COMMUNITY BASED CORAL REEF MANAGEMENT OF THE MARINE TOURISM PARK GILI INDAH, LOMBOK BARAT

COMMUNITY BASE CORAL REEF MANAGEMENT OF THE MARINE TOURISM PARK GILI INAH, LOMBOK BARAT Imam Bachtiar Jurusan Pendidikan Biologi, FKIP Universitas Mataram Email: ibachtiar@telkom.net ABSTRACT Coral reef management is something never been seriously done by the Indonesian government, the only managing agency for public marine resources so far. The government initiative to promote a community-based management is encouraging, as it is more applicable and sustainable. Establishing the community based coral reef management, however, is not an easy job. Experiences on the Marine Tourism Park Gili Indah (MTPGI) show that it could take a long time to establish a good and reliable community based management for coral reef resources. Government support is necessary to have a good community support on the program. The capacity of facilitating agency (NGO) is also a crucial factor in determining the result of the management plan. In the case of the MTPGI, the district government should let community to collect the user fee for funding their day to day management. Without any sufficient funding, no management could be run well. INTROUCTION Coral reef is an important economic asset in Indonesia, particularly in the village Gili Indah, Lombok Barat - Nusa Tenggara Barat, where marine tourism is the first economic income. The marine tourism development is largely depend on coral reefs. Coral reefs provide clear waters, white sandy beach and wonderful underwater world. On the other hand, coral reef destruction is spreading on nearly all coral reefs in Indonesia (Soekarno, 1990; Chou, 1997). Coral reef management is therefore urgently needed in all locations, particularly where marine tourism is very important. At present, coral reef management is something that is not seriously done by the government (Sloan and Sugandy, 1994). Even management carried out inside a marine park is not sufficient to ensure sustainable uses of marine resources (Claridge, 1994, Sloan et al., 1994). Unfortunately, the government is the only managing agency of marine public properties. Coral reef destruction occurring on all over Indonesian archipelago is one indication of bad coral reef management program by the government. Recently, the Indonesian government initiates a community-based management for coral reefs resources, through the COREMAP (coral reef rehabilitation and management program). Coral reef community based management is a new approach in Indonesia. This management is thought to be the most applicable approach, since it is considered to be cheaper and more sustainable. There are used to be several traditional (collaborative or community based) management on coastal and marine resources in Indonesia (White et al., 1994). Those management, however, have been replaced by the formal government management that did not work very well, for example the traditional management sasi in the Maluku (Zerner, 1994). Coral reef management ideally must satisfy all stakeholders. A succeed coral reef management usually involving all users (stakeholders) in the planning and implementation of the management (Gomez, 1997). Craik et al. (1990) classifies the stakeholders of coral reefs into three groups. a. Extractive group, that takes or exploits some renewable marine resources, either by fishing or collecting. b. Tourism group, who enjoys the beauty of coral reef resources, either extractive or non-extractive. c. Researcher and conservationist group, who conserve coral reef resources for future use and research. Since the three groups have their own different needs, they have their own goals on coral reef management. The extractive users, for example, want to catch fish or other marine resources as much as possible. While, tourism group wants to increase the number of visitors and the length of their stay. To develop tourism, they may want to construct tourism facilities that improve tourism Komunitas 3(1):67-77@2000 1

attraction. On the other hand, researcher and conservationist want to preserve natural ecological processes to ensure sustainable uses of coral reef for future generation. Since the three groups may have some contradiction goals, they all have to be involved from the planning of the management. A good coral reef management should therefore be the result of agreement among the three parties to use coral reef in sustainable way and to avoid conflicts among the stakeholders. The present study is to report and to document important steps in establishing a community based coral reef management in the Marine Tourism Park (MTP) Gili Indah. This paper also study difficulties and problems leading to ineffectiveness of the approved management plan. MARINE TOURISM PARK OF GILI INAH (MTPGI). The Gili Indah is a marine tourism park in the Province of Nusa Tenggara Barat. The Gili Indah is an archipelago village consisting of three small islands (gili=island, Sasak), i.e. the Gili Air, the Gili Meno and the Gili Trawangan. Geographically, the Gili Indah is located between S8 20' to S8 23' and E116 00' to 116 08'. The size of the area is about 2,954 hectares, with terrestrial area is about 665 hectares. Among the three islands, the Gili Trawangan is the largest one (340 hectares), followed the Gili Air (175 hectares) and the Gili Meno (150 hectares). The Gili Indah is populated with about 2,370 people that spread over 552 families. The population is distributed heterogeneously; 255 families in Gili Air, 105 families in Gili Meno and 192 families in Gili Trawangan. Most people living in the Gili Indah are called themselves as Buginesse community instead of Sasak that are dominant in the mainland Lombok. Recently, there are many Lomboker (Sasak, Sumbawa, Javanesse) and Balinesse coming to the Gili Indah and make a living in the three islands. Most people in the Gili Indah have low level of education. ata in 1997 shows that about 90% of population only have elementary education or never finish their elementary schools. About 35% of them never go to any schools. Only about 10% of the population experienced high-school education. Very few (<5) young people studying in the university. Tourism related occupations are the main economic activities in the Gili Trawangan. But in the Gili Air, there are still many people working in fishery and seaweed farming. In the Gili Meno, people working either in tourism related jobs or seaweed farming. The Gili Trawangan is the most popular tourism island. The number of tourist visiting the Gili Trawangan is about six to nine times higher than those visiting the other two islands (Table 1). Since the Gili Trawangan is the farthest from the mainland Lombok, ferry tickets to go there is the most expensive. The Gili Trawangan, however, has more attractive tourism objects than the others. Beside it has clearer water, it has also longer clean and undisturbed sandy beach, larger snorkeling area, more dive center, more low-cost accommodations and restaurants, and other facilities, such as: clean water, electricity and telephone). Table 1. The number of staying visitors at the Gili Indah in 1997. Island (sub-village) Foreign Indonesian Total Average/ month Gili Air Gili Meno Gili Trawangan 4,747 3,006 27,903 0 12 5 4,747 3,018 27,908 396 251 2,326 Source: BPS Kantor Cabang Perwakilan Lombok Barat. The marine tourism definitely brings about wealthy of the Gili Indah people. In fact, it is the backbone of their economic activities. The tourism itself is largely rely on the elegant value of the coral reefs. Management of coral reef in the islands, however, was never been better. So far, there is no managing agency working seriously to save the heavily used coral reefs for the sustainability of economic activities on the islands. There was an NGO established to save coral reefs on snorkeling area. Since people established the NGO with low capacity in the Gili Trawangan, while conflicts among community on this island are high; other community members did not support their efforts. Komunitas 3(1):67-77@2000 2

In 1993, the Minister of Forestry declared that the three small islands are a marine tourism park and therefore their management is under the epartment of Forestry. eclaration of the MTPGI (marine tourism park Gili Indah) was not followed by serious actions. As most marine parks in Indonesia, the marine tourism park status is just on a paper. Until early 1998, there was no management plan designed or conducted by the epartment of Forestry. The only thing this department did is employ a staff (jagawana) to visit the islands on regular basis. Community on the three islands is highly aware on the importance of coral reef for their economic activities. They already know well that tourism development on the islands is dependent on how well the coral reef beauty is maintained. Their awareness is mainly coming from their interaction with visitors. Many visitors have close interaction with local community, and they bring many ideas on what the local people should do to conserve the coral reef. Since there is no one community leader could unite people on the three islands, no one would start the conservation efforts. Coral reef destruction on the MTPGI is mainly coming from destructive fishing methods (blast fishing, muro-ami) and anchoring of tourism boats (Bachtiar, 1997). Since there are many tourism boats sailing around the islands during the day, blast fishing and muro-ami is no longer intensive. Coral breaking from anchoring, however, is very intensive. Most community members are therefore agree to have their own coral reef management on these islands. ESTABLISHMENT OF COMMUNITY BASE MANAGEMENT a. Process of Establishment Establishment of community-based coral reef management was begun in February 1998. The steps of the establishment can be classified into five phases. 1) issemination phase 2) Initiation phase 3) Sub-village discussion phase 4) Village-KTF discussion Phase 5) Legalization phase The whole processes took about six months. The dissemination phase was begun with a formal ceremony that involved Bupati of the Lombok Barat Regency, along with the Kabupaten Task Force (KTF) COREMAP of Lombok Barat. This ceremonial occasion is very important for the appointed field manager (NGO) to get a full support from the community and the local government agency on the village. The socialization of the program, however, was over-show-off. The principal KTF, a new man in the COREMAP team, promised to provide good compensation for people practicing destructive fishing methods. In the later meetings, this promise often leaded to misdirection of the discussions. The initiation phase is a step where community is motivated to take full participation on the planning the coral reef management. A team from Universitas Mataram visited each island to meet as many as stakeholders. The meeting