11+

professional publications and policy briefs

12

years working on environmental and community planning initiatives

25+

academic journals or book chapters

Planning and Policy Development Consultant

2019 - present

Integrated Urban Water Management: Indonesia

MCC Indonesia Green Prosperity Participatory Land Use Planning (PLUP) Portfolio Evaluation

2019 - 2020

Dala works with Social Impact Inc. with Myers as team leader and land governance and land tenure specialist, working together with Fisher as analyst for evaluation to explore interim achievement of outcomes, assess implementation in project sites, and assess the likelihood of achievement of long-term outcomes.

2020

NGOs take many shapes and forms, operating at various governing scales and levels. As a categorical form, NGOs often emerged as benevolent philanthropists or as antagonistic actors. Relative to governments, NGOs are envisioned to fill a void of unmet public services, exposing shortcomings, or in extreme cases, gain notoriety by applying aggressive campaigns in confrontational ways. However, more recent manifestations of NGOs are maneuvering political strategies in more elegant and reflexive ways that do not always match their more classical categorizations. Notwithstanding the proliferation of literature indicating the evolving role of NGOs, the theorizing of existing definitions and the usage of NGO as a category in the scientific literature remain anachronistic, recalling a particular imaginary of a rather simplistic idea. Indeed, as a category of analysis, the academic literature and associated political commentary refer to NGOs in normative terms that invoke benevolent, independent, and non-profit agents striving for common goals to foster societal betterment. We argue that such normative definitions of NGOs no longer reflect the empirics, and indeed obscure the overall role that such actors perform. By more closely examining NGO activities and the strategies they employ to achieve political goals, we argue that NGOs, like other interest groups, are highly political actors that pursue self-interests in ways that we might not otherwise recognize.

2020

Studies on power dynamics have helped to develop a better understanding of the role of actors and interests influencing community forestry initiatives. This article introduces a sequential power analysis as a framework for expanding research on power dynamics to better understand the various stages that shape benefit sharing outcomes in community forestry. The research is based on the increasingly popular “partnership” scheme in Indonesia, but the framework is introduced as a method for potential application in other community forestry contexts. The framework is based on three parts. It first historicizes the actors in what we term the “power background.” Thereafter we examine the arrival of a partnership scheme described as “power delivery”. Third, we highlight a process of “power adjustment,” which serves to explain the way actors achieve benefit sharing outcomes. Our research draws from a diverse set of partnership schemes from four sites across five different comparative variables. We find that the framing of power delivery allows us to identify the key actors that serve as the messengers of partnership schemes (the prophets) promoting the terms of project implementation. In the latter stages however, power adjustment determines the outcomes, which are contingent upon benefit-sharing arrangements (profits). Not only does our sequential power analysis help to enrich studies of power dynamics in community forestry, we also show that the current implementation of the partnership scheme in Indonesia is unlikely to result in more equitable outcomes, but rather serves to strengthen the position of existing powerful actors.

2020

In policy discussions of sensitive and complex issues, particularly in the field of forestry and natural resources, interests play an integral role, but are often a challenging component to contextualize, understand, and study. For various reasons related to factors of influence and authority, actors often do not want their interests uncovered by either competitors or even by non-partisan researchers. Nevertheless, identifying such interests continue to be a critical task for the research community, particularly if we are to better understand the broader effects, effectiveness, or shortcomings of policy. In this short policy brief, we provide a practical guide for researchers to capture and incorporate actor interests as part of their empirical evidence through the interview process. Following an empirical-analytical approach, we first distinguish interests of two different types, the formal and informal. Thereafter, our guide lays out an approach consisting of four distinct phases, namely: i) deciding on the interview format, ii) creating situational settings for the interview, iii) preparing interview guides; and iv) triangulating the interview. In each phase, we underline the importance of a culture of generosity and positivity directed toward the interviewees, comfortably engaging them to describe factors and scenarios in rich detail, while also encouraging respondents to express their values and feelings toward both the area of study and other actors across policy networks.

Actor interests are always a sensitive issue in policies related to the environment, which are often purposefully hidden by actors, and commonly overlooked by research;
We develop a practical guide based on a set of principles for researchers to use when approaching interviews, which will help to more effectively understand and contextualize actor interests, and can ensure more robust findings about policies related to the environment and natural resources;
This guide lays out four distinct phases for approaching the complex and sensitive issue of actor interests for data collection using interviews, namely through the way researchers i) structure interview formats, ii) set up situational settings, iii) approach the preparation and delivery of guiding questions, and iv) triangulate the interview.

