EMERGENT DYNAMICS OF MIGRATION AND THEIR POTENTIAL EFFECTS ON FOREST AND LAND USE IN NORTH KALIMANTAN, INDONESIA
KARTIKA SARI JUNIWATY, BIMBIKA SIJAPATI BASNETT, BENITA NATHANIA, RILIN PURWATI, I MADE SANJAYA, PAUL THUNG
Many of the world’s poorest live in a close relationship with trees and forests. To sustainably enhance their well-being, policymakers require accurate information about who these people are and how they interact with forests. While migration has been widely adopted as one of an important strategy for their lives, the links between migration and its potential effects on forest and land use are remains poorly understood. This lack is becoming even more glaring as improved transportation and communication systems are transforming and intensifying mobility patterns. In an attempt to resolve this gap, we present evidence of how the changing face of migration impacts on land use decisions made by households in Indonesia. Much of the existing literature addressing the interlinkage between migration and the environment in Indonesia investigates the extent to which migrants are responsible for deforestation in the places where they settled. Our study moves beyond the limitations of such studies in three innovative ways. First, instead of treating migration as an independent force impacting on the environment, we recognize the importance of mediating variables in determining forest outcomes. Thus we engage with previous studies on the economic, social and ecological drivers and effects of migration, and expand on them by tracing the impacts of these phenomena on forest management systems. Second, we shift the focus from the receiving areas to the migrant-sending regions. Focusing on migrant-sending areas allows us to include a variety of emergent patterns of migration into our analysis, such as rural-urban, circular and educational migration. Finally, we do not limit ourselves to the effects of migration on forest cover only, but also consider the implications for forest-related livelihoods, access to and distribution of natural resources and the design of policy interventions. Our findings are based on mixed-methods research in two different landscapes in Malinau Regency, North Kalimantan. Lower Malinau is a peri-urban area on the outskirts of the capital of the regency in which a small portion of the area is forest and a coal mining zone. Upper Malinau is a vast forested landscape and located in a border with a neighbor country. Data were collected in two rounds. It began with quantitative data collection through a survey of 360 households in 8 villages. Following this, we revisited four villages with the highest rate of migration and most evident changes in forest landscape. In this round, data were acquired through 141 interviews and 20 focus group discussions.
Event: Land Governance in an Interconnected World_Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty_2018
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