Ecoregional Assessment of Biological Diversity in East Kalimantan

East Kalimantan Ecoregional Assessment: Chapter 1 – Background & Analysis Process
Socialization Ψ of the process and the product to those who will be responsible for ultimate
implementation and decision making, has been paramount to the ECA planning team during
every phase of this assessment. After significant consideration, the ECA team concluded that
extending this planning process into neighboring countries (Malaysia) or out of the Province
would have detracted from its applicability and relevance to the East Kalimantan local policy
makers.
As indicated earlier, all component WWF “ecoregions” were incorporated into this effort
within the planning unit as ecological system types – this was found to be their more
appropriate utility. In the same way that vegetative communities span across and between
more standard-defined ecoregions in the US and elsewhere (i.e. the Creosote-Scrub
community spanning both the Sonoran and Mojave Ecoregions), these ecological system
types also extended beyond the geographic boundaries of the planning unit to varying degree.
This island-wide distribution was reflected in the categorization of our target ecological
systems as “endemic”, “widespread” or “limited” and subsequently influenced the goal
setting for capturing these targets across the planning area.
The ECA team made a strategic decision to limit this assessment to the Indonesian province
of East Kalimantan, though several of the ecological system types are distributed in other
parts of Borneo. An example using the Lowland Rainforest ecological system type illustrates
why this decision was made. To integrate this dominant matrix system type which
circumnavigates the entire island would have required incorporating the three other
Indonesian Provinces on Borneo, as well as the two Malaysian States of Sarawak and Sabah
and the Nation-State of Brunei Darussalam. Such an approach would have transformed this
planning process into an international effort, delayed information gathering, ground-truthing,
and most likely reduced the relevance of the final product to those entities most responsible
for implementation of the recommended conservation strategies. It would also not have been
feasible within the one-year time frame and budget we were provided. This was determined
to be an unnecessary risk for the planning effort and a good reality check for the standard
stateside TNC recommendations for our global conservation programs.
Threats such as road construction, logging (primarily illegal) and forest fires which traversed
the Upper Montane and Cloud Forest system types were considered on their total occurrence
scale (Fuller, 2003), not just for their presence/absence or extent within East Kalimantan.
Strategies for abating these threats though, will have to be limited to the East Kalimantan
portion of this area since TNC currently has no relationship with Malaysia which contains the
majority of the remaining landscape occurrence of this high altitude unique ecosystem.
From a more practical standpoint, this first test case of comprehensive ecoregional planning
for a portion of Borneo has established a methodology and a rigor of logic which can be
replicated when politically and financially feasible, across remaining Provinces and States of
the island in the future to accomplish a truly ecoregional analysis of the whole Bornean
Island. The pending “Heart of Borneo” initiative which is a collaborative effort among
WWF-Indonesia, TNC and Conservation International holds great promise in bridging these
Ψ Socialization is the term used in Indonesia to mean the process of “marketing” a plan, process, or idea to gain acceptance
and buy-in from a wide audience, usually of stakeholders who will be responsible for actually implementing the product.
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