Linking Livelihoods to the Landscape:
A short summary of lessons learned from my summer trip in Indonesia

By Melissa Abdo

Introduction
     This summer I went to Indonesia to pursue studies and training in the multi-disciplinary fields of sustainable agriculture and applied conservation in tropical developing areas. Theoretically, these fields strongly overlap: we have all heard loud and clear from the many proponents of win-win scenarios and integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs). There are a few common ideas that often form the underpinnings of ICDPs and similar projects: the first main idea is that local communities living nearby forest "frontiers" are less likely to encroach upon the forests if they are helped to improve agricultural productivity in existing cultivated lands (and thus enhance their economic livelihoods). Another key idea is that local and/or indigenous peoples are more prone to having or adopting beliefs and practices related to nature conservation and sustainability, basically because they live "close to nature." However, these ideas have been questioned by many experts and practitioners and thus the ICDP approach has fallen into widespread and heated debate; although ICDPs and their promised win-win scenarios still attract a major share of international aid funds earmarked for conservation and development goals.
     During my trip I sought to explore these ideas in real settings, and my findings were mixed. On the one hand, many traditional forms of agriculture and agroforestry that are being practiced across Indonesia are inherently beneficial to biodiversity conservation (when compared with alternative land uses and "conventional" agriculture) as well as sustainable - thus the practices of local peoples are in many ways already beneficial to nature conservation without the intervention of ICDPs or sustainable agriculture programs. However, in these cases the local communities practicing traditional agriculture and agroforestry were not usually doing so with the intent of benefiting conservation; their focus was primarily on supporting their economic livelihoods. Within such communities, it is hard to say whether ICDP interventions and improvements in agricultural productivity on existing lands will help communities to retain their intact forest or if forest encroachment will advance. On the other end of the spectrum, in areas which were dominated by conventional agriculture, interventions by proponents of sustainable agriculture and biodiversity conservation did seem to be relatively effective in convincing and aiding local smallholders to switch to more sustainable and environmentally beneficial practices. However, this was only the case in areas where growing markets exist for organically and sustainably produced products, and where strong educational and awareness campaigns have been underway for some time now.
     My summer trip brought me a deeper understanding of how in practice it is often quite challenging to implement complimentary conservation and sustainable agriculture activities. I concluded that although more challenging than usually portrayed, there are certain "steps" and conditions which may make the development of sustainable agriculture and biodiversity conservation more successful in Indonesia as well as here in South Florida.

Goals of study and approach.
     First, it is useful to give a brief background and some definitions. The physical setting of the study was primarily in Bali and Sumatra with some time also spent in Java. The socio-economic setting varied from rural agriculture-based livelihoods in a market economy to semi-urban and urban agriculture and service-related livelihoods in market economies. Interestingly, in all cases even the most rural smallholders were somehow tied to global markets - in no settings were markets entirely locally-based, and no communities were entirely subsistence economies.
     The study site of the study that was first proposed had to be changed in consultation with my advisor and with contacts in Indonesia, due to logistical and practical health-related reasons (primarily disease outbreaks nearby the first proposed study site). However, the intent of the study and my overall goals remained basically the same. The primary underlying goal of the project was to gain specific knowledge of how traditional ecological knowledge can help improve sustainable agriculture and biodiversity conservation initiatives. Peripheral goals of the study were to learn what needs to be done to support traditional ecological knowledge from being lost, as researchers in Indonesia have already documented this problem of knowledge not being passed on to the current generation, especially as many communities and local economies are in rapid states of transition. The practical goals of the study were to learn lessons and gain information about specific initiatives and practices that may be of broader applicability in helping local communities to enhance their livelihoods while supporting environmental conservation, via sustainable agriculture.
     The approach of the study was two-pronged. First, extensive literature study was carried out prior to the field visit. Second, the field study was carried wherein visits to various farm sites, research centers, NGO offices, and communities was undertaken; at all times I arranged to communicate and conduct formal and informal interviews with local stakeholders. A set of research questions was used to frame discussions, interviews, and focus groups in both urban and rural areas of Bali, Java, and Sumatra. A variety of stakeholders (such as local farmers, private agriculturalists, community members & leaders, and sustainable agriculture & agroforestry experts) were contacted in order to gain the broadest perspective and most detailed information possible, while the focus remained on smallholder farmers.

