The cost of leisure: the political ecology of the commercialization of Indonesia’s protected areas

ABSTRACT

Using the political ecology approach, we investigated the Indonesian government’s decision to commercialize protected areas (PAs) and promote its tourism sector aggressively, and examined how this commercialization is enabled through various institutions and governing structures. We confirmed that the commercialization of PAs in Indonesia was an alternative accumulation, dealing with the crisis of capitalist accumulation. Our empirical finding showed that the commercialization of PAs in Indonesia had detimental environmental and social impacts, such as deadlocks or monopoly or management, and environmental deterioration. This commercialization pattern was different from accumulation by conservation in other regions, such as Africa, where local people were deprived of their access to the means of production, consequently becoming laborers in the tourism industry. In Indonesia, local people were given access to resources; however, as these resources were of little value, they became laborers in the tourism industry. Further research is needed to test whether different patterns of accumulation by conservation also apply to other types of PAs in Indonesia, such as national parks and customary forests, including various coral reef conservation areas in remote and small Islands used as tourist attractions.

KEYWORDS:

• Political ecology
• populism
• tourism
• commercialization
• protected area

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank various people for their contribution to this project: Ms. Kismari Widyaningsih, East Java Research Bureau, for the valuable technical support on this project; Dr. Nurul Aini and Restu Rizkyta Kusuma, the staff of Research and Community Services Faculty of Agriculture, Universitas Brawijaya, for their help in collecting the plant data; and all the technicians who helped me in handling the instruments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes on contributors

Mangku Purnomo

Mangku Purnomo is an Associate Professor at Department of Social Economics, Faculty of Agriculture Brawijaya University since 2018. His primary research field is Agricultural sociology with focus on Political Ecology, and his secondary field is Agrarian Change, Rural development and Cultural Transformation issues. He has held numerous previous administrative positions, including Head of Social economics Department in 2014-2019, Vice Dean Finance of the Faculty of Agriculture of Brawijaya university from 2020 until now.

Ahmad Maryudi

Ahmad Maryudi is a Professor (Full) at the Faculty of Forestry, Universitas Gadjah Mada (Indonesia). His research interests include forest and nature conservation policy, principally the influence of global governance on the domestic policy making, e.g. social/ community forestry policy, local/ customary rights and access, forest tenure and land use policy, conflict management. He chairs the faculty’s Sebijak Institute (Research Center of Forest Policy and History).

Novil Dedy Andriatmoko

Novil Dedy Andriamoko has been an instructor at Department of Social Economics, Agriculture Faculty of Brawijaya University since 2016. His primary research field is agricultural socio-economics, technical efficiency, food security and his secondary field is agricultural marketing. He has administrative position that is staff of Vice Dean Finance of the Faculty of Agriculture of Brawijaya University.

Edy Muhamad Jayadi

Edy Muhammad Jayadi, is Associate Professor of Biology, Faculty of Tarbiah and Theaching Science, Universitas Islam Negeri Mataram, Indonesia since 2000. His primary research field is local knowledge related to bio-diversity science, eco-tourism and the dynamics of human and environmental relations and their impact on biodiversity. His research often uses an ethno-botanical approach to explain how local knowledge of forest communities is able to moderate the biodiversity in their environment.

Heiko Faust

Heiko Faust is a Professor (Full) at the Department of Human Geography Institute of Geography, Göttingen, Germany. His studies in geography and international technical and economic cooperation. PhD in geography. Extraordinary professor in social geography and sustainable resource use at the University. His research interests societal transformation, sustainable resource use, land use change, environmental governance.