Community Conservation and Ecotourism Agreement
brings new hope for globally threatened
wildlife on Waigeo
Released February 2, 2009
Papua Expeditions/cv.Ekonexion and customary landowners
on Waigeo Island in the fabled Raja Ampat archipelago of eastern Indonesia
proudly announced that, as of January 1, 2009, they have entered into
an ambitious and innovative five-year pilot agreement to preserve for
future generations, the entire Orobiai River catchment in Waigeo's eastern
half: 92 square kilometers of virtually untouched primary forest, set
in visually stunning topography, and teeming with spectacular yet globally
threatened wildlife.
THE OROBIAI RIVER CATCHMENT
Its location in eastern Waigeo Island, one of the fabled Raja Ampats in
eastern Indonesia, and a tantalizing view at the river's mouth where it
dissolves in the Rabia Strait, the narrow channel into Mayalibit Bay which
divides Waigeo in roughly two equal halves.
This Community Conservation and Ecotourism Agreement
(CCEA) seals direct annual quid pro quo payments by Papua Expeditions/cv.Ekonexion
to customary landholding groups on Waigeo in return for both carefully
defined conservation outcomes as well as the exclusive access and selective
management rights required by the private ecotour outfitter in order to
operate small-scale and essentially non-invasive ecotourism activities
in a way that these can support the company's contractual financial obligations
toward the landowners.
Foremost, protected through this CCEA is the entire catchment
area of the Orobiai River, encompassing 92 square kilometer (9,225 hectare)
of heavily forested land and clear water draining directly into the Orobiai
itself or via any of its tributaries, out of the surrounding Rabia and
Mumes Hills and Mount Danai, to discharge into the Rabia Strait. The Orobiai
catchment harbors the paramount breeding population of Waigeo's endemic
megapode, the enigmatic Bruijn's Brush-turkey Aepypodius bruijnii
(Endangered according to IUCN 2008), and holds good numbers of the endemic
Waigeo Cuscus Spilocuscus papuensis (Vulnerable). The area is
a haven for regionally endemic or restricted-range yet globally threatened
birdlife such as the Western Crowned-Pigeon Goura cristata (Vulnerable),
the Brown-headed Crow Corvus fuscicapillus, and the Wilson's
Cicinnurus respublica and Red Bird of Paradise Paradisaea
rubra (all Near-threatened).
VITAL REFUGE FOR GLOBALLY THREATENED WILDLIFE
The mound-building Bruijn's Brush-turkey Aepypodius bruijnii,
the marsupial Waigeo Cuscus Spilocuscus papuensis, and the breathtakingly
beautiful Wilson's Bird of Paradise Cicinnurus respublica one
by one are flag-ship species for the conservation of the rich natural
heritage of the Orobiai River catchment. Copyright © Ashley Banwell
(except image of Aepypodius bruijnii which is Copyright ©
Papua Expeditions/cv.Ekonexion and C. Davies).
Concretely, the CCEA proactively bans all forms of deleterious
resource extraction and stops or otherwise restricts current traditional
usage throughout the Orobiai catchment. Subsistence gardening is being
extinguished over the period of natural soil exhaustion, the use of traps
and ground snares is absolutely forbidden, and parforce pig-hunting
is restricted to bottom-valley forest below 100 m elevation and 12 hunts
per year. 'The long-term vision is to give the entire Orobiai catchment
back to nature': explained Like Wijaya, Founder of Papua Expeditions/cv.Ekonexion.
In a series of consultative meetings, landowners consistently advanced
support for tertiary education as the single-most urgent avenue of expenditure
for compensation payments. The CCEA thus stipulates that all payments
are to be used toward education, structures timing of annual payments
to coincide with the onset of the academic year in Indonesia, and applies
appropriate financial reporting duties toward the end of each financial
year.
'We are well aware of the potential problems associated
with unfair use and distribution of funds, as well as the inherent risks
of linking conservation to giving money in itself': said Wijaya. 'That's
why our financial compensations are contingent upon performance, both
in terms of their specified usage, as the direct and immediate conservation
returns expected from our investment. Structured advance payments only
directly benefit customary landowners, but through the deployment of our
ecotourism activities we create dignifying employment opportunities for
entire communities around the Orobiai catchment. We act on the convincingness
of the added value of at least attempting to make conservation efforts
more market-driven, and it is this synergy between accepted 'conservation
incentives' and 'green premium' approaches that makes our CCEA pretty
unique': added Wijaya.