The following research questions were the basis of interviews:
     o What are your goals and methods used to practice your form of traditional         agriculture/agroforestry?
     o What species are most important for your livelihoods?
     o How do you view and/or practice sustainable agriculture?
     o How do you view and/or practice conservation?

Information gathered
     For this report I will focus primarily on Bali and to a lesser extent Sumatra, because that is where most of the field visits were undertaken. The visits to Java were nonetheless extremely important because vast data and information (in the form of books, reports, etc.) was gained, and many insights from formal research and lessons in capacity-building were also acquired in Java. To organize the information gathered, I systematically saved relevant literature and filed it under useful headings. I also brought copies of Indonesian-language literature on sustainable farming methods (such as how to create compost, why to save land races, integrated pest management, etc.) to share with farmers in rural areas that may not have easy access to such info, because it was important to me that I not only gather information from them but also share information with them.
     Prior to the field visit, I made a small database to facilitate organization of my thoughts, ideas, research questions, and study goals. I found that it was useful to refer back to this table throughout my trip. One example of the way I used it was to generate lists of ideas that I thought would be helpful in improving local practice and development of sustainable agriculture in ways that are complementary to biodiversity conservation, and then "test" these ideas against what was being practiced and ask locals which avenues they thought would be most useful. During all the field visits and interviews, both formal and informal, I took copious notes and also lots of photographs. During the farmer meetings that I participated in, I took minutes of the meeting in Indonesian and later gave copies of the minutes to the farmer cooperatives.

