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Exploring
biological diversity, environment and local people's perspectives in forest landscapes.
Methods for a multidisciplinary landscape assessment.
The characteristics of forested landscapes are usually
critical to their inhabitants, but the significance of these relationships
is largely hidden from the outsider. The challenge is to understand what
aspects of the landscape local people care about, why they matter and how
much. The groundbreaking approach reported in this book was developