November 2023 How Can a Community-based Approach EAST ASIA AND Improve Large-Scale Mangrove PACIFIC GENDER INNOVATION LAB Rehabilitation Efforts in Indonesia? The East Asia and Pacific Gender Innovation Lab (EAPGIL) carries out Key findings impact evaluations and • Mangrove loss in Indonesia has been rapid and linked to market incentives, land inferential research tenure issues, regulations, and institutions. to generate evidence • Efforts to rehabilitate and protect mangroves have had mixed success, but a on what works in community-based approach can be effective. closing gender gaps • A community-based approach incorporates local knowledge, generates buy- in assets, economic in from the community, and tailors activities to the local economic, social, opportunities, and biophysical, and tenurial conditions. agency, and how • Scaling a community-based approach requires experienced facilitators, targeted closing these gaps technical assistance, well-defined rules and guidelines, and a fair and inclusive can help achieve process that emphasizes local concerns and women’s participation. other development outcomes. Ultimately, EAPGIL seeks to increase the welfare Introduction of women and men Mangroves are critical natural resources for climate change mitigation and adaptation in East Asia and the (Kauffman et al 2020). They have significant carbon storage potential, sequestering five times as Pacific by promoting much carbon as tropical forests and twice as much as peatlands1. They attenuate storm surges the uptake of effective and dissipate wave energy, thereby reducing the impacts of flooding, erosion, and damage to policies and programs coastal communities in the face of increasing natural disasters and sea level rise2. identified based on evidence. 1 Murdiyarso et al 2015 2 World Bank 2022 local communities. This policy brief aims to provide practical guidance on how to adopt a community-based approach to achieve better results in mangrove rehabilitation and conservation efforts that take place at scale. It provides the rationale for using a community- based approach, or an operational model that involves local populations throughout the process of planning, rehabilitation, and monitoring and delegates most decisions to the local level. It then details lessons learned from global evidence and Indonesia’s experience with community driven development programs to provide guidance on how to successfully ensure local ownership of mangrove rehabilitation and sustainable use in projects delivered at scale. What are challenges to successful Mangroves also have an important economic value. They rehabilitation and sustainable use of play a key role in the fishery sector, providing a nursing ground mangroves in Indonesia, and how can and source of nutrients for species that are commercially a community-based approach help harvested. An estimated 55 percent of Indonesia’s total address these challenges? fish catch biomass consists of species that depend on Market incentives, regulatory failures, land tenure issues, mangroves3. Moreover, local communities gather timber and institutional incentives have hindered the success of products for poles, firewood, charcoal and construction mangrove protection, rehabilitation and sustainable use in materials as well as non-timber products such as medicines, the past. A community-based approach could help overcome tannin, dye, food and others4 The average value of fisheries some of these obstacles and contribute to the success of services per hectare of mangrove in Indonesia is estimated future initiatives. Indeed, the lack of community engagement at USD 3,289 per hectare per year, and the average value of has been shown to be one reason why projects in coastal firewood and timber extraction is estimated at USD 1,286 per communities do not have a sustainable impact on livelihoods hectare per year5. or conservation efforts9. Indonesia has the largest mangrove cover in the world6, with a Agriculture and aquaculture commodities can be a total area of 3.3 million hectares7. Despite this large coverage, significant source of income for households in mangrove mangrove loss has been rapid: in three decades, Indonesia areas, and this incentivizes clearing of mangrove forests for lost 40 percent of its mangroves8. Mangrove rehabilitation production of these commodities. Half of historical mangrove efforts have had mixed success. Many large-scale efforts loss is estimated to be driven by conversion to aquaculture to replant degraded mangrove areas have failed to deliver ponds for seafood production, and an additional 16 percent of sustainable results in terms of successfully rehabilitated mangrove loss is estimated to come from the development of mangrove forests and improved wellbeing for surrounding palm oil plantations10. Indonesia’s decentralized governance communities. However, some smaller-scale initiatives have structure means local governments have considerable power achieved better results, in part due to the alignment of the over mangrove management. However, in many regions, local approach with local contexts and intense engagement with governments facilitate increasing land cultivation, including in 3 Ibid. 4 Kusmana and Sukristijiono 2016 5 World Bank 2022 6 Donato et al 2011; Alongi 2015 7 MoEF 2020 8 Murdiyarso et al 2015 9 Stacey et al 2021 10 Richards and Friess 2016 mangrove-protected zones11, and very few have designated managed, communities may have enjoyed informal use rights mangrove forests as protected areas.12 In addition, current for years, based on local agreements or understandings. laws and regulations do little to protect most mangrove areas, These complex and often political land tenure arrangements with responsibilities for mangrove management fragmented around mangroves are specific to each locality and require across a range of national and subnational agencies, but careful assessment and negotiation – including to avoid loss no over-arching set of rules, and no moratorium on further of livelihoods