View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Edinburgh Research Explorer Edinburgh Research Explorer Beyond Oil Palm: Perceptions of Local Communities of Environmental Change Citation for published version: Hasanah, N, Komarudin, H, Dray, A & Ghazoul, J 2019, 'Beyond Oil Palm: Perceptions of Local Communities of Environmental Change', Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, vol. 2. https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2019.00041 Digital Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3389/ffgc.2019.00041 Link: Link to publication record in Edinburgh Research Explorer Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Published In: Frontiers in Forests and Global Change Publisher Rights Statement: Copyright © 2019 Hasanah, Komarudin, Dray and Ghazoul. 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Sep. 2020 ORIGINAL RESEARCH published: 06 August 2019 doi: 10.3389/ffgc.2019.00041 Beyond Oil Palm: Perceptions of Local Communities of Environmental Change Nur Hasanah 1, Heru Komarudin 2, Anne Dray 3 and Jaboury Ghazoul 1* 1 Ecosystem Management, Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, 2 Value-Chains, Finance and Investment, Center for International Forestry Research, Bogor, Indonesia, 3 Forest Management and Development, Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland Involving local communities in ecosystem service research can improve the relevance, quality and, ultimately, the outcomes of natural resource management. Local engagement can also contribute to solutions to ecosystem management challenges by diversifying the range of options and contextualizing their applicability. The benefits to local communities of ecosystem service-based policies relative to other interventions, such as oil palm development, are, therefore, best understood from the perspectives of the local communities themselves. We used observations, focus group discussions, and interviews in four villages along the Belayan River, East Kalimantan, Indonesia, to explore how local communities in different oil palm development contexts perceive Ecosystem Edited by: Services (ES). The main livelihood activity differed across these villages, which were either Rory Padfield, fishing, oil palm smallholder communities, or forest-dependent communities. Perceptions University of Leeds, United Kingdom about ES varied across villages, though three services were perceived to be crucial in all Reviewed by: four villages, namely fish provision, water quality, and land availability. These services can Helena Varkkey, University of Malaya, Malaysia be a common concern entry point for discussions on landscape management. Despite Adam Tyson, common recognition of the negative impacts of oil palm development on these crucial University of Leeds, United Kingdom services, all communities are nevertheless choosing to expand oil palm. Communities *Correspondence: Jaboury Ghazoul identified a wide array of direct and indirect drivers underlying this trend, including social [email protected] influence, financial capital, ecological factors, and subsidies from local government. Early engagement of local policymakers, oil palm companies, and local communities Specialty section: is essential to the maintenance of crucial and widely recognized ecosystem services in This article was submitted to Tropical Forests, oil palm landscapes. a section of the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Keywords: ecosystem services, Indonesia, Kalimantan, landscape, livelihood, participation, values Change Received: 09 February 2019 Accepted: 11 July 2019 INTRODUCTION Published: 06 August 2019 Local communities should be included in ecosystem services (ES) assessments, as they are the Citation: primary users and beneficiaries of many ecosystem services and have direct access to local resources Hasanah N, Komarudin H, Dray A and providedbytheecosystemsofwhichtheyareapart(Folke et al., 2005). Involving local communities Ghazoul J (2019) Beyond Oil Palm: Perceptions of Local Communities of in ES assessments facilitates more accurate evaluations of the importance of the ecosystem services Environmental Change. and the factors that determine social preferences and trade-offs associated with land use change Front. For. Glob. Change 2:41. and decision-making (MEA, 2005). The value and needs of local users should, therefore, guide any doi: 10.3389/ffgc.2019.00041 ecosystem assessment process (Menzel and Teng, 2010). Frontiers in Forests and Global Change | www.frontiersin.org 1 August 2019 | Volume 2 | Article 41 Hasanah et al. Community Perceptions of Oil Palm Integrating socio-political aspects into ES will deepen the through the use of low carbon emission are adopted. The conceptual understanding of how land use decision-making takes President issued a national policy to put a halt the issuance of new account of and affects the services provided by ecosystems to oil palm permits on primary forests and peatlands. To further humans (Andersson et al., 2007; Abson et al., 2014; Albert follow up the policy, the Governor of East Kalimantan issued et al., 2014). Issues of social impacts, governance, legal rights, a regulation specifying the postponement of the issuance of and justice all play a role in shaping decision-making by local licenses for land-based investment including oil palm plantations land users (Chaudhary et al., 2015). Local participation during across the province. Particularly, a province regulation stipulates the process will, therefore, increase the quality of decision- the need for oil palm companies to set aside and protect high- making (Sayer et al., 2013). Such integrative collaboration conservation areas. The Head of the district in Kutai Kartanegara provides a better understanding of the role of societal and issued a policy to protect peatlands and ensure that the policy is cultural processes on ecosystem changes (van Oudenhoven not benefiting only the environment, but also local communities. et al., 2018) and the ways in which ES are supplied and Despite massive efforts to adopt the practices, adverse impacts distributed (Bennett et al., 2015). of the oil palm development continue to occur. How such International trade often detrimentally affects local social and economic changes affect the traditional fishing ecosystems and communities who depend on them (Aggarwal, and forest-dependent communities, many of which source a 2006; Chang et al., 2016). The growing global demand for variety of resources and services from natural and semi-natural palm oil, for example, has driven large-scale land use changes ecosystems, remains unclear. Also poorly understood is how in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. This has resulted in the local communities perceive these changes and are responding transformation of often formerly forested landscapes into to opportunities, and how vulnerable they are considering extensive areas of oil palm plantation. The development of oil their physical, social, economic, and environmental limits palm in Indonesia, for example, has increased at a rate of around and capacities. Understanding them is essential if the future 10.99% per year; what was only 294.56 ha in 1980 reached to 11.2 development of oil palm is to effectively respond to community million ha in 2016 (Indonesian-Agricultural-Ministry, 2016). needs and aspirations. The production increase has amounted to 11.50% per year, from Direct community involvement in ecosystem service research 721.17 tons in 1980 to 31.7 million tons of crude palm oil in can contribute to improved natural resource management 2016. This rapid and extensive development has caused adverse by acknowledging and responding to locally perceived trade- effects on both the environment and society (Sayer et al., 2012), offs (Tadesse et al., 2014). The direct involvement of local one of which has been declining food security (Sinaga, 2013). communities in research can also promote local engagement in While the production of marketable goods may increase as a finding solutions to ecosystem management challenges (Menzel result of oil palm plantations (Dislich et al., 2017), extensive and Teng, 2010; Meijaard et al., 2013). Yet there are few development of this commodities generally reduce ecosystem investigations of the benefits to local communities of ecosystem service provision (Fitzherbert et al., 2008) and can cause growing service-based policies relative to other interventions, such as oil economic inequities that lead to social conflict and poverty palm development (Goldman et al., 2008; Bennett et al., 2015). (MEA, 2005). Different scenarios for oil palm expansion are With these considerations, we aim to explore the condition possible, which would give opportunities for enhancing carbon of the ecosystems in Kutai Kartanegara as perceived by local stock, water yield and habitat quality (Sharma et al., 2018). communities living