Economic development, environmental stress and sustainability in Indonesia. A case study on community transformation and local resource use in Berau, East Kalimantan

Abstract

This study concerns the use of natural resources in the Berau District of East Kalimantan (Indonesia), where environmental conditions are considered at risk. Policy change, rapid economic development and the inflow of various population groups have important implications for the access to and control by local populations, forest products, land, marine products, and other natural resources.The above processes have both positive and negative impacts at the district level. On the other hand, the communities and their households are facing the full force of externally induced changes in their livelihood conditions and perspectives, without being able to exert control over these changes. The communities react in different ways, as revealed by our research in four types of communities, namely tribal, peasant and pioneer farming communities in the interior, and fishing communities on the coast. No farming or fishing community has been left unaffected by the changes that have occurred in the area, as each of the changes has had an impact on the main resource use systems, the livelihood conditions, and the levels of commercialization and social differentiation. These forces of change have to some extent triggered the establishment of new resource use systems, such as gold mining (tribal communities), permanent farming systems (peasant communities), rubber and cocoa plantation (pioneer and peasant communities), and bagan and aquaculture (coastal communities). The forces of change have also reduced or modified the existing resource use systems, such as the shift from swidden cultivation to more permanent and commercial agricultural systems, the increased level of commercialization, in terms of the use of technology, and created social differentiation among the communities. The tribal communities seem to be the least flexible in facing the forces of change whereas the peasant farming communities emerged as the most flexible. In addition, none of the communities can be conceived as a closed unit of analysis, or even as a homogeneous social entity, because each includes different types of households and different strategy groups, and each reacts differently to the processes of change. Some responses are strongly related to their socio-cultural background, while others are determined by the flexibility of their resources use systems. As a result, the communities show considerable mutual and internal differences in coping with the major factors of change and in managing their natural resources as a result of these changes. Furthermore, the various sustainability analyses have shown how important it is to include economic, social and ecological dimensions, as they are strongly interlinked. A system with high values in only one of the dimensions does not necessarily achieve a better total score, as the other dimensions may provide much lower values. Thus, a balancing of the combination of these three dimensions is imperative in assessing the overall sustainability characteristics, and in exploring ways to improve the sustainability of the respective systems. The government’s policy approach should also take into account the differences between communities, as no single and uniform solution can be applied to all types of farming communities.