Constellation of 3 Ecosystems: Land, Coast, and Sea

Tenurial issues are still a major challenge in the fair and sustainable management of natural resources. Conflicts arise due to unclear land rights and policies that do not favor indigenous peoples and the environment. The concept of tenure is a bundle of rights. There is no equivalent word for tenure in Indonesia, usually the word tenure is translated as ownership rights or private ownership so that it does not match the reality in the field. This incommensurate definition causes the limitation and closure of community rights in the management of natural resources. The bundle of rights in this tenure concept includes access rights, exploitation rights, management rights, exclusion rights, and alienation/transfer rights.

For 3 days from January 31 to February 2, 2025, various CSOs in Indonesia and internationally gathered in Les Village, Tejakula District, Buleleng Regency to conduct a workshop on learning for recognition and management based on community rights to land, coast and sea. The workshop was organized through a collaboration between the Tenure Facility, Samdhana Institute, the Customary Territory Registration Agency (BRWA), LMMA, and the Packard Foundation. In addition to discussing tenure issues, lessons learned at the grassroots level from the Maluku, Sulawesi, Bali, and Papua regions in this activity also focused on discussions to build integration of land, coastal, and marine areas which have always been separated and compartmentalized by policies and donors.

There are three recommendations or concrete derivatives resulting from this meeting, namely:

A. Building collaborative work to accelerate and protect tenure rights and guarantee sustainable management of natural resources (land, coast, sea)

a. Identifying proposed pilot areas and actors:

• Tejakula-Bali (mountain – sea), parties/actors who can be involved are traditional villages, MDA, Wisnu Foundation, AMAN Bali, WWF.
• Nusa Laut-Maluku, actors involved include Baileo, AMAN Maluku, CTC.
• Biak-Papua, actors involved include: LMMA, Biak traditional council etc. Has been supported by Packard for 25 years, how can we harvest the work that has been done and become a model that can be imitated and disseminated.
• Bajau Region: Sea tribe who can integrate from the sea to the islands, no specific location yet.

b. Advocacy of marine conservation area models to protect biodiversity, social, culture, including strengthening the concept of tenure in conservation areas (Wakatobi Biosphere Reserve, Lease Islands Small Island Park).

c. Involvement of key actors; the role of “think tanks”, the role of ‘movement’, the role of ‘convener’, and building new roles that do not yet exist.

B. Awareness of community tenure rights issues and guarantees of sustainable management of natural resources (land, coast, sea).

1. Building a counter narrative to the dominant government narrative regarding community tenure guarantees.
2. Public education for community tenure issues, especially coastal and marine tenure (bundle of rights, common property)

C. Intervening and monitoring the implementation of international agreements related to the recognition and protection of community tenure rights (land, waters, coastal-sea). Protection of tenure rights is in the CBD, ILO, UN Declaration which can be used from the village to international levels.

Several other proposals that emerged were how to encourage the emergence of anthropologists who discuss issues on the coast and sea and how to optimize the management of national park areas that have not been managed sustainably and have only produced “paper parks”. The institutions that attended were BRWA, WGII, Rare Foundation, Stockholm Environment Institute Asia Center, LANDESA, FOKER LSM Papua, LMMA, PB AMAN, AMAN Bali, Baileo, LMMA, WWF, BRIN, Wisnu Foundation, Fisherfolk Community, BRIN, Packard Foundation, Turning Tides, Samdhana Institute, and Tenure Facility also conveyed the commitment of each institution regarding efforts to integrate the three ecosystems of land, coast, and sea.