Abstract
Road development is increasing worldwide. Generally, examples of road building in tropical countries demonstrate that road access can assist the fight against rural poverty, but such developments are also linked to deforestation, pollution, invasions of exotic species, and environmental degradation. For Papua and West Papua provinces (Tanah Papua) in Indonesia, the development of the provincial road network is intended to improve the rural economy, aiming to alleviate poverty within isolated rural areas. However, road development can pose particularly challenging problems to rural and Indigenous communities. Poorly planned roads can be devastating when they provide easy access to illegal hunting that threatens endangered species. In this study, we discuss how road development in Tanah Papua has changed indigenous hunting. Native Papuans have benefited from improved road access, which allows them to sell their agricultural products at local markets. Increased road connectivity has also changed how local people use natural resources and forest products, moving from subsistence to a more market-based orientation. Although policies on infrastructure development including roads form part of Indonesia’s national program, they are not automatically compatible with a sustainable development program in Tanah Papua. To foster more equitable and sustainable road development, government agencies must improve their overall coordination of further road expansion plans by promoting green infrastructure that supports the sustainable use of natural resources in a way that is reconciled with traditional knowledge of local people. Such efforts may also have positive effects on the efforts to protect biodiversity within the wider government conservation agendas.
Highlights
Roads play important roles where there are strong economic incentives to provide access to large-scale logging, oil and mineral operations as well as agribusiness (Laurance & Balmford, 2013)
We argue that road expansion for Tanah Papua’s economic and livelihood development will continue to be a critical factor driving the exploitation of wild meat through hunting that increases pressure on wildlife populations
There is no doubt that road access will have significant effects on efforts to fight rural poverty
Summary
Roads play important roles where there are strong economic incentives to provide access to large-scale logging, oil and mineral operations as well as agribusiness (Laurance & Balmford, 2013). There is a growing awareness that road development can have major environmental and social impacts. This includes damage to sensitive ecosystems, loss of productive agricultural lands, resettlement of large numbers of people, permanent disruption of local economic activities, demographic change, accelerated urbanisation, and introduction of diseases (Trombulak & Frissel, 2000; Laurance et al, 2009, 2015). The newly established road networks provide more access to hunters to hunting locations, connects resources directly to available markets and increases harvest rates (Robinson et al, 1999, Lee, 2000; Clayton and Milner-Gulland, 2000). We offer a literature review and propose new approaches for future wildlife conservation agendas based on the current situation in the field
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