were attended mostly by fishermen. Very few people from tourism group attended the meeting held in the Gili Air and Gili Meno. It was not very clear, whether, the absence of tourism group in the meeting because of their low awareness on the importance of the management planning or the failure of field manager in getting in touch with this group. The fishermen attended meetings in the Gili Air were mostly those practicing blast fishing. They came to the meeting to express their motivation to stop blast fishing if they could get a good compensation deal from the COREMAP project. The compensation asked was to high that might not be affordable for the COREMAP funding. On the third phase, a tentative management plan (TMP) was handed out to all stakeholders, particularly to literate community, in March 1998. There were 45 stakeholders receiving the TMP. They were traditional fishermen, seaweed farmers, dive operators, and businessmen from accommodations, restaurants, and transportation. On the TMP the stakeholders were asked to give comments on the plan draft and to draw a proposed coral reef zoning for their own needs. Zoning is the core of coral reef management plan. It is expected therefore that all stakeholders draw their own zoning plan. Surprisingly, only one stakeholder draw zoning for his own need. There were not many comments on the TMP. The following meetings are then carried out specifically to discuss zoning plan Komunitas 3(1):67-77@2000 3

of coral reef uses. On the discussions many information could be obtained on what do they want to have on the management plan. The long discussions, however, were not much attended by tourism group. It was likely that the tourism group afraid of being burdened with the cost of day-to-day management. The later meeting also discussed about what sort of sanctions should be applied for law-breaker on management plan. On the fourth phase, results of the discussions from each island were presented on a plenary meeting at village level. The plenary meeting were attended by Kepala esa, LKM and Camat Tanjung. On this discussion, proposed zoning plan of each island is reviewed to make one village level management plan. This discussion took a very long time. Again, the number of representative from businessmen was very low. At this time, epartment of Forestry has published its own zoning plan on the MTPGI that they claimed has already been discussed with the local community. In fact, when this zoning plan was presented in discussions, none of the participants have been involved on the planning, including the formal community leaders. Since most participant reject the zoning plan published by the epartment of Forestry, local community wanted to continue discussions to have their own management plan. The draft of community management plan was discussed and reviewed in the KTF Lombok Barat. The KTF meeting were attended by the district representatives of tourism department, fishery department, Indonesian Navy, police department, Kepala esa, Camat Tanjung and a team from the university. The fifth phase, the final draft of coral reef management plan was translated into a legal document as a traditional community regulation (awig-awig). The awig-awig was signed by Kepala esa Gili Indah and LKM members, Camat Tanjung and Bupati Lombok Barat. Approval from Bupati Lombok Barat on the awig-awig was signed on September 1998. b. Coral Reef Management Plan On the awig-awig, there will be an environment conservation group (ECG) on each island that responsible to run day to day management. The ECG will be responsible to Kepala usun. There are 12 people in an ECG, consisting of a leader, a secretary, a treasury, and three people at each: conservation, cleaning and welfare sections. The member of ECG will be elected every year. On the zoning plan, coral reefs surrounding the three islands are divided into seven zones (Figure 1). The zoning was decided mainly based on current uses and the need on future uses to avoid conflict among users (stakeholders). Ecological consideration was not very dominant factor in the decision. Community of the Gili Indah thought that important stakeholders are only themselves, the community of the Gili Indah. Researchers and conservationist on the university are considered not the important stakeholders. The complete list of activities that are regulated on the zoning plan are described on Table 2. Table 2. Activities regulated in the MTP Gili Indah. Y=Yes, N=No, P=Permit required ACTIVITIES A B E F G ive, snorkeling Y Y Y Y Y Y Spear-fishing N N Y Y Y Y Line-fishing from vessel N Y Y Y Y Y Line-fishing with trampling N N Y Y Y Y Terinjang net N N N Y Y N Mogong net N N N N Y N Muro-ami net N N N N Y N Seaweed farming N N P P P N Anchoring traditional vessel N N Y Y Y Y Anchoring motorized vessel N N N Y Y Y Unloading passengers N N N N N Y Scientific collection P P P P P P Komunitas 3(1):67-77@2000 4

