Factors driving land use change: Effects on watershed functions in a coffee agroforestry system in Lampung, Sumatra

Forest cover in Sumberjaya declined from 60% to 10% over the past three decades; current land uses are a mosaic of smallholder coffee fields on slopes, and rice paddies and vegetables in the valleys. While deforestation was continuing at the forest frontier, farmers were already ‘re-treeing’ the landscape and many monoculture coffee gardens were gradually transformed into mixed systems with shade trees. In this case study we illustrate that the factors driving deforestation were strong, interconnected and generally outside the forestry domain. The current agroforestry landscape generates a significantly higher discharge than in the past, allowing a hydropower dam to revise its power-production targets upwards. One of the main reasons given to justify the eviction of farmers in the watershed, based on claims that the past land use change would negatively affect the discharge and the dam’s power generation, proved wrong. In this area, various myths about watershed functions – already dismissed in other parts of the world – still dominate the thinking of many foresters and policymakers; this paper illustrates how and why this situation came about.