Environmental anthropological studies on natural resource management have widely demonstrated and thematized local resource management practices based on the interactions between local people and supernatural agencies and their role in maintaining natural resources. In Indonesia, even though the legal status of local people’s right to the forest and forest resources is still weak, the recent transition toward decentralization presents a growing opportunity for local people to collaborate with outsiders such as governmental agencies and environmental nongovernmental organizations in natural resource management. In such situations, in-depth understanding of the value of local resource management practices is needed to promote self-directed and effective resource management. Here, we focus on local forest resource management and its suitability in the local social-cultural context in central Seram, east Indonesia. Local resource management appears to be embedded in the wider social-cultural context of the local communities. However, few intensive case studies in Indonesia have addressed the relationship between the Indigenous resource management practices closely related to a people’s belief in supernatural agents and the social-cultural context. We illustrate how the well-structured use of forest resources is established and maintained through these interactions. We then investigate how local resource management practices relate to the social-cultural and natural resources context of an upland community in central Seram and discuss the possible future applications for achieving conservation

In this study, we aimed to investigate the uncertainty events affecting small-scale salt producers and find out how small-scale salt producers were responding to the combinations of climatic and socioeconomic uncertainty they had experienced. We divided the salt producers into three categories based on land ownership: (1) land owner;(2) wage laborer; and (3) tenant. We examine their perceptions of the problems and their adaptive responses at the household and aggregate levels. Based on fieldwork in salt production areas in rural Sampang, Indonesia. First, we find that, the effect of uncertainty events does affect salt producers unequally. This, depending on resources and power within community. Second, there are advantages and disadvantages of each adaptation. This is representing dilemma of salt producers that shape how adaptation practices are negotiated in order to respond the combinations of climatic and socioeconomic uncertainty. Finally, our finding underlines the challenges of developing an integrated approach to mitigate these uncertainty events.

No abstract

BackgroundIn Solomon Islands, forests have provided people with ecological services while being affected by human use and protection. This study used a quantitative ethnobotanical analysis to explore the society–forest interaction and its transformation in Roviana, Solomon Islands. We compared local plant and land uses between a rural village and urbanized village. Special attention was paid to how local people depend on biodiversity and how traditional human modifications of forest contribute to biodiversity conservation.MethodsAfter defining locally recognized land-use classes, vegetation surveys were conducted in seven forest classes. For detailed observations of daily plant uses, 15 and 17 households were randomly selected in the rural and urban villages, respectively. We quantitatively documented the plant species that were used as food, medicine, building materials, and tools.ResultsThe vegetation survey revealed that each local forest class represented a different vegetative community with relatively low similarity between communities. Although commercial logging operations and agriculture were both prohibited in the customary nature reserve, local people were allowed to cut down trees for their personal use and to take several types of non-timber forest products. Useful trees were found at high frequencies in the barrier island’s primary forest (68.4%) and the main island’s reserve (68.3%). Various useful tree species were found only in the reserve forest and seldom available in the urban village. In the rural village, customary governance and control over the use of forest resources by the local people still functioned.ConclusionsHuman modifications of the forest created unique vegetation communities, thus increasing biodiversity overall. Each type of forest had different species that varied in their levels of importance to the local subsistence lifestyle, and the villagers’ behaviors, such as respect for forest reserves and the semidomestication of some species, contributed to conserving diversity. Urbanization threatened this human–forest interaction. Although the status of biodiversity in human-modified landscapes is not fully understood, this study suggested that traditional human modifications can positively affect biodiversity and that conservation programs should incorporate traditional uses of landscapes to be successful.

The purpose of this research was to explore the history of suction dredging and the local political dynamics of coastal resource governance in a village on Bangka Island, Indonesia. Using both qualitative and quantitative approaches, this study is significant for the quality of the data obtained through field visits, in-depth surveys, and interviews with the affected local community, representing different subsistence groups and socioeconomic political stratifications. This study found that both economic and local socio-political factors influenced the local community's acceptance of suction dredging. Compensation provided a compelling reason to agree to license mining activity. The key reasons for opposing suction dredging included resource depletion and deterioration, reduction in the quantity and price of fish, and difficulties associated with finding alternative livelihoods. Most of the net-fishing community disagreed with suction dredging, but the local political system stifled their opposition. The lack of fair decision-making processes for these licenses is indicative of an immature democracy.