In some areas of Indonesia, local wisdom of coastal communities becomes an important factor and even determines the conservation initiative and mangrove-based ecotourism destinations; Wringinputih, Muncar, Banyuwangi, for instance. As a matter of fact, shrimp farms in this particular area were developed through reclamation in the 1980’s, and in consequence, many of the mangrove forest areas performed distinctly different functions. However, shrimp farming did not last long here as most shrimps suffered to death from white spot syndrome at the beginning of 1990’s. Thus, as most businessmen went bankrupt, they just left the shrimp farms and let the environmental conditions not taken a good care. Hence, in 1997 a number of community leaders of Wringinputih expressed their concerns and initiated local wisdom in the form of mangrove forests in favor of ex-location of shrimp farms. The research data were collected through descriptive qualitative method and in-depth interviews with some community leaders, the management of mangrove forests, selected individuals to obtain valuable information on local wisdoms related to the conservation of mangrove forests and the making of ecotourism destination. As a result, Wringinputih village community eventually restored mangrove forests in favor of the shrimp farms, and this particular success can apparently be applied elsewhere. Hence, with mangrove forest restoration, other natural resources grow exponentially and many mangrove-based tourism resorts are developed. The coastal communities can accelerate through many activities and job vacancies that they eventually can improve their social welfare.

This paper explores the pivotal and influential roles of an informal leader in community development at Pasar Banggi village, Rembang, Central Java particularly in relation to social capital, social scenarios of change, organization and local community participatory engagement in the development process. This paper, thus, presents social welfare perspective with qualitative approach by phenomenological method. As this paper was based on case studies, it deploys purposive technique to determine the key informants forwarding to next informants. Participatory observation and in-depth interviews were carried out to obtain information. The results were then analyzed through descriptive-qualitative analysis. The findings showed that the informal leader possessed natural ability in building up social capital, networks and trust in the community which revitalized socio-cultural and environmental values.