Ecosystem Guardians or Threats? Livelihood Security and Nature Conservation in Maluku, Indonesia

This article addresses the challenge of combining ecosystem protection with economic development. The setting is societies living near a national park in a poor and peripheral part of Indonesia. Data from our household survey are used to answer the following questions: Do local communities find secure and sustainable livelihoods in areas surrounding the park? To what extent do communities close to the park contribute to ecosystem protection? We use cluster analysis to group households based on a mapping of livelihood means and outcomes. In-depth interviews complement the statistical data. The study reveals prevailing and widespread poverty combined with non-sustainable livelihoods. It shows that people's traditional lives may pose a risk, rather than the solution, to ecosystem protection, and that sustained biodiversity and pristine forests may not be consistent with maintaining an economic resource base for an increasing population. Further, that ecosystem degradation does not necessarily evoke traditional social mechanisms for nature protection.