$ NORTH F GILI TRAWANGAN i B E LOMBOK STRAIT FLORES SEA A G½ G GILI MENO F A G B ½ E GILI GILI AIR ½ G A B Figure 1. Zoning plan of the MTP Gili Indah (not in scale). There are several activities totally prohibited in all locations on the MTP Gili Indah. These activities include: 1) collection coral reef animals, dead or alive, either for commercial or souvenir purposes, 2) pearl oyster culture, 3) collection of turtle and its eggs, and 4) ingathering giant clams. On the management plan, there are some sanctions for the people that are not abiding the management regulation. The sanctions are mainly in the form of a fine charge. Person conducting any activity that is not permitted on the zoning regulation will be fined Rp 15000,- at the first time breaking the law. The fine charge is increased gradually by Rp 5000,- on the next lawlessness. There will be an incentive for someone who report the lawlessness to encourage all community participating in coral reef watchdog. Person reporting the lawlessness will receive Rp 5000,- per report, that will be taken from the fine charge. The rest fine charge will go to the ECG of each island. Sanction applied for prohibited collection and ingathering will be decided between Kepala esa and policemen. c. Funding Plan Funding is a big question on a community-based coral reef management. The money will be required: to pay monthly incentive for ECG people, to provide funding for operational expenses on coral reef surveillance and garbage handling, and to provide facilities for management, e.g. mooring buoys, navigation markers etc.. The funding is supposed to be raised from the community themselves. But, how community can raise sufficient money for the management? On the plan discussed at the village level, the money required will be collected from tourist contribution on conservation, and is called conservation money. This contribution is considered to be a user fee on economic instrument approach (Tietenberg, 1992). In developed countries, paying a user fee is compulsory for tourist visiting a national or marine park, such as the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. The amount of user fee was set at Rp 2000 per visit. From about 78 returned questioners, 95% of tourists are willingly to spend extra Rp2,000 for contribution to coral reef management. Since in 1997 there were about 40,000 tourist visited the islands, there would be Rp 40 millions available for the coral reef management per year. The plan to collect user fee, however, was strongly rejected by the representative of the epartment of Tourism. He was afraid that the conservation fee would discourage tourist coming to the Gili Indah. After a long discussion and delay, the Kabupaten Task Force (KTF) finally Komunitas 3(1):67-77@2000 5

recommended not collecting money directly from tourist. There is no user fee as it is used to be on the awig-awig. The conservation money will be obtained from contribution of businessmen (accommodations, restaurants, dive centers) to the village. This contribution is about 1% of their net income. Half of the contribution will be used for coral reef conservation. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE MANAGEMENT PLAN On January 1999, Kepala Bappeda Lombok Barat acting as Bupati declared that the awigawig on coral reef management is formally legalized. The declaration, however, was not supported by crucial facilities. At this time, there was no zoning map available on public places, for example the office of Kepala esa, beach, or harbor. Neither was buoys marking borders between one zone with another. How come regulation on coral reef management is run without appropriate dissemination and border markers? Team of Universitas Mataram then handed out hundreds of papers showing a map of zoning regulations on Senggigi Beach. The zoning map on a billboard was also established a month later on each harbor of the three islands. But, there are still no buoys that mark the border among zones. The results are still not very good, that the declaration did not change anything. Regulation on zoning plan was not abiding, and no sanction could be applied. The failure to put regulation on collecting user fee was the failure to get fuel for the management machine. Since there was no available funding, no ECG could mobilize its member to participate on the management and no marking buoys can be bought. Slowly, the zoning plan and its regulations were forgotten. It has been tried to raise money by selling stickers to tourists in March 1999. The stickers had two designs. Each would be sold at Rp 2000,-. It was expected that one sold sticker will contribute Rp 1000,- to the coral reef management. Again, very few tourists willingly to buy the sticker, although it was written on it that the money will go directly to the community-based coral reef management. Therefore, the management expenses only relied on business contribution to the village of Gili Indah. Since the contribution fee from businessmen is never been recognized, the management machine is definitely never been fuelled and it therefore never been running on the road. Although the management plan failed to be implemented, community awareness on the importance to take any action to protect economic value of coral reef is improving. In the second half of 1999, there are many tourists complained on blast fishing that still occurs occasionally on the Gili Indah waters. Since all community aware that they need tourist to visit their islands, all formal and informal leaders met together to formulate act against blast fishing. The act, number: 33/I:1/06/1999, was formulated very smoothly. On the act, it is clearly stated that any body doing blast fishing will receive social sanctions. Nobody of the three islands will be permitted to attend any party or other invitation from the blast-fisherman, and no blast fishermen will get administration services from the village. This sanction worked very well on the