Masatoshi Sasaoka

By Masatoshi Sasaoka

In recent arguments in the governance of natural resource management, effectiveness and desirability of collaborative management among various stakeholder including indigenous people has been recognized. In the context of Indonesia, the reformation movement has stimulated the growth of a new perception of indigenous people’s rights to their land in the country. This recent transition presents a growing opportunity for indigenous people who live in nature-rich areas (national parks, etc.) to collaborate with ‘outside stakeholders’ such as governmental agencies, scholars and environmental NGOs in natural resource management. In such situations, it is necessary to deeply understand the value of indigenous resource management (IRM) practices to promote self-directed and effective resource management. This chapter focuses on local forest resource management and its suitability in the local social-cultural context in central Seram, east Indonesia. First, I describe how the well-structured forest resource use is constructed and maintained through the indigenous resource management practices based on ‘supernatural enforce mechanism’. After that, I investigate what social-ecological roles the IRM in Amanioho has, and how IRM practices relate to the social-cultural context of an upland community in central Seram. Then, I discuss the possible future applications for achieving self-directed resource management by people who ‘coexist’ with supernatural agents.

Part of the book: Indigenous People

By Masatoshi Sasaoka

This chapter aims to examine the validity and desirability of “separative conservation model,” a conservation model, which tries to separate human use areas from wildlife habitats to protect “intact nature.” In mountain areas of central Seram, East Indonesia, local people have created and maintained various types of human-modified forests (HMFs) through arboriculture. Among them, some of damar forests and forest gardens are distributed inside the Manusela National Park in central Seram. Principally, the Indonesian national park management authority has adopted the “separative conservation model” and basically forbids local arboricultural activities for creating HMFs by cutting wild trees inside a national park. In this chapter, I first describe how the locals have formed HMFs through arboricultural and how resources provided from those HMFs support local livelihood. After that, I describe local knowledge on behavior of a flagship species of Wallacea Moluccan cockatoo and its habitat utilization. Then, I evaluate how some types of HMFs function as habitats for the Moluccan cockatoo by analyzing transect survey data. Finally, I provide implications for future conservation and research.

Part of the book: Tropical Forests