Finally, this CCEA is the vision of Papua Expeditions/cv.Ekonexion,
but it is the company's varied international clientele which ultimately
turned this vision into reality. 'We thank everyone who has been our guest
over the past three years and just by participating in our tours contributed
immensely toward the fruition of this CCEA': said Wijaya. 'In particular,
we thank Mrs. Elizabeth Fikejs of Chicago (USA) who made a generous additional
financial contribution toward supporting this initiative. But our greatest
debt is with Mr. Yohanis Gaman-Goram, Secretary of the Maya Tribe Customary
Right Council. Without his continuous support, encouragement and voluntary
dedication, this agreement may never have come into existence.'
Additional information
The conservation value of the Orobiai River catchment
on Waigeo can hardly be overstated. In addition to the suite of endemic
and restricted-range, globally threatened wildlife highlighted above,
it is worth mentioning here that the area boasts the full spectrum of
elevational and thus vegetational gradients for (karstic) limestone and
volcanic landforms on the island. Moreover, the catchment is continuous
with a c. 1,000 square kilometer, heavily forested and trackless expanse
including the ultramafic complexes of Mounts Nok and Sau Lal-Waimila,
and the Mnier-Werar Hills. The Orobiai catchment would surely merit recognition
by BirdLife International as part of a larger Important Bird Area (IBA)
that ideally would include much of Waigeo's eastern half. The catchment
is a quintessential priority area for bird conservation within BirdLife's
'West Papuan Lowlands' Endemic Bird Area (EBA 172), as well as, all evidence
suggests, a key area for terrestrial conservation within WWF's 'Vogelkop-Aru
Lowland Rain Forest' Ecoregion.
The idea to make direct payments for environmental services,
including biodiversity conservation, is evidently not new. In fact, there
is reasonable consensus that a contractual approach over public provision
of conservation through so-called 'conservation concessions' (also known
as 'conservation incentives') is cost-effective and efficient, yet the
implementation of applied schemes in Indonesia has been lagging behind.
The accepted concept usually involves a public agency or non-governmental
organization acting as the honest broker to mediate between environmental
service sellers (landowners and local communities) and takers (conservation
investors). Key to the problem then is that the latter investors tend
to get cold feet for varied reasons that are reducible to contractual
incompleteness, and hence an inevitable free-riding effect results. In
the specific context of a remote area like the Orobiai catchment, where
environmental problems are yet uncomplicated, and customary landowners
generally exhibit positive conservation attitudes and exercise strong
control over land and resources, this CCEA adds valuable elements to the
debate. First and foremost, the knowledge that the strictly necessary
opportunity cost of conservation (the cost required to convince landowners)
can be modest enough to enable corporate ecotourism to play an active
role in the development of meaningful conservation agreements. Second,
that quid pro quo payments to landowners are then being backed-up
by a sustainable income-generating mechanism with dignifying employment
opportunities for entire communities. Third, and perhaps best of all,
that such market driven initiatives are fully complementary and can be
expected to yield similar conservation outcomes to public or charitable
conservation projects but without affecting public or charitable budgets.
This CCEA is a bottom-up initiative departing from the
observation that customary landholding groups on Waigeo effectively control
vast tracts of intact forest, and when complying with destructive resource
users, exercise the equally observable capacity to irreversibly destroy
globally significant patterns of biodiversity which until recently were
broadly sustained through traditional land tenure. Conservation and donor
agencies alike tend to assess customary landownership by indigenous people
as the primary source of contractual incompleteness within the context
of conservation concessions, and hence the need of government leverage
over eventual disputes is automatically assumed. Following the devolution
of power in Indonesia, it is argued that the observable legal vacuum which
results from an ongoing tug-of-war between the various hierarchical levels
of governance, in fact introduces a far greater moral hazard and impediment
to conservation investment. Whether it be for destructive resource use
or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, the restriction or complete cessation
of traditional usage under the terms of a conservation agreement, customary
landowners and local communities, as rural poor, invariably end up paying
the highest price for the limitation of their customary property rights.
As a starting point, any direct payment scheme for environmental services
should thus by priority focus toward the people intrinsically connected
to the land and biodiversity at stake. Nevertheless, Papua Expeditions/cv.Ekonexion
views this CCEA as an opportunity to 'learn while doing' and as a complementary
form of engagement to be used in the context of other natural resource
management or sustainable development initiatives, and thus most definitely
not as an attempt to bypass governments. Ultimately, this CCEA is a strategic
'insurance premium' against potentially irreversible loss of a spectacular
component of Earth’s living diversity contained within the Orobiai
River catchment, in anticipation of a supporting top-down initiative.
Related links
Read on about the birdlife
of Waigeo Island.
Read on about the first
photographs taken of Bruijn's Brush-turkey in the wild on Waigeo Island
on a PE exploratory bird tour.
Read on about our short birding
break to Waigeo Island.
Read on about our prolonged birding
expeditions visiting Waigeo Island. |