for those with insecure tenure16. Even within one clearing of mangroves . As such, there is a need to not only 13 regency, ownership and use rights can vary considerably from work with community members who derive their incomes one village to the next. For example, in Bintan Regency in from mangroves but to also work with local governments to the Riau Islands, land tenure regimes for mangroves range ensure local policies that are consistent with conservation from 90% of mangroves being owned by the private sector and rehabilitation objectives. to all mangroves being controlled by the community, with other villages having a mix of village-controlled and local A community-based approach can highlight the specific government-controlled land17. In the Kayan Sembakung economic pressures that contribute to local loss of mangroves Delta in North Kalimantan, conversion of mangrove forests to and reveal local government initiatives that are not aligned shrimp ponds (approximately 150,000 ponds) happened on with mangrove conservation. Local communities are better land designated as state forest, as well as in areas classified placed to identify alternative livelihoods that may be viable. as other use areas. While many pond owners have some Past experience in Indonesia has shown that some livelihoods kind of permit, none have certificates of land rights. Because interventions introduced by programs that aim to address land tenure arrangements are specific to each community, coastal degradation have actually increased pressures on a community-based approach is needed to identify who natural resources or had limited viability. Examples include the controls the targeted mangrove areas and to build their provision of assets that can increase the capacity for fishing, support for rehabilitation and conservation efforts. and projects introducing handicrafts or ecotourism in remote areas with limited access to markets14. Other alternative Another challenge for mangrove rehabilitation is the need livelihood programs that incentivize sustainable business to monitor and maintain rehabilitated areas for several years. activities have become “additional” rather than “alternative” It can take over five years for mangrove rehabilitation to livelihoods in the absence of adequate enforcement efforts be considered successful and over seven years for carbon or environmental safeguards . A community-based approach 15 capture benefits to materialize, which is longer than many can ensure that project activities address the specific rehabilitation projects. A community-based approach can pressures faced by the community and introduce livelihood boost the sustainability of rehabilitation projects because activities that are viable in the local context, have a high it generates a sense of ownership and facilitates long-term likelihood of adoption by the community, and are aligned with engagement of the population. Involving the communities the dual objectives of conservation and providing alternative throughout the process creates buy-in that is essential for livelihood opportunities. ensuring the necessary time and resource commitments and passing of village-level regulations. In the absence of One challenge to successful mangrove rehabilitation is the stronger protections of mangrove forests, this local ownership complex and insecure land tenure issues that make it difficult is the strongest protection for remaining forests and newly to guard existing mangroves and find secure and suitable rehabilitated zones. sites where rehabilitation is likely to succeed. Some mangrove forests or former forest areas which were historically cleared Small-scale, largely NGO-driven efforts have shown that for aquacultural activities are in state forest areas designated community-based mangrove rehabilitation can succeed. as protection or production forests, while others are now There are many cases of rehabilitation efforts which have used privately owned. Even where land is technically government community-based approaches to achieve effective mangrove 11 Mursyid et al 2021 12 Local governments have more incentives to boost economic activity and revenue collection than to improve environmental outcomes. 13 Mursyid et al 2021 14 Stacey et al. 2021 15 Wright et al 2016 16 Sasmito et al 2022 17 Ulfah et al. 2022 forest rehabilitation, with high-quality mangrove forests that including natural resource management initiatives, are survive beyond the first few years after initial investments. effective because they leverage local knowledge and skills In addition, the Government of Indonesia has shown, by giving key decisions to communities. The closer decision- through the Desa Peduli Gambut program, that community- making about development interventions is to communities, based ecosystem restoration and livelihoods projects can the more likely activities are to be context specific, culturally be managed effectively though partnerships between the appropriate, owned by those affected, and sustained over government, NGOs, and other third parties. These initiatives time. Strong design of community-based approaches will are likely successful because they account for complex and identify the decisions best made at the local level by affected site-specific factors, including land tenure arrangements and communities and ensure a strong enabling environment, biophysical aspects of rehabilitation. They also help build including good technical support and efficient flow of project a consensus in the community about the importance of resources to finance community proposals. mangrove rehabilitation and sustainable use and create buy- There are several key ingredients to quality local planning in for the type of behavior change that is needed to ensure and implementation that project designers may wish to lasting impacts, including by supporting environmentally consider: sustainable livelihoods. 