Village level analyses of poverty and land use/cover in West Aceh

How people use land is always an integral question to ask in order to understand rural livelihoods, even though the degree of importance of land based income may vary from place to place and from households to households. Land uses change from time to time as a response to opportunity and constraints arisen both by internal and external triggers. Choices of land uses combined with skills, natural hazard, market trend, infrastructure and policy result in livelihoods outcome such as income, well-being and sustainability, and environmental services such as watershed protection, biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration. The coastal area of West Aceh was struck badly by the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004. The direct impact of the wave has been severe, especially livelihood wise. The direct impact on the environmental services was mostly of short term nature, however there are evidences of permanent damages in tree crops and changes in micro landscape. The second wave of change has been taking place, which most likely will lead to a much longer term impact. Beyond the immediate pasca-tsunami aids for fast recovery that external agents bring into the area, the long term changes in the five-capital landscape are inevitable. West Aceh, with its rich mineral resources and vast forested areas is an attractive area for the investors to bring in financial capital for natural resource extraction. Non-profit organizations target on developing human and social capitals, while the government works on the physical capitals. These together will inevitably increase pressure on natural capital with no guarantee that sustainable livelihoods of the local people will be improved in the long run. There is no short of evidences in different places in Indonesia and other countries where investors displace local communities from their resources. Unlike in Java and other places where the actual land use/cover reflect very little of land use plan developed by the government years ago, mostly based on biophysical characteristics, in West Aceh forest zone is still mostly covered by forest. Flat coastal zones are mostly allocated for non-forest uses and further along to the hinterland, as topography becomes rougher, land use allocation becomes stricter from forest that can be converted to other uses to limited production forest up to protected forest. These areas are at present still largely covered by forest. However, as tsunami incident induces less gradual changes, the government needs to anticipate some potential directions of change in order to develop effective and efficient policies in maintaining environmental services while improving people’s livelihoods. This study aims to help key decision makers by providing analysis on the following areas: long and short term patterns of land use/cover changes pre and post tsunami, the relationships between poverty and land use/cover, health and education facilities with regards to road after tsunami. This bulletin will offer some preliminary results and discussions of our study followed by some recommendations.

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