Results and lessons learned
     In Bali, most farmers and smallholders that were interviewed participated in rice farming, and their form of wet rice agriculture is dominated by what is termed the subak system. Their goals in this case were primarily to engage in a cooperative form of agriculture to support their livelihoods. The methods used are best described as highly cooperative in nature due to the long-held tradition of cooperation in sharing water resources between upstream and downstream farmers. This was discovered to be beneficial because pests and disease can also be a problem, and by cooperating with each other to schedule simultaneous fallow times and simultaneous community pest-fighting (such as rat catching!). Thus, there is incentive for upstream farmers to cooperate with downstream farmers in terms of water sharing because they rely heavily on the cooperation of downstream farmers in scheduling fallows and fighting pests. There is a complex system, also originating in the practice of Hinduism on Bali, for protecting upstream water resources (many of these upstream sources are in the various water temples throughout the island) and even the upstream plots of land on each farmers' area of land. There are a few types of rice used in Bali, including both land races as well as high-yield varieties.
     The focus on water in the subak system led me to discover what other sustainable practices are occurring on the island to help protect water resources. On the positive side, I learned that an innovative form of wastewater treatment was being practiced on a small scale on the island. Basically these wastewater treatment systems were brought about on the island by international visitors and experts interested in helping the Balinese to develop more sustainably. The treatment systems are modeled after the constructed wetland form of wastewater treatment yet on a much smaller scale, which is of primary importance on an island with a growing population, rising cost of real estate, and less total land availability. I visited a couple hotels and a demonstration site with these small wastewater treatment centers to learn more about the costs, feasibility, maintenance, and overall requirements and efficacy of them. The plants used in the wastewater treatment gardens are also used for ornamental landscaping which does not require any additional inputs of water, fertilizer, etc. In addition to being aesthetically pleasing, they are also used to provide cut flowers and material for handicraft construction. Upon further study after the trip came to an end, these wastewater treatment systems became a growing interest to me. I intend to learn more about them as they would be very useful in areas of South Florida where septic tanks are being replaced, and especially in the Keys and other islands in the Caribbean. A specific application of these could be in the Keys, where water is relatively expensive and septic tank leakage is a known problem for the surrounding coastal areas and coral reefs: homeowners willing to do a retrofit using wastewater gardens could simultaneously treat their wastewater as well as gain pleasing landscaping without the additional costs of irrigation and fertilizer.
     Naturally the farmers on Bali also engage in traditional agriculture other than rice culture. Specific crops produced included many kinds of annual vegetables and perennial fruits, as well as some medicinal plants (mostly in the Zingiberaceae) used for local medicinal drinks. In terms of local ecological knowledge, the smallholders I spoke with were overall very knowledgeable in terms of using rotating cultivation, knowing local pests and diseases, and using local varieties in their fields but they wanted more information on "modern" sustainable agriculture and organic practices. Some farmers who actually live in communities nearby the national park in the western part of the island had recently switched to organic-only production. After further inquiry I was also able to locate some smallholders who grew organic produce in a couple plots in high-density urban centers, which was a great find for the study as it allowed me to compare farmers' ideas about conservation, sustainable agriculture, and farming practices from a semi-rural area and from an urban area on Bali. Of all the avenues I suggested to them, farmers from both semi-rural and the urban areas said that they felt that the most useful improvements for their communities were related to: 1) market access, marketing improvement, and better overall understanding of market demands; and 2) education and information dissemination (they said they were interested in both info specifically related to sustainable agriculture as well as environmental conservation).
     In Sumatra, the main form of sustainable agriculture that I explored was traditional agroforestry, especially in forest frontier zones. It is commonly accepted that the main threats to Indonesia's forests are habitat destruction and degradation; forest conversion for agriculture; illegal and legal logging and mining; and forest fires. Although agricultural conversion of forest lands is often seen as a threat (as listed above) to forests, in reality many local peoples and farmers in Indonesia practice traditional forms of sustainable agriculture and agroforestry that actually enhance forest sustainability and biodiversity conservation. This has been shown by numerous studies. These agricultural traditions provide critical income for many households, as well as numerous important products for both local and international markets. For example, rubber produced for international markets often can be sourced to these traditional agroforests and by some estimates about seventy percent of Indonesian rubber exports are produced by smallholders from these agroforests.
     I found that traditional knowledge of plants enabled farmers in Sumatra to select numerous species' seedlings from natural forests to be planted in domesticated agroforests and agricultural lands, benefiting genetic conservation from the localized to landscape scale. For example, they were able to identify wild seedlings of tree, palm, and herbaceous species that were valuable for timber, shelter production, food, and medicinal purposes. However, this knowledge was not being effectively passed on at a large scale and this presents an important problem affecting both farmers' economic livelihoods as well as conservation (this problem is discussed in more detail below).
     Of all the avenues for improving conservation and sustainable agriculture that I talked about with Sumatran farmers, most smallholders seemed to agree that there were tools that were needed at the local level as well as "enabling conditions" that needed to be developed at the regional level. Their responses were, not surprisingly, different from those of the Balinese farmers and suggest that the challenges here are perhaps far greater. Most stakeholders said that they felt that the most useful improvements for their communities were related to: 1) community capacity-building, infrastructure and political empowerment; 2) transparency of private/public land tenure and improved overall community land tenure and use rights; 3) market access and better overall understanding of market demands and the market chains relevant to them; and 4) education and information dissemination (they said they were more interested in info specifically related to sustainable agriculture, as this directly impacted their potential incomes, and were interested in info about environmental conservation to a lesser degree). Although very different than Balinese smallholder responses, we can see that farmers across these regions need greater access to markets, and more educational opportunities and information need to be made available to them.
     Another commonality found in Bali and Sumatra was that farmers' interpretations and ideas about "conservation" were much more vague and mixed than their interpretations of sustainable agriculture. Most had an idea that sustainable agriculture used minimal external inputs, and many farmers also vocalized about numerous other characteristics of sustainable agriculture. When it came to the concept of conservation, the responses were much more varied. Most of the farmers in Sumatra who were actually conserving native biodiversity in their agroforests were doing so by default, not by design. In terms of specifically conserving native flora or fauna, although the older people in the Sumatran villages knew a lot about the native species and felt some should definitely be conserved, the younger farmers and community members overall knew little about the uses of native species (practical uses, medicinal uses, etc.). This shows that traditional ecological knowledge is indeed in danger of being lost in today's generation, and may include loss of knowledge of important species potentially useful in agricultural production and in enhancing local livelihoods. At the close of my visit, most community members (young and old alike) accepted my recommendation that they assign greater value to their traditional ecological knowledge and seek to maintain it through the creation of a small-scale "community information center," and I left them with some materials and worksheets which will hopefully aid them in facilitating this.
     In Bali ideas about conservation were often related to conserving environmental services such as watershed and water quality protection, erosion prevention, and aesthetically pleasing landscapes. However, there was also a sense that conservation of "natural" landscapes (including cultivated landscapes) was beneficial economically and culturally to the Balinese farmers. This seems to be somewhat of a backlash against the large-scale sell-off of cultivated lands to make way for hotels, villas, and other tourism-related developments on the island which has occurred in the last couple decades. Basically, many Balinese farmers are (supposedly) no longer willing to sell off their cultivated lands, even at high real estate prices, because it is felt that the income from their farms is more sustainable in the long run for themselves, their families, and their culture. Interestingly, the Balinese had even developed a local-language saying about the importance of not selling off their remaining cultivated lands which I heard repeated throughout the island.

