Explaining Household Participation in Establishing Community Agreements on Conservation at Protected Areas-Indonesia

Abstract

State based management approach to nature conservation has often failed to balance the goal of conservation and the goal to improve the livelihoods of local communities. A promising approach to deal with this problem is the concept of community participation in promoting agreements on nature conservation. The aim of this research was to explore the conservation problems and explain the process of household participation in establishing community agreements on conservation at Lore Lindu protected area. A qualitative analyze is applied to better understand the underlying conservation problems, while the quantitative analyze is based on probit model to determine factors influencing participation. The finding that more wealthy households are not more likely to participate, however, households with more social relation (social capital) and better access to political decision making (political capital) were more likely to be involved. In conclusion, the result showed that community agreement on conservation offer a considerable potential for reaching ecological goal, but attention has to be paid the interests of disadvantaged community members, who depend on natural resources for their livelihood.

Keywords:  household participation, community agreements, protected areas