2020

We extend the Actor-Centred Power framework to consider dimensions beyond the life of community natural resource management partnership initiatives by examining social forestry partnership projects in Indonesia. We do this by examining how power constellations realign across the temporal phases that operationalize project partnerships. We propose a sequential power analysis framework that examines power in three parts. The framework first proposes a method for historicizing actors into their power background. Second, we present mode for examining the arrival of a partnership scheme, which we call the power delivery phase. Third, we highlight approaches for examining the way power relations are adjusted, whether reinforced or reconfigured, by introducing an approach for examining programmatic outcomes of social forestry partnership schemes. This article thus provides broadly applicable but targeted guide for the researchers collecting data and seeking to make sense of power relations on community forest partnership schemes in various contexts. This framework is particularly useful for analysing equity and justice dimensions by highlighting who benefits and who loses.

2019

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2019

Recent land management policies around the world have experienced a broader political push to resolve forest and land tenure conflict through agrarian reform policy. As a result, conservation bureaucracies are responding with both formal and informal interventions to acknowledge the role of people in forests. In this methods paper, we provide a closer examination of the ways that conservation bureaucracies apply their political capacity in negotiating forest and land tenure conflicts. Our proposed method measures both the capacity and actions of conservation bureaucracies, combining formal dimensions (such as of legal status, budget availability, and the type of organization unit) with informal dimensions (including ways of gaining authority, donors and funding, and trust). The framing is rooted in theories of bureaucratic politics, and while culled from rich empirical experiences from Indonesia, the proposed method is also applicable in examining bureaucratic politics in other natural resource governance contexts.
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We develop a method rooted in bureaucratic politics to measure the capacities of conservation agencies to manage forest land tenure conflict

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The proposed typology guides forest and land use policy researchers to incorporate emergent governance issues such as land tenure reform into their assessments of changing conservation bureaucracies

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The can be adapted for examination of bureaucratic capacities and actions in other contested natural resource contexts

2019

Rural development advocates are increasingly favouring policies that recognise community land rights in Indonesia, suggesting that recognition will protect forests and support livelihoods. In this article, we examine the effects of recognition by asking who benefits, and to what extent recognition impacts on livelihoods. Our case study focuses on an iconic site, the Kajang community of South Sulawesi, because advocates often point to that community as a model case. Based on over three years of field research on tenure and conflict among the Kajang, we highlight the discrepancy between the effects of recognition and existing livelihood realities. We show that communal territory in Kajang is a site of contestation, entangled in conflict over who can claim cultivation rights. We thus argue that representation of Kajang as harmonious forest communities governed by communal tenure is misleading. As advocates continue to promote similar policies elsewhere, we show that this kind of misrepresentation serves to further obscure the lingering land insecurity of rural Indonesians.

2019

Through the discourse of indigeneity, rural communities around the world are joining a global network of rural justice seekers. By articulating grievances collectively, they demand state recognition while seeking support from NGOs and international development organisations. In Indonesia, the manifestation of indigenous ‘adat’ politics is no longer confined to the national struggle for the recognition of land rights, but instead, has proliferated into many localised short term ‘adat projects’. This introduction to the TAPJA special issue on adat demonstrates that both the rural poor and local elites can be the initiators or recipients of these adat projects but, at the current juncture, the latter are better positioned to benefit from such projects. The special issue shows that in Indonesia, where adat is often firmly entrenched in the state, the promotion of indigeneity claims can work in contradictory ways. Findings from across the special issue show that adat projects tend to reinforce the power of the state, rather than challenging it.

2019

The capital city of Indonesia, Jakarta, faces chronic flooding which has been and will continue to be exacerbated by climate change processes, including sea level rise and increased rainfall. In response to these threats, the government has devised a megaproject solution to flooding which will simultaneously address the problem while enhancing Jakarta’s status as a ‘world city’, improving the economy of the metropolitan region and the country as a whole. However, the so-called Great Garuda project has a number of major flaws. We describe how this project fails to address the root causes of flooding in Jakarta as well as the primary drivers of vulnerability to flooding. We further show how the Great Garuda project is a channel through which politically connected economic elites of the Suharto regime, now marginalized by democratization and decentralization reforms, can reconstitute ‘growth coalitions’ to benefit from state resources and privileged access to development contracts and concessions. Lastly, we apply and expand on the concept of maladaptation to demonstrate how the project could leave the city and its residents more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change than they currently are.

2019

The research investigates actors' power on Jeneberang watershed management. By using bureaucratic politics framing, we found that central government actors' patron much more drives the power. It is also found that dominant information and national budget incentives are used to segregate a dual coalition, such as watershed-based coalition under Ministry of Environment and Forestry (KLHK) patron and dam - river basin management coalition under the Ministry of Public Works and Public Housing (PUPR). The provincial government is trapped in these two major coalitions; they can not disburse these two strong patrons. These strong dual fragmentation coalitions also lead to the issue of comprehensive uncoordinated on managing a watershed landscape.

