Institutional development to build a self sustenance in integrated watershed management (the case of arau watershed unit management area, West Sumatera)

Abstract

Arau Watershed Unit Management Area that is located in Padang City, its condition continued to degrade due to deforestation in the upstream watershed, impact on water crisis, so that the watershed performance is still bad. Meanwhile, reforestation and conservation is constrained by limited funds, ineffective and inefficient forest governance institution and the lack of incentives for forest sustainable management. The study was aimed to build a self sustenance and integrated watershed management through the development of incentives for reforestation and conservation from payment for environmental services (PES) and non PES funds by indentifying exogenous factors that influence action arena in watershed management using Ostrom framework of institutional development analysis. The results show that to achieve good watershed performance, 32,092 ha of forest land must be maintained. The identification of action arena shows that forest degradation occurs due to uncertainty property rights, so forest property right become ill-defined property rights, since the dominant role of the government. More over, this condition has destructed collective action and illegal forest extraction is still continuing and forest degradation become widely spread then forest is considered as open acces property. The obscurity of forest property rights must be solved to find a solution. While customary rules of society that is still good to implement, so property right conflict resolution can be driven to a common property, because of the followings: the common property are not sold susceptible so that land integrity can be maintained; ecxludable so that disruption to the resource can be known early; awakening of collective action in forest management; members of the group can utilize forest resources so that can improve social welfare, and the excesses of open access resources can be avoided. To overcome the limited financing forest conservation and reforestation as well as to increase forest communities income, it can be implemented payments for environmental services in utilization of surface water at 27,657 ha forest area. The presence of funding from the watershed itself, is expected can realize the self sustenance of watershed management. For the realization of sustainable forest management and the integrated and self-sustenance watershed management, co-management model called Nagari Forest Management Model, by means of incorporate formal rules and customary norms in the forest management is more suitable because there is space to strengthen forest management based on local wisdom, and to build synergies between the customary norms and government rules, so that conflicts can be minimized. Finally, it can be concluded that the lack of clarity on the situation of vulnerable property right potentially can damage common pool resources, and when the condition of society still have strong cultures, communal property solutions with co management model between communities and government still have advantages.

Salah satu satuan wilayah pengelolaan (SWP) daerah aliran sungai (DAS) Prioritas di Sumatera Barat yang sangat strategis karena terletak di Kota Padang sebagai ibu kota propinsi adalah SWP DAS Arau. Selama tahun 1990-2009 telah terjadi pengurangan luas hutan sebesar 1.320 hektar pada SWP DAS Arau, mengakibatkan kecenderungan peningkatan debit maksimum, penurunan debit minimum dan peningkatan fluktuasi debit, yang mengindikasikan kinerja DAS buruk. Ini menunjukkan bahwa pengelolaan DAS belum terpadu, belum mandiri dan belum berkelanjutan, sehingga performa pengelolaan DAS masih belum baik. Pengelolaan DAS melibatkan banyak pihak, sehingga permasalahannya seringkali sangat kompleks. Permasalahan krusial aspek fisik pada SWP DAS Arau adalah perubahan proses hidrologi karena perubahan tutupan lahan hutan pada kawasan lindung menjadi tutupan non hutan. Sementara itu, pemulihan kerusakan hutan dan lahan terkendala oleh terbatasnya dana untuk kegiatan konservasi dan RHL, sehingga pelaksanaan kegiatan belum sesuai dengan kebutuhan; sedangkan pada aspek kelembagaan terdapat masalah tumpang tindihnya lahan hutan ulayat dan hutan negara dan perbedaan aturan pengelolaan hutan antara masyarakat adat dan pemerintah, yang diyakini sebagai salah satu penyebab perambahan hutan di hulu DAS dan kemiskinan masyarakat sekitar kawasan hutan. Dengan demikian pertanyaan yang ingin dijawab dalam penelitian ini adalah “Bagaimanakah model kelembagaan serta insentif seperti apa yang harus diterapkan sehingga dapat mewujudkan model pengelolaan DAS yang terpadu dan mandiri pada SWP DAS?” Pertanyaan ini akan dijawab dengan Analisis Pengembangan Institusi (Institution Analysis Development, IAD), yang dikembangkan oleh Ostrom (2008) melalui penelusuran faktor eksogen (kondisi fisik/material, atribut komunitas dan aturan main yang berlaku), yang mempengaruhi arena aksi (situasi aksi dan aktor) yang akhirnya akan menentukan performa pengelolaan SWP DAS Arau.