Data from: Using a participatory impact assessment framework to evaluate a community-led mangrove and fisheries conservation approach in West Kalimantan, Indonesia
Description
- Community-based conservation (CBC) has been identified as a solution to biodiversity loss, climate change, and the reduction of rural poverty. The heterogeneity in social and economic inequalities often acts as a barrier to community engagement in resource management and further inhibits the distributional equity of social and ecological outcomes.
- This study presents a participatory impact assessment (PIA) framework that evaluated the outcomes of a cross-sector community-led conservation initiative. Community members involved in the program identified activities and outcomes for the Conservation Cooperative (CC), ranking the influence of the former on the latter as well as their daily life through multiple focus group discussions (FGDs). Participants were asked to rank the impact of activities on outcomes and the scale of the outcome which was totaled to identify the most impactful program activities and outcomes during the project period.
- Community members reported improved income, health, education and the creation of a locally-led natural resource management system. Members also reported improved crab harvest rates and reduced mangrove deforestation. Environmental outcomes identified by community members through the PIA were verified through a secondary spatial analysis and mud-crab independent fisheries monitoring.
- The results support the hypothesis that environmental NGOs need to consider a multi-dimensional view of human well-being, and that cross-sector integrated interventions may be effective at improving multiple outcomes.
- Future steps should focus on spatial replication of the CC program which will provide further insights by testing for differences in outcomes between villages, how those are impacted by preexisting social and ecological systems, and comparing outcomes between control sites that did not receive interventions.
Notes
The community identified 11 core activities, of which all but the chip making training were identified as 'important' or 'very important' motivators to engage in the cooperative. All activities with the exception of training on TMRs were rated as 'important' or 'very important' for daily life (Table 1). The fish chip making training was the only activity not discussed in the Influence mapping.
The activities requiring the greatest time commitment from the community are the closure system, patrols and the meetings of the Conservation Cooperative. There were no areas where the amount of labour expended was disproportionate to the importance given to the activities. Health services was an instrumental motivator for project engagement, very important for daily life and required limited community labour.
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Below is a description on how to use and interpret this data set:
The mixed FGD identified six major outcomes of the program, and compiled the activities into six interventions (Table 2). Improvements in mangrove and fisheries management was the area with the highest magnitude of positive change with a score of 17. Increased income and savings were the second highest level of change (14), reduced illegal logging was the third highest (13) and the lowest was improved health and better education levels (11). The conservation cooperative was identified as the most important activity overall, having a strong influence on all changes identified with a score of 18. The activity driving the least amount of change across multiple areas were mangrove patrol units (11).
The village leaders FGD identified five project activities (Table 3). Village leaders felt more comfortable grouping activities such as 'Cooperative Monthly Meetings' and 'Savings and Loans Program' as well as 'Conservation Agreement' and 'Monthly Mangrove Patrols' together. Village leaders listed all activities as very important for daily life and as a motivator to join the cooperative, with the exception of the Conservation Agreement and Mangrove Patrols which was rated as less important for daily life than others. As identified by the community FGD , health was found to be a 'low level of labour expended,' but conversely village leaders did not find that the Conservation Cooperative was time consuming which was ranked the same as the health program in labour expenditure (Table 2).
The FGD conducted with only village leaders yielded different results to the FGD with community members. Village leaders identified five major outcomes with the 'Conservation Agreement and Monthly patrols' having the largest impact across multiple outcomes. The outcome with the greatest magnitude of change, according to village leaders, was 'improved community assets' that were both financial and non-financial. Similar to the mixed FGD health activities were listed as low labour expended and high impact. Interestingly, village leaders noted that the cooperative activities required a low level of labour while the mixed FGD identified is as requiring high labour.
Fisheries Independent Data
Crabs in the open rivers were significantly larger than in the TMR rivers in November (W = 78, p-value = 0.00132), but after the closure crabs were significantly larger in the TMR rivers than the open ones (t = 3.703, df = 41, p-value = 0.000629 (Fig. 2). Crabs in open rivers were the same size in November and February (W = 1082, p-value = 0.561), however in the TMR rivers, crabs were significantly larger after the 3 month closure (W = 94, p-value = 0.000441 (Fig. 2). The size of crabs in the rivers open to fishers remained the same, while rivers that were closed temporarily, went from significantly smaller crabs before the closure compared to open, to significantly larger than it was as well as becoming significantly larger than in open rivers.
CPUE was significantly greater in open rivers compared to TMR ones in November (p-value = 0.028), and was similar in all rivers in February (p-value = 0.333 (Fig. 3). CPUE remained the same for TMR rivers in both sampling periods (p-value = 0.782), however in open rivers it significantly decreased after 3 months (p-value = 0.0039 (Fig. 3). There was no impact on CPUE in TMR rivers, however, CPUE in open rivers went from significantly greater in TMR ones before the closure, to significantly less over 3 months to become similar to the closed river.)
Funding provided by: Darwin Initiative*
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Funding provided by: Darwin Initiative
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