first few months. On January 2000, one blast-fisherman gave up his job because of this sanction. The other blast-fishermen, however, showing off their bravery to other community members that they did not afraid of the social sanction. Blast-fishermen living outside the Gili Indah also did not show their respect to the awig-awig. When social condition was labile due to the 17 th January 2000 riots in Mataram, blast-fishermen had "parties" bombing coral reef fishes around the islands. The "parties" raised many complains from diving tourists. People in the Gili Trawangan reacted by activated their anti-bombing taskforce established in 1999. The task force is consisting of young people of the three islands. They patrol waters around the islands regularly on daily basis. A speedboat was provided by Natural Resources Conservation Agency (KSA) of the epartment of Forestry, and the fuel expenses are shared between KSA and businessmen. So far, their surveillance is very effective. The task force is implementing another awig-awig established by traditional fishermen institution of northern Lombok (Lembaga Adat Nelayan Lombok Utara). Five blast-fishermen boats have already been caught in the first year. Two of them are owned by people of the Gili Indah. Four of them had to pay fines about Rp 5,000,000 to get back their boat. Another fishermen, that committed doing blast-fishing, rejected to be punished based on awig-awig and begged to be Komunitas 3(1):67-77@2000 6

punished by government criminal law. At present, no more blast fishing occurs on the reef surrounding the islands. Blast-fishing on sub-tidal reefs that far from the islands, however, still happened occasionally and heard by divers on the islands. LESSONS LEARNE Establishing a community-based coral reef management is a slowly process. This is usually not understood by people on the government agency or university. Those people think that the project should meet a time frame. This approach, however, is not working well in the field. In a case of the MTP Gili Indah, declaration on the legalization of awig-awig was done before supporting aspects were established, i.e. funding, billboard zoning map and marking buoys. The result is therefore not very good. On the other hand, establishment of a community-based management would never happened without facilitation from an agent with high capacity. Community reaction on the blast fishing is slow and partial. The community never reacts on the anchoring damage from tourism boat. In fact, the damage from anchoring is very intensive and an important issue. It is therefore suggested that facilitating agent from NGO or university is necessary to the establishment of community-based management. Government support on the beginning of the program is crucially important for the field manager. It will be very hard to get support from the community and the village level government without good introduction from district level government, particularly Bupati. The role of district government should be limited on the moral and legal support. The government agency should not promise anything to the community, as the promise might even inhibit cooperative relationship between field manager and the community. Collecting user fee on the MTP Gili Indah should be done immediately. Anywhere in the developed country, tourist visiting a marine park must pay a user fee. There is no reason at all that we do not collect user fee from a wealthy country tourist who visits a marine park of a poor country such as Indonesia. The user fee could be very important to run the community-based management. Without collecting user fee, where the community could get funding for their management program? Can the government provide the funding in all coral reef management? The failure stories on the management of several marine parks show that it is impossible to expect more funding to run day-today management program from the government. ACKNOWLEGEMENT This paper was written from personal experience with several colleagues in establishing a community-based management funded by COREMAP, LIPI Jakarta. I therefore thank specially to L. Husni, A.S. Hadiwijaya and Alfian (field manager) for their great contributions during the program. Assistance and helps from the KTF Lombok Barat and many friends from Universitas Mataram are also appreciated. REFERRENCES Bachtiar, I. 1997. Konservasi terumbu karang: permasalahan yang dihadapi di Nusa Tenggara Barat. Gema Rinjani 37:75-81. Buhat,.Y. 1994. Community-based coral reef and fisheries management, San Salvador Island, Phillipinnes. In : White, A.T. and Hale, L.Z. (eds.) Collaborative and Community Based Management of Coral Reefs. Kumarian Press, Connecticut. pp. 33-50. Chou, L.M. 1997. The status of southest Asian coral reefs. Proc. 8 th Int. Coral Reef Symp. 1:317-322. Claridge, G. 1994. Management of coastal ecosystems in eastern Sumatra: the case of Berbak Wildlife Reserve, Jambi Province. Hydrobiologia 285:287-302. Craik, W., Kenchington, R. and Kelleher, G. 1990. Coral-reef Management. In: ubinsky, Z. (ed.). "Coral Reef". Elsevier. Amsterdam. pp. 453-467. Gomez, E.. 1997. Reef management in developing countries: a case study in the Phillipines. Coral Reefs (Supplement) 16:S3-S8. Polunin, N.V.C. 1983. The marine resources of Indonesia. Oceanography and Marine Biology Annual Reviews 21:455-531. Komunitas 3(1):67-77@2000 7

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