Conservation in Asmat

Facilitating Community-Driven Conservation and Strengthening Local Cultural Institutions in Asmat and the Greater Lorentz Lowlands, Papua Province, Indonesia

IPCA’s main project is located in the Asmat area within and around Lorentz National Park and World Heritage Site in southwestern Papua, Indonesia. 

IPCA has been working with Asmat leaders through their community organizations since 1999. IPCA works as a facilitator to community-owned and community-driven projects that strengthen local awareness of the importance of maintaining healthy forest, freshwater, and marine ecosystems, and provide tools and training to empower those communities to manage their biodiversity resources. Our program has had significant conservation results, including stopping a 150,000 hectare clear-cut logging operation and a destructive fishing operation. With a grant from Seacology, we provided outboard motors to local groups to better allow them to patrol and guard against unauthorized commercial fishing boats that attempt to enter Asmat seas and rivers without permission.

Living in one of the world’s most pristine tropical rainforest areas, and depending on natural resources for almost all their needs, the Asmat people retain their vibrant cultural traditions and strong identity. The woodcarving of the Asmat is renowned around the world, and the integrity of this art is tied to cultural cycles and festivals. Biodiversity and culture are closely linked in Asmat. Indeed, in many ways Asmat culture and local biodiversity are two sides of the same coin: if the forests are destroyed, traditional culture will lose its moorings. Conversely, if their society loses its traditional culture and systems for managing natural resources, the forests aren’t likely to remain intact. Adapting culture to new realities is important and inevitable, but the loss of key core values can have tragic consequences for people and the environment. Because of this, IPCA’s program is geared to achieving conservation in ways that also support elements of Asmat culture and society that the communities themselves identify as important.

IPCA’s approach in Asmat…

Our approach is to work closely with community leaders and representatives to understand their needs and aspirations, and to identify and support common shared goals. This dialogue is used to forge a common strategy and agenda that is built from the grassroots. IPCA is a facilitator for projects, not the implementer. Because priorities and activities are determined in consultation with the community representatives who also implement them, IPCA’s approach establishes strong self-reliance and community initiative.

IPCA works through the Asmat Traditional Council (Lembaga Musyawarah Adat Asmat, or LMAA) and Sub-Councils (Forum Adat Rumpun, or FAR; click here to see a PDF map of FAR areas , 336KB). Our goal is to empower local communities to actively and sustainably manage their natural resources at a time of rapid change, when these globally important ecosystems are increasingly threatened by destructive resource extraction. To carry out that vision, IPCA facilitates community-driven conservation efforts by providing tools and training to build local capacity, document and map natural, social, and cultural resources, resource-use monitoring, and environmental education.

New tools in Asmat…

IPCA is working with our local partners to carry out a participatory community mapping and training project that will document and strengthen Asmat traditional institutions and practices that support conservation. This approach, a locally-adapted form of CIFOR’s Multidisciplinary Landscape Assessment (MLA), will identify socially critical habitat (used for hunting, fishing, and other activities) and sacred forest areas that are deemed "off-limits" to development or external exploitation. MLA is also a tool to generate greater awareness among the Asmat regarding the importance of their natural resources, and to facilitate understanding by external stakeholders of the importance of biological resources to local people in terms of their livelihood and culture.

The Multidisciplinary Landscape Assessment is an innovative methodology that helps reveal why different aspects of the landscape and biodiversity matter to the local people, how much it matters and to whom. It also takes careful note of how both men and women, and people with different village status, value different aspects of the landscape. MLA uses participatory surveys, GPS measurements, biological assessments, and mapping to assess critical forest, freshwater, and marine habitat from biological, social, and cultural perspectives.

Click here for more information on our MLA approach in Asmat.

For additional information on Asmat, also see our external links.

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