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Abstract: Tropical peatlands are fragile ecosystems with an important role in conserving biodiversity,

water quality and availability, preventing floods, soil intrusion, erosion and sedimentation, and

providing a livelihood for people. However, due to illegal logging, fire and conversion into other

land use, the peatlands in Indonesia are under serious threat. Efforts to restore Indonesia’s tropical

peatlands have been accelerated by the establishment of the Peatland Restoration Agency in early

2016. The restoration action policy includes the rewetting, revegetation and revitalisation of local

livelihood (known as the 3Rs). This paper summarises the regulatory, institutional and planning

aspects of peatland restoration, in addition to the implementation of the 3Rs in Indonesia, including

failures, success stories, and the criteria and indicators for the success of peatland restoration.

A Community-Led Analysis and Planning (CLAP) process was conducted in Tumbang Nusa village, in Jabiren Raya Subdistrict, Pulang Pisau District, Central Kalimantan Province on 14-17 March 2019.

This activity was the starting-point for ongoing community engagement for the ‘Gambut Kita’ project, otherwise known as ‘Improving Fire Management and Peatland Restoration in Indonesia’: a project funded by the Australian Center for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).

This village-based activity was facilitated by ten Key Informants from the village of Tumbang Nusa, assisted by a team consisting of eleven researchers from the Forestry and Environmental Research and Development (FOERDIA) plus one researcher
from RMIT, as well as a twelve-person community development team from Yayasan Tambuhak Sinta (YTS).

The purpose of this activity was to obtain a general overview regarding the current living conditions in the village, community development potentials, and current community concerns regarding aspects of village society, economy, infrastructure,
institutions, culture, health, education, religion, livelihoods, natural resource utilization and other factors.

The data and other outputs from this activity may now be used as a baseline reference for the entire project team to further consider the most suitable livelihoods to be developed and assisted during implementation of this long-term research project in Tumbang Nusa which focuses on peatland management and the control of unwanted peatland fires.

In this activity, a total of 15 analytical tools were used: a village walk, village history, trend analysis, seasonal calendar, wealth ranking, social map, village map, land use map, transect, economic matrix, institutional analysis, household analysis, data
consolidation, evening meetings, and a final meeting.

This document provides the detailed documentation of the results of the CLAP process, presented in chronological order, based on the stages of the CLAP as performed in Tumbang Nusa village.

Description
‘GAMBUT KITA’OUTREACH & CAPACITY BUILDING STRATEGY (2018-21) Building Knowledge and Know how for Community Fire Management and Peatland Restoration in Indonesia

Community engagement and integrated research are key approaches to solving complex
socio-ecological challenges. This paper describes the experience of bringing together a team
of natural and social scientists from Australia and Indonesia in the ‘Gambut Kita’ (translated
as ‘Our Peat’) project. Gambut Kita aims to produce new knowledge and support efforts to
successfully, and equitably, restore Indonesia’s tropical peatlands and ensure that livelihoods
can be maintained on restored (rewetted) landscapes. The paper focuses on experiences of
using community engagement for integrated research. It discusses three community
engagement approaches used in the project—resilience, adaptation pathways and transformation
approach (RAPTA), participatory rural appraisal (PRA), and community-led analysis
and planning (CLAP). It also describes the qualitative analysis of 14 interviews with the
project team of lessons learned in community engagement for integrated research. ‘Criteria
for success’ from the literature on international development projects is used to assess
progress. The findings highlight the specific complexities of working across countries and
cultures. Successful community engagement is not so much about the ‘tool’ but about the
trust, agency, and support to change. The tools do, however, have different strengths. PRA
and CLAP can build deep community understanding and relationships. RAPTA has strengths
in framing visions and pathways to the future, systems thinking, anticipatory learning, and
taking a cross-scale systems view which is required to solve many of the problems manifesting
at local or community scales. Similarly, success in integrated research is not just about
individuals, but structures (e.g. explicit process) and infrastructure (e.g. access to technology).
These findings suggest that integrated research needs special considerations in terms
of design, and these relate across scales to individual researchers as well as teams, leaders
and organisations. Integrated research projects need careful, inclusive, iterative management
with a lot of interaction to learn from each other, build a common vision, achieve clarity of
roles, and share emerging findings.

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