The Importance of Being Political: Emergence of a Multi-stakeholder Forum at the Lake Malili Complex, South Sulawesi

Abstract

Multi-stakeholder forums are considered an essential element of landscape approaches for sustainable development and integrated ecosystem management. Such forums are widely adopted in environmental management policies and introduced as precursors for novel institutional arrangements for collective action in complex landscapes. However, while they are often held up as a mechanism for greater inclusion and representation, they can also further marginalize less powerful stakeholders. In this respect, the importance of politics in shaping the success of a multi-stakeholder forum is often overlooked. This article examines different multi-stakeholder mechanisms for governing the Lake Malili Complex in Sulawesi, Indonesia —a landscape characterized by competing land use interests and the presence of threatened endemic species. The case highlights a successful bottom-up multi-stakeholder approach that became a model for collaboration, and which was subsequently scaled up to cover the broader Lake Malili Complex area.. The research is based on longstanding participation in the politics of decision-making processes at the Lake Malili Complex, complemented by in-depth examination of the establishment of the multi-stakeholder forum. The findings show that strong, locally-based initiatives provide an avenue for generating greater participation in achieving mutual goals for conserving the Lake Malili Complex. However, participation in the multi-stakeholder platform is not enough to push for decision making at the district level, where more powerful management decisions take place. We therefore note that outcomes of community-based resource management are limited when they are not backed by more political approaches to influence decision making

The Cultural Transmission of Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Cerekang, South Sulawesi, Indonesia

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Placing the Commoning First: Getting Beyond the Patronage Trap in Natural Resource Decentralization Policies

“…In some cases, collective action can translate simply into taking matters into their own hands (DeVore, 2019). Less powerful organized citizen groups need to be able to build sufficient power to level the playing field before diverse stakeholder resource management arrangements can achieve meaningful results for all parties Sirimorok & Rusdianto, 2020). Furthermore, studies also suggest that local citizens need to be able to negotiate among themselves to go beyond the essentialist 'community' point of view and create 'democratic spaces' for all, including those marginalized in the community (Agrawal & Gibson, 1999;Shaw, 2014).…”

Community and conservation in Wallacea: Making the case for the region, a methodological framework, and research trends

“…The article by Sirimorok and Rusdianto (2020a) takes on directly the issue of governing scales at the village and district levels. They examine the opportunities for developing conservationoriented coalitions based on replicating successful localized cases.…”

“…Research from Maluku, for example, (Salampessy et al, 2017), highlights the flaws of social forestry policy applications for its overly formulaic solutions, as middlemen co-opted the process that led to the dispossession of forest cultivators to their groves of cloves. A number of the contributions to this special section also seek to explore these and other formally supported community-based or co-management arrangements, ranging from a close examination of local institutions and their practices related to conservation (Batiran and Salim, 2020;Sirimorok and Safriyanto, 2020b), or more explicit community conservation partnerships initiated and supported by the state and other partners to develop new models for managing forest and coastal/marine areas (Anugrahsari et al, 2020;Sirimorok and Rusdianto, 2020a;Sirimorok and Rusdianto, 2020b). Nevertheless, there is much more to be explored among these and other policy prescriptions for involving communities in conservation from across this vast region.…”