Borneo Orangutan Pongo pygmaeus pygmaeus habitat sustainability and its challenges

Abstract

This study aims to evaluate the current condition of landscape sustainability and its challenges in Orangutan Pongo pygmaeus pygmaeus habitat in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. The results of such a study assist researchers, planners and policymakers to formulate direction of regional development policy with mainstream the concept of sustainability into development practice. For evaluating landscape sustainability, this study deployed assessment through sustainable landscape index that has six assessment indicators, which are expected to reflect economic, social and environmental sustainability. The indicators are land use benefit and regional economy as the representation of economic indicators, fairness of land utilization and poverty conditions as the representation of social indicators as well as environmental service protection and biodiversity conservation as the representation of environmental indicators. The study shows the sustainability in landscape level appears to be balanced among the six indicators of evaluation, but in further detail, it shows the unfair use of land utilization and gaps between sub-landscapes. There is high dominated land ownership by private groups in the landscape. The utilization gap is also found where in coastal and middle sub-landscapes are utilized more economic-oriented. Contrarily, the upstream is dominated by protection utilization. The paper recommends that government should be seriously considers the carrying capacity concept in land allocation and initiate payment for environmental services or other incentive mechanisms for upstream districts to conserve and protect the remaining forests.