1. Good facilitation. Strong facilitators will lead A key question is how to scale these types of initiatives. communities through an analysis and planning process, Institutions scaling rehabilitation activities are often under combining local knowledge with external support as high pressure to disburse funds and deliver against targets, they go, and ensuring all stakeholders at the local level while building trust and legitimacy in a new site can be difficult have a voice and are included – especially those who and time consuming. Such pressures create incentives to will be most affected by the program. Facilitation allows adopt a one-size-fits-all approach to rehabilitation, even if local conditions are not aligned with this approach, or for a flexible, context-specific ‘learning-by-doing’ to cut corners on difficult issues such as identification of process at the local level. To build trust and buy-in viable sites and rehabilitation methods. Plans for mangrove from local communities, facilitators must be consistent rehabilitation need to be site-specific and consider the in their messaging – they introduce a process, then social, political, and ecological aspects of the site18. Placing they support the village through the process. They community engagement and local decision-making at the are not constantly changing, and they are not delayed center of a project design is an effective way to leverage local by different authorizations coming from the national contextual knowledge towards a tailored approach. A process level. They set expectations for what the program will oriented around local consultation and consensus building deliver and then meet those expectations. While the creates space for learning from local experiences, adapting needed skill set of facilitators may vary based on the rehabilitation methods to the local context, and building the attributes of the site, projects may wish to seek out buy-in of local stakeholders critical to medium- and long- facilitators with demonstrated familiarity with the local term success. Although evidence on scaling community- context and the needs of communities, the ability to based mangrove rehabilitation is thin, lessons learned from navigate local social and political issues carefully, and community driven development programs – including some capacity to balance both with the priorities and goals focused on environmental investments 19 – can shed light on of the project. effective ways of engaging communities and facilitating local 2. Good technical assistance. Communities need decision-making in a scalable way. support on technical aspects outside their sphere of knowledge (such as detailed knowledge of carbon What are promising approaches to capture or various transplantation or propagation scaling community engagement and techniques). Interventions need technical assistance local decision-making? to adopt new technologies (e.g. for alternative or Indonesian and international experience shows that sustainable livelihoods). Technical advisers must community-based approaches to local development, be able to work collaboratively with communities, 18 Rahadian et al 2022 19 Watt et al 2019 drawing on their local knowledge and combining it all in the community who wish to access it. Clear with scientific expertise to find the best solutions. communication also means providing mechanisms for 3. Improve local participation. Ensuring that local communities and stakeholders to make inquiries and governments, organizations, and institutions are voice their concerns or feedback. This may include included in projects is essential for community community forums, hotlines, or online resources such ownership and sustainability. Village-level institutions as social media. Clear and effective communication should be included within planning and implementation allows communities to make informed decisions and as much as possible, though attention should also be more actively participate in the rehabilitation process. given to individuals and groups that may be excluded Well-informed stakeholders can better identify what from those organizations. resources they need to make a project successful and 4. Clear rules of the game. Communities and the local sustainable. facilitators who support them need to understand what It is important to ensure that decision-making is happening is allowed, what is not, and how to complete their plans at the appropriate level in community-driven approaches. properly in order to access funds for implementation. Implementation issues can arise when management is overly Clear and simple operational guidelines are needed, centralized. To achieve economies of scale and avoid creating with consistent training for the facilitators and project staff who guide communities. duplicate program costs, it is important to invest up-front in high-quality inputs, such as training. Layers of subcontracting 5. A fair and inclusive process. Trained facilitators and and parallel delivery systems for linked activities (such as technical advisors can help villages handle internal rehabilitation and livelihoods) can be counterproductive. conflicts and make sure everyone has a voice. They tailor their approach and plans to make sure those Because community-driven approaches require high levels most reliant on mangrove resources are included in of human resources and are often accompanied by tough discussions and activities, while also making sure timelines and political pressures, it can help to break-down local landowners and officials are respected. Criteria the coverage areas and phase the activities. This enables staff for beneficiary selection and targeting are explained to be trained and deployed at a reasonable rate and learning and followed fairly. To ensure women’s inclusion in from early phases to be incorporated into the program while the process, facilitators should provide separate making tangible progress and building systems. meeting invitations to women and be trained on how to prevent elite women from dominating decision- References: making. 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