Human conflict can be classified in several ways: according to the nature of participants/disputants and according to the issues. Participants/disputants/parties/ stakeholders may be individuals, communities, political groups, nation states, or blocks/alliances. The issues may be rights or privileges, control over resources, political power, or, in extreme cases, conflict arises from the nature of social systems. The means may range from persuasive arguments to physical threat. Conflict over natural resources such land, water/ watershed, and forest is ubiquitous. Forests are particularly prone to conflict, as the stakeholders of environmental and social functions are not those who benefit from the financial gains of conversion or management for economic gains. In many cases, these differences between stakeholder interests generate dysfunctional conflicts. Conflict should be managed: from dysfunctional to functional; from destructive to constructive, and from anarchy to persuasive systems. In the context of natural resources conflict management, an integrated analysis is needed in order to offer a broad range of resource use alternatives, to provide benefits to conflicting parties in a manner that achieves resolutions. This paper introduces an approach on how to manage conflict over natural resource. Conceptually, the approach is named Negotiation Support System (NSS). The NSS approach was tested and implemented since 2000 in the Sumberjaya watershed, Lampung Province. How the NSS approach could bring advantages to parties and it is implemented is elaborated in this paper.
Publication year
2004
Authors
Pasya, G.; Fay, C.; van Noordwijk, M.
Language
Indonesian
Keywords
landscape, watershed management, natural resource management
Geographic
Indonesia
