Toward a policy mix in conservation governance: A case of Gunung Palung National Park, West Kalimantan, Indonesia

Abstract

This paper aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of articulating a policy mix in conservation governance noting that various conservation policy instruments are currently under implementation elsewhere in tropical regions. However, an approach of strategically combining these policy instruments in their application as a policy mix is still limited. The paper finds, by referring to the case of Gunung Palung National Park, Indonesia, that interactions of different policy instruments can produce either positive or negative outputs depending on their processes so that a strategic coordination of policy instruments becomes essential. Also, non-conservation policy instruments for economic or business development under implementation by various stakeholders such as local governments or private companies sometimes have a significant impact on conservation governance. Therefore, incorporating such instruments into a policy mix should be part of strategic coordination. To realize an effective policy mix for mitigating anthropogenic disturbance on biodiversity and forest ecosystems, adopting a parallel approach of overall policy coordination through a multi-stakeholder platform and field-based experimentation of policy interactions prior to their scaling-up are suggested.