East Kalimantan Environmentally Sustainable Development Strategy

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Box 15
included programs to provide employees and local people with new skills, in anticipation of the
time when the company would no longer be the economic engine of the community. These
included training focused on the set up of mechanical workshops for cars and motorcycles, sewing
services, small trading shops, and various farming endeavors, improved agricultural practices
(beyond slash and burn), and new cash crops for trading.
Community Engagement in the Berau Forest Carbon Program
TNC and its partners have been working with forest communities in Berau since 2002 and recently
completed a study of 20 of the 107 villages in preparation for the BFCP. Villages in Berau vary widely
in level of forest dependence, remoteness, level of cultural homogeneity, and experience with the
market economy. Virtually all villages are in a process of transition in livelihood strategies and
governance institutions, and in most cases village institutions are ineffective, particularly in the
upland high forest areas. Land tenure is not formally recognized, and villages are not often not even
included in district spatial and development plans. Many villages are located within timber and oil
palm concession areas, and each has or will be affected by timber, oil palm, or mining concessions.
Proximity and weakly-defined property rights often lead to latent or overt conflicts between
communities and neighboring companies. Key issues in community-company relations include
consent of communities for company operations, recognition of different types of community rights,
legally required and voluntary fees and compensation to communities for use of the forest, and
legally required investments by companies in community development.
The BFCP has identified six objectives for its community engagement plan:
1. Involvement in low-carbon development strategy: Meaningfully involve communities
in design and oversight of Berau’s low carbon development strategy. Forest communities are
constructively engaged in BFCP governance and decision making at strategic and operational
levels, as well as other important policy dialogs in Berau.
2. Free, prior, and informed consent: Ensure informed consent for all agreements, to be
implemented on a sustainable basis.
3. Strengthened village institutions: Help villages develop better governance institutions,
ones that will allow for effective community involvement in natural resource management and
sustained implementation of BFCP.
DRAFT
4. Livelihoods: Improve livelihoods, including alternative livelihoods that reduce pressure on the
environment in the short, medium, and longer terms.
5. Benefit sharing: Establish arrangements for fairly and sustainably apportioned streams of
benefits for villages including women, (social services, community infrastructure, etc.)
6. Learning: Document and disseminate learning and scaling-up mechanisms from BFCP’s
community involvement component.
Public awareness on climate change is also required in addition to community
engagement programs focused on achieving projects. In 2001, East Kalimantan took part
in the survey Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices: Natural Resources Management, which was a
comprehensive survey of awareness and attitudes toward environmental issues. Although quite
some time has passed since the survey, its findings indicated that while environmental issues
are relatively important to residents of East Kalimantan, there was a gap to people becoming
actively involved in solutions. Public awareness and engagement can be even more important and
challenging for climate change as its impact is not as clearly or immediately seen as that for poor
environmental practices (such as water or air pollution). Kaltim Green and the Governor have been
recently conducting a larger public awareness campaign on climate change, which has included