a village. By not bringing something from outside, I need to think with the villagers, and to explore together”. Now, they express their change in such words. On the other hand, how about the villages? It is not easy to change the villagers’ attitude if you just chant a slogan of “nature conservation”, but if you touch a “heart string” of the villagers, they definitely start doing something. For example, Sumberklampok village had been disreputably labeled as “a village pushed Bali Mynah into the edge of extinction”. When the villagers found that there might be a good opportunity for them to be recognized as a village where the residents really love Bali Mynah, it became strong motivation for some of the villagers to form a breeders’ group. In Blimbingsari village, many young generations have already left the village and the villagers confront severe problem of de-population and aging society. They really want to revive the village to attract the young people come back. Thus, some of the villagers started to think if they promote village tourism focusing on the Grojogan waterfall, it may create employment opportunity for the young people. It touched the heart string of the villagers. In the future, i-i-network plans to deepen collaborative activities in WBNP, and also to extend its community facilitation method to the other National Parks or Nature Conservation Areas in the country. At first, in WBNP, it will conduct community facilitation training for the field staff who interact with the community people around the Park in order to extend “Team 9 Plus” groups. For the other National Parks, it is planned to send field staff of WBNP who has accumulated experience on community facilitation in the field, and to increase capacity of field staff of those Parks through “peer support” style. Through the activity, it aims at facilitating exchange of experience and mutual learning among National Parks, thus the method of facilitating collaborative actions will be extended in a sustainable manner. As for facilitation to the surrounding villages, it is necessary to continue partnership building between the National Park and the local communities, and based on that, we will facilitate initiatives of the communities to solve their issues. If the villagers understand the real situation surrounding their communities, it becomes obvious that they need to have livelihood improvement activities that co-exist with the nature, and it will become possible to prepare for a village master plan towards community development harmonizing with the natural environment. One of our final goal is to conclude MOU between the Park and the villages for achieving sustainable collaboration. In order to expand collaborative activities with the villagers, it is also necessary to collaborate with the other stakeholders such as local government and private companies. The National Park needs to have capacity to be a facilitator of collaborative relation between other stakeholders.

In November 2012, a new MOU between WBNP and i-i-network has been concluded, and those activities above will be implemented continuously. It has also been decided that the activities will be supported as a JICA-NGO partnership project. The West Bali Style of “method of facilitating collaborative actions” can be applied fully in the other National Parks, and it does not require huge amount of fund. When i-i-network as an outsider leaves the Park, the method of facilitating collaborative action will be expanded through “peer support” system. With having such hopes, we would like to continue our activities.