2019

Although Indonesia is experiencing one of the most complex transformations of social forestry
policy in the world, there is a need to step back and more closely examine the politics, ecologies, and
economies that provide context for its implementation. This introduction offers a synthesis of the
collection of special section submissions in Forest and Society. We begin by navigating the current social
forestry moment by presenting a heuristic for identifying the discourses underpinning the rapid expansion
in support of social forestry schemes. These perspectives are fragmented across four continuously
contested discourses: community-first, legal-first, conservation-first, and development-first. We then
contextualize the historical developments that brought social forestry into its current form by laying out a
genealogy of its antecedents across three distinct generations. These three generations of social forestry
are roughly aligned with the overall political changes that have taken place in Indonesia, each of which
engaged in their own mechanisms for defining and administering social forestry. The first generation
roughly follows the period of New Order rule; a second generation began as the regime unraveled,
resulting in a period of reform and restructuring of the political system. At this time, new legal frameworks
were introduced, followed by the development of new implementation mechanisms. We argue that social
forestry has entered a third distinct period that is characterized by the expanding interests of numerous
stakeholders to formalize permitting schemes. This third generation presents new possibilities for
redefining land management on Indonesia’s vast national forests. The contributions to this special issue
shed new light on the overall implications of these changes. We divide the findings across submissions,
covering broad topical engagement on the economies, ecologies, and politics at different governing scales.
From these findings we suggest a course for future research, and identify key policy challenges for the
future of social forestry and for Indonesia.

2019

Global concern has sought to connect resilience with the field of disaster risk reduction, which was prominent in the Hyogo Framework for Action (2005–2015) and updated in the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015–2030). However, defining disaster risk reduction and resilience as policy goals geared towards reducing vulnerability and minimizing risk requires a closer examination. This research examines operationalization of resilience in programs and budgets of development plans in Indonesian cities. This paper investigates the documentation of planning policies in the Indonesian context, examining National to local level efforts. The research specifically analyzes case studies at two cities, Semarang and Tegal, and highlights how these sites have accommodated the term resilience to address flooding. The scope of the research focuses on flooding as it is the most commonly experienced hazard across Indonesia. Content analysis is applied to assess identified planning documents. The content analysis is further verified through focus group discussions among key stakeholders. Findings indicate that there are fourteen areas of plans/programs in terms of reduced exposure to hazards, lessened vulnerability of people and property, improved management of land and the environment, and improved preparedness to address flooding in the two selected cities. The elaboration of resilience-related programmes provides important lessons, namely that operationalizing resilience should be integrative and comprehensive, and require both short-term actionable initiative(s) and long-term transformative frameworks.

2019

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2018

Indonesia is undergoing major policy changes, seeking to expand social forestry designations from less than 1% (1.1 million hectares) to over 10% (12.7 million hectares) of the Forest Estate. Expanding designations is at once a landmark reform and a call for caution, raising questions about policy intentions, and practical concerns about legal, technical, and implementation mechanisms. Social forestry literature highlights three key tenets, namely efforts that: confer rights to local communities, support livelihoods, and achieve conservation outcomes. This paper examines social forestry implementation from a cross-section of sites in South Sulawesi by reflecting on sustained action research between 2012–2016. The approach critically juxtaposes social forestry policy intent with implementation at three different sites. Findings indicate social forestry implementation suffers from historically problematic state enclosures and flawed land administration processes, entrenched politicaleconomic interests among local actors, and lack of institutional engagement beyond the permitting process. Shortcuts to addressing entrenched conflict will only heighten tensions or further marginalize the most vulnerable, without guarantees to conservation outcomes.

2018

Environmental conflict is complex and variable, and over time, a concerted field has developed to study processes for collaboration and resolution. This article examines the evaluations of multistakeholder collaborative processes underpinning the field of Environmental Conflict Resolution (ECR). Specifically, we analyze ECR evaluations from over four decades, across different approaches, geographies, and scales. We also corroborate our findings through interviews and discussions with key scholars and practitioners in the field. We highlight the valuable empirical data from evaluations and point to a three‐pronged approach for reinvigorating evaluations that support practitioners and projects and promote broader ideals of ECR collaboration.

2018

This is an introduction and review for a special section on agrarian transformation in Thailand. The article seeks to guide greater attention toward issues affecting rural Thai landscapes and livelihoods. Through the examination of specific commodities across various geographies, the paper seeks to refocus research towards decision making processes among rural communities. The research draws on field study cases that follow various aspects of particular commodities, including rubber, pomelo, tomato, cassava, and furthermore, incorporates complementary research in Forest and Society on coffee, ginger, jujube, and agrotourism in Thailand. Through the factors shaping engagement with these agricultural commodities, we examine issues including labor, soil fertility, contract farming arrangements, drought resistant crops, climate change, and others. In this way we seek to draw attention to the complex dynamics taking place on the Thai rural landscape and the factors that are reshaping land relations. Through initiating a research network on similar research approaches we identify and envision broader opportunities for helping to re-imagine future possibility in rural Thailand.

