Land-use trade-offs in the Kapuas peat forest, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia

Forest ecosystems provide benefits to people locally and globally. Sustainable management of forest resources is required to ensure continued supply of these benefits, but complex social-ecological processes are often a constraint to the design of such forest management strategies. In this study, we developed a model of adaptive forest zonation to facilitate forest ecosystem management. We employed the ecosystem services concept and a land-use change model to identify potential areas for conservation and for economic use in the Kapuas Protected Forest Management Unit in Indonesia. Local people actively participated in this study to jointly define management zones and stakeholders’ associated rights and responsibilities. Our results show that a stakeholder agreement facilitated the reduction of threats to forest ecosystems and increased local awareness of the need for forest ecosystem conservation. Compared to current forest zonation, we show that the availability of an economic development zone in adaptive forest zonation could potentially increase ecosystem benefits for local communities by about 40% through rattan and jelutong collection and agroforestry rubber and jelutong production. Although our results are specific for the Kapuas District, the methodology of adaptive forest zonation can be applied more generally. We recommend our methods be included in guidelines for zonation and management plans to help improve sustainable forest management practices of all forest management units in Indonesia.