Kalimantan Forests and Climate Partnership (KFCP) Design ...

crops generate the majority of the income which is underlined by limited importance of food
production (less than 10% is own produced, the remainder is bought on the market). Land access and
use is low, total rubber owned is around 6 ha while land access is 1.9 ha, so most land is left to fallow.
Rubber cultivation here is traditional and of smaller scale. Most of the land is still forested and trees
are relatively old. Around 32% of the rubber is planted on peatland but acreage wise it is less than
what is planted in Mantangai where households depend more on rubber. Interestingly for Block E,
incomes were higher when monitoring started in 2006 and have been relatively stable since, which
given inflation means a decline in bargaining power. In particular, ‗off farm‘ income shows little
improvement, mostly due to increased efforts towards combating illegal logging and gold mining.
Impacts on peatlands
The rapid modernisation trend in rubber cultivation, combined with increased planting in peatlands,
has been identified as a serious threat to carbon stock stored in peatlands. The clearing of land
requires the use of fire. Recent research shows that during extreme dry years, the pace of land clearing
increases, which leads to climate regulated fire emissions 23 . This in itself could be a threat to rubber
gardens.
The prioritisation of threats indicates that fire is the most important. Fire is an important element of
most livelihood strategies. The impact of agricultural technology development on REDD has to be
better understood. Improving technology leads to increased returns to land, which will cause increased
opportunity costs, which will enhance payment demands, and is fuelling the use of fire to claim land.
Agricultural development tends to lead to more inequity and resource control by the elite, mostly
former nobility, often with significant spiritual roles in villages. These dynamics are not well
understood but are a potential threat and should receive more attention. It is important to understand
that:
Besides rubber, most other interventions initiated by NGOs have shown low returns or failure.
This is confirmed by field work and data analysis. Without undertaking additional activities, it
will be difficult to make micro credit work. On its own, credit investment would not be
effective as in the end people are likely to have accumulated debt and without additional
income. This could result in a renewed reliance on land clearing and logging.
Whilst in West Kalimantan credit unions have been very successful, in the KFCP area, this
seems not to be the case. This implies that more needs to be invested into encouraging
community groups to start saving together.
PNPM activities seem mostly to have focused on infrastructure (constructing village roads
etc), others however, are mentioned as not successful.
Other Livelihood Impacts: Health and Other Basic Human Services
The data is limited, and comprises of government data and the CKPP village assessment (for two
villages Katunjung and Lawang Kajang). The picture emerging is that the health, water, sanitation,
and education situation is poor.
Education
The MONQI data set shows a break down for every household by gender and education level. The
data shows that women are less well educated than men, which differs from the average Indonesian
picture. While as many men as women have a relatively low level of education, men are more likely
to have had a higher education. This is common given the Ngayu Dayak are patrilineal. For
comparable areas in most of the outer island similar trends occur. However, it underwrites the need to
pay more attention to gender inequity than is happening under current programs.
23
G. R. van der Werf, J. Dempewolf, S. N. Trigg, J. T. Randerson, P. S. Kasibhatla, L. Gigliof, D. Murdiyarso, W. Peters, D. C. Morton,
G. J. Collatz, A. J. Dolman, and R. S. DeFries Climate regulation of fire emissions and deforestation in equatorial Asia. p20350–20355
! PNAS ! December 23, 2008 ! vol. 105 ! no. 51
KALIMANTAN FORESTS AND CLIMATE PARTNERSHIP (KFCP) DESIGN DOCUMENT 1-3