2018

Conservation areas are designated to protect biodiversity and resources by limiting anthropogenic stressors. In Indonesia, conservation areas account for almost 23 percent of the state forest with extremely limited allowable uses. Previous policy interventions to support community and traditional uses have never been very successful due to the deep roots of bureaucratic politics originally defined to safeguard biodiversity. This deadlock created by the two major laws governing forestry and conservation areas has been broken with recent permits for geothermal projects in conservation areas. The rationale is to provide an environmental service (renewable energy) and to address global concerns for climate mitigation. This paper examines how the deadlock is broken at least temporarily for geothermal development and maintained for social forestry. Arguments and findings presented in this paper are drawn from content analysis, interviews, and long-term engagement among the authors observing operationalization of conservation policies in Indonesia, both in Java and outer islands. We propose the operational framework of deadlock opportunism as a way to highlight the processes of breaking a deadlock by legitimizing particular interests (geothermal development) through green and populist narratives, while hollowing out claims of other interests (social forestry). Although anticipation of breaking the deadlock through geothermal development has encouraged numerous policies and programs developed for social forestry, we argue these developments actually camouflage the underlying legitimacy of communities and keep them from accessing lands within conservation areas. We believe the concept of deadlock opportunism and the operational framework can provide new insights for understanding progress (or lack thereof) of certain policies in their lifecycles in other parts of the world.

2017

Welcome to our first edition. We are excited to provide a new, and what we believe, timely avenue for presenting research findings and publications in Southeast Asia, for scholars interested in Southeast Asia. Although Southeast Asia as a region of study has provided tremendous contributions to theory and practice regarding forests and society across the social and natural sciences, avenues for cultivating a scholarship of the region remain limited. We seek to engage on a broad set of themes through the application of targeted research related to timely issues affecting the human-environment interface in a diverse region that we have much to learn from. We take a broad understanding of the forest - as a politico-administrative unit, a geographic area, and as an ecological unit. We do not limit the forest to its boundaries but rather seek to engage on the dynamics of change in social and ecological processes. Under such an umbrella, new approaches and methods become possible. ‘Forest' can be analyzed as land use, ecological process, divided across watersheds, as landscapes, mountains, and more. The lens of ‘society' allows for opportunities to understand change, whether it is the interaction between a resource to be preserved, exploited, forgotten, or erased. Forests, therefore, operate as the clues of what once was, has become, and what can be. Particularly in the age of climate change, riddled by increasingly complex challenges, a new dimension also emerges for the forest. Different perspectives at different scales – from the local to the global – provide equally important dimensions, and are those which we seek to provide avenues to learn from, and communicate through this journal. As the reader will find in this inaugural issue, we have compiled an initial set of studies across multiple methods and geographies that help to set the terms of future editions. We examine: historical political ecologies of land use around opium cultivation in the uplands of Thailand; emerging governance regimes of corporate social responsibility in Myanmar; the capacity of new state institutions to manage land conflict in forest estate lands in Indonesia; a close analysis of forest harvesting and management in a mangrove forest in Malaysia; and, an economic valuation of non-timber forest products in a national park in Indonesia. There is much to choose from and much more to delve into. We hope that this issue serves as an impetus to engage on these timely themes and further encourages new ideas for submissions.

2017

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2016

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2016

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2016

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2015

Ongoing climate change can alter conditions for plant growth, in turn affecting ecological and social systems. While there have been considerable advances in understanding the physical aspects of climate change, comprehensive analyses integrating climate, biological, and social sciences are less common. Here we use climate projections under alternative mitigation scenarios to show how changes in environmental variables that limit plant growth could impact ecosystems and people. We show that although the global mean number of days above freezing will increase by up to 7% by 2100 under “business as usual” (representative concentration pathway [RCP] 8.5), suitable growing days will actually decrease globally by up to 11% when other climatic variables that limit plant growth are considered (i.e., temperature, water availability, and solar radiation). Areas in Russia, China, and Canada are projected to gain suitable plant growing days, but the rest of the world will experience losses. Notably, tropical areas could lose up to 200 suitable plant growing days per year. These changes will impact most of the world’s terrestrial ecosystems, potentially triggering climate feedbacks. Human populations will also be affected, with up to ~2,100 million of the poorest people in the world (~30% of the world’s population) highly vulnerable to changes in the supply of plant-related goods and services. These impacts will be spatially variable, indicating regions where adaptations will be necessary. Changes in suitable plant growing days are projected to be less severe under strong and moderate mitigation scenarios (i.e., RCP 2.6 and RCP 4.5), underscoring the importance of reducing emissions to avoid such disproportionate impacts on ecosystems and people.

2014