Research, part of a Special Feature on Navigating Trade-offs: Working for Conservation and Development Outcomes Will Forests Remain in the Face of Oil Palm Expansion? Simulating Change in Malinau,…

By Marieke Sandker, Aritta Suwarno, B. Campbell. 2007

131 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The severe tensions between conservation and development are illustrated by events in Malinau Dstrict (Kalimantan, Indonesia). Conservationists decry proposed plans for logging and conversion of pristine tropical forest to oil palm ( Elaeis guineensis). Although the local government is willing to declare the district a "conservation district," at the same time, it shows interest in oil palm conversion. This article explores the impact of the potential conversion of 500 000 ha of forest to oil palm on forest cover, in- migration, and the local economy in Malinau. The simulation model was developed using STELLA® software, and relies on a combination of empirical data, data from the literature, and stakeholder perceptions. If a company were to clear the forest for timber without planting oil palm (as commonly happens), poverty levels are likely to rise rather than decline over the long term. If large-scale oil palm plantations were to be established, they could yield significant benefits to local authorities. However, such development would induce massive employment-driven migration, with wide-ranging consequences for the current inhabitants of the region. By visualizing and quantifying these trade-offs between conservation and development, the model stimulates debate and information exchange among conservationists, development actors, and district authorities so that well-informed choices can be made.

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/83a65014ddb0d210e9e498d21494a9faae964a34

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Citations in the corpus

Reconciling biodiversity conservation and food security: scientific challenges for a new agriculture (2010, background): “In addition, pressures on the wildlands and shifts to intensified production are not purely driven by local people — the global demand for products can see vast areas cleared for commercial agriculture, as is the case for oil palm in Kalimantan [47].”
Fire economy and actor network of forest and land fires in Indonesia (2017, background): “Currently, the demand for land in Indonesia is mostly driven by a global demand for palm oil (Sandker et al., 2007).”
The livelihood impacts of oil palm: smallholders in Indonesia (2010, background): “As such it is necessary that we have a greater understanding of the current and potential future livelihood consequences of oil palm agriculture (Sandker et al. 2007).”
Why do Farmers Prefer Oil Palm? Lessons Learnt from Bungo District, Indonesia (2010, background): “Oil palm attracts farmers due to its high financial returns (Belcher et al. 2004; Sandker et al. 2007; Sheil et al. 2009).”
Mitigating the biodiversity impacts of oil palm development (2010, background): “Simulations of land-use change involving oil palm have been developed to inform district government of the consequences of various land-use options available to them [47].”
How will oil palm expansion affect biodiversity? (2008, background): “With higher yields per unit area for both large-scale commercial enterprises and small holders than many alternatives, oil palm might provide a substitute for traditional subsistence agriculture and could reduce the area of land needed to support each household [7, 25 ].”
Getting REDD to work locally: lessons learned from integrated conservation and development projects (2010, background): “To this end, threat modeling at the landscape scale could be used to inform project interventions under multiple economic and social scenarios (Harris et al., 2008; Sandker et al., 2007).”
Adaptive Capacity and Traps (2008, background): “Many other papers use distance-to-threshold to investigate social–ecological systems (e.g., Kondolf et al. 2006, Martin 2004, Peterson 2002, Sandker et al. 2007, Walker and Meyers 2004).”
Participatory Scenario Planning for Protected Areas Management under the Ecosystem Services Framework: the Doñana Social-Ecological System in Southwestern Spain (2011, background): “…2005), regional planning (Peterson et al. 2003a), coastal planning under climate change (Tompkins et al. 2008), conservation-development projects (Sandker et al. 2007), research-development projects (Enfors et al. 2008), and the management of natural protected areas (Brown et al. 2001, Gude et…”