Land Use Change and Local Communities Perception on Biodiversity

Variety of animals and plants that called BIODIVERSITY, play important role in ecosystem function and livelihood sustainability. Biodiversity become source of basic material for food, health, construction (light and heavy), fuel and fiber. Biodiversity product like timber, resin, fruits and honey become important source of income to community as timber and non timber forest product (NTFP). On the other hand, biodiversity has ecosystem services such as genetic resources, spiritual and religious value, aesthetic value, provision of habitat, nutrient cycling, water cycling, climate regulation, pollinators, seed dispersal, and any other services. Rapid and unprecedented land use changes have reduced significantly local and global biodiversity measures such as species number, relative abundance and compositions.Some indigenous species lost due to land use change and some introduced species replace it. Changing biodiversity affects ecosystem function and livelihood sustainability at the same time. While the effect on ecosystem function is mostly one way, the effect on livelihoods are confounding to the facts thatland use changes are driven and have consequences on livelihoods. Economic reason, of course, is main factor of land use change. Economic orientation of community is strongly influenced by infrastructure development condition in certain area, for example access to market. Forum group discussion in three different road access of villages conducted in Bungo District, Jambi, Sumatra to know: local perception of biodiversity function and in what land cover biodiversity and it function still found.

---

• View source