COMMUNITY BASED CORAL REEF MANAGEMENT OF THE MARINE TOURISM PARK GILI INDAH, LOMBOK BARAT Imam Bachtiar Jurusan Pendidikan Biologi, FKIP Universitas Mataram Email:
[email protected]
ABSTRACT Coral reef management is something never been seriously done by the Indonesian government, the only managing agency for public marine resources so far. The government initiative to promote a community-based management is encouraging, as it is more applicable and sustainable. Establishing the community based coral reef management, however, is not an easy job. Experiences on the Marine Tourism Park Gili Indah (MTPGI) show that it could take a long time to establish a good and reliable community based management for coral reef resources. Government support is necessary to have a good community support on the program. The capacity of facilitating agency (NGO) is also a crucial factor in determining the result of the management plan. In the case of the MTPGI, the district government should let community to collect the user fee for funding their day to day management. Without any sufficient funding, no management could be run well. INTRODUCTION Coral reef is an important economic asset in Indonesia, particularly in the village Gili Indah, Lombok Barat - Nusa Tenggara Barat, where marine tourism is the first economic income. The marine tourism development is largely depend on coral reefs. Coral reefs provide clear waters, white sandy beach and wonderful underwater world. On the other hand, coral reef destruction is spreading on nearly all coral reefs in Indonesia (Soekarno, 1990; Chou, 1997). Coral reef management is therefore urgently needed in all locations, particularly where marine tourism is very important. At present, coral reef management is something that is not seriously done by the government (Sloan and Sugandy, 1994). Even management carried out inside a marine park is not sufficient to ensure sustainable uses of marine resources (Claridge, 1994, Sloan et al., 1994). Unfortunately, the government is the only managing agency of marine public properties. Coral reef destruction occurring on all over Indonesian archipelago is one indication of bad coral reef management program by the government. Recently, the Indonesian government initiates a community-based management for coral reefs resources, through the COREMAP (coral reef rehabilitation and management program). Coral reef community based management is a new approach in Indonesia. This management is thought to be the most applicable approach, since it is considered to be cheaper and more sustainable. There are used to be several traditional (collaborative or community based) management on coastal and marine resources in Indonesia (White et al., 1994). Those management, however, have been replaced by the formal government management that did not work very well, for example the traditional management sasi in the Maluku (Zerner, 1994). Coral reef management ideally must satisfy all stakeholders. A succeed coral reef management usually involving all users (stakeholders) in the planning and implementation of the management (Gomez, 1997). Craik et al. (1990) classifies the stakeholders of coral reefs into three groups. a. Extractive group, that takes or exploits some renewable marine resources, either by fishing or collecting. b. Tourism group, who enjoys the beauty of coral reef resources, either extractive or non-extractive. c. Researcher and conservationist group, who conserve coral reef resources for future use and research. Since the three groups have their own different needs, they have their own goals on coral reef management. The extractive users, for example, want to catch fish or other marine resources as much as possible. While, tourism group wants to increase the number of visitors and the length of their stay. To develop tourism, they may want to construct tourism facilities that improve tourism
Komunitas 3(1):67-77@2000
1
attraction. On the other hand, researcher and conservationist want to preserve natural ecological processes to ensure sustainable uses of coral reef for future generation. Since the three groups may have some contradiction goals, they all have to be involved from the planning of the management. A good coral reef management should therefore be the result of agreement among the three parties to use coral reef in sustainable way and to avoid conflicts among the stakeholders. The present study is to report and to document important steps in establishing a community based coral reef management in the Marine Tourism Park (MTP) Gili Indah. This paper also study difficulties and problems leading to ineffectiveness of the approved management plan. MARINE TOURISM PARK OF GILI INDAH (MTPGI). The Gili Indah is a marine tourism park in the Province of Nusa Tenggara Barat. The Gili Indah is an archipelago village consisting of three small islands (gili=island, Sasak), i.e. the Gili Air, the Gili Meno and the Gili Trawangan. Geographically, the Gili Indah is located between S8°20' to S8°23' and E116°00' to 116°08'. The size of the area is about 2,954 hectares, with terrestrial area is about 665 hectares. Among the three islands, the Gili Trawangan is the largest one (340 hectares), followed the Gili Air (175 hectares) and the Gili Meno (150 hectares). The Gili Indah is populated with about 2,370 people that spread over 552 families. The population is distributed heterogeneously; 255 families in Gili Air, 105 families in Gili Meno and 192 families in Gili Trawangan. Most people living in the Gili Indah are called themselves as Buginesse community instead of Sasak that are dominant in the mainland Lombok. Recently, there are many Lomboker (Sasak, Sumbawa, Javanesse) and Balinesse coming to the Gili Indah and make a living in the three islands. Most people in the Gili Indah have low level of education. Data in 1997 shows that about 90% of population only have elementary education or never finish their elementary schools. About 35% of them never go to any schools. Only about 10% of the population experienced high-school education. Very few (
