Abstract
Land-use change has progressed rapidly throughout the Indonesian archipelago and is now intruding into western New Guinea (Tanah Papua), one of the world’s last wilderness areas with extensive tracts of pristine and highly diverse tropical rainforests. Tanah Papua has reached a crossroads between accelerating environmental degradation and sustainable development policies entailing landscape-scale conservation targets, pledged in the Manokwari Declaration. We assessed the representation of ecoregions and elevational zones within Tanah Papua’s protected area network to identify its shortcomings at broad spatial scales. Lowland ecoregions are less protected than mountainous regions, with half of the western and southern lowlands designated for land-use concessions. Under the direct threat from land-use change, the political motivation in Tanah Papua toward conservation- and culture-centered land management provides a window of opportunity for scientifically guided, proactive conservation planning that integrates sustainable development for the benefit of Indigenous communities.
Highlights
Southeast Asia is rich in biodiversity, and a region of great conservation concern (Wilcove et al, 2013)
Considering the large scale (>70% of Tanah Papua’s land area) at which social forestry is foreseen to provide Indigenous communities access to land in the context of the Manokwari Declaration in Tanah Papua, central questions regarding bureaucratic procedures, extent of local participation, socioeconomic implications, and environmental impacts remain unresolved (Fatem, 2019; Fisher et al, 2019)
We found that publicly available land-use concessions for oil palm or tree plantations and logging areas covered ∼138,000 km2 (29% of total land area), while Tanah Papua’s protected area network currently covers ∼92,000 km2 (∼20%) (Figures 1, 2A; UNEP-WCMC and IUCN, 2019)
Summary
Southeast Asia is rich in biodiversity, and a region of great conservation concern (Wilcove et al, 2013). This Memorandum of Understanding, signed by the governors of Papua and Papua Barat in 2018 aims to protect > 70% of Tanah Papua’s land area and ensure sustainable development for the benefit of Indigenous communities (Manokwari Declaration, 2018; Cámara-Leret et al, 2019b) Within this political context, the Indonesian social forestry permit scheme will play a key role in facilitating sustainable development in the region, while providing legal access to land for local communities (Fatem, 2019). The province of Papua Barat recently concluded a review of the existing palm oil concessions, in which the data and extent of the respective concessions were consolidated, leading to a seizure of ∼276,000 ha from 12 oil palm concessions due to administrative and legal violations (Jong, 2021b) Such efforts represent important steps toward the pledges of the Manokwari Declaration, while. Protected areas represent 20% of the study area, while assessed land-use concessions comprise 29%.”
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