Discussion and conclusion
     The concept of scale is useful for analyzing how lessons learned across the Indonesian archipelago can be applied in real settings. During my trip as I was thinking about the many practical lessons gained from seeing various forms of sustainable agriculture in action (including traditional, modern, and "mixed" forms of sustainable agriculture and agroforestry), I tried to uncover ways to more effectively "link livelihoods to the landscape" in order to improve both sustainable agriculture and environmental conservation, while economically and socially benefiting local livelihoods.
     To systematically do this, I attempted to apply simple categories of scale in order to help me understand what specific lessons or practices may be best applied to other scenarios. I did this because a common practice in the field of sustainable agriculture is to attempt applications of lessons across different ecological, geo-political, and socio-economic areas; yet effectiveness and furthermore efficiency in transferring "lessons learned" is not automatic and is not always easily measured. So, if we hope to increase transferability of sustainable agriculture information it makes sense to consider scale at the outset. The scales I used conceptually throughout my trip consisted of a typical breakdown of "community level" all the way up to "national" and "international levels"; however within each I tried to see the distinct characteristics that defined sub-scales such as "small, relatively unorganized communities" to "small highly organized communities," etc.
     Practical applications of these notions of scale helped me to make recommendations in my study's poster as well as in my presentation on what "lessons learned" may be useful in various settings across Indonesia as well as here in South Florida. For example, my poster shows arrows between "lessons" which highlight ways in which we can apply the lessons from one community to another where it will likely be beneficial. Another example is the comparison I made during my presentation on the scale of "small highly organized communities" such as those in Bali and those in the Florida Keys, where the high level of organization and also similar population pressures and water-resource demands led me to believe that Bali's innovative wastewater treatment systems could be implemented in the Florida Keys.
     The connections and linkages between livelihoods and landscapes uncovered during this trip were numerous. I learned that it is critical, (especially in the world of ICDPs, aid, and sustainable development), to address the practical needs of farmers and communities if interventions are to be effective for sustainable agriculture and conservation as well as in aiding local people to improve their precarious livelihoods. Certain general goals, such as improved market access and information, can be sought in most situations across Indonesia. However, solutions need to be tailor-made for any given community situation and practitioners should always include considerations of local, regional, and also global scales.

This project has been made possible by a funding support under the USDA CSREES ISE Grant Program. USDA-CSREES Grant Number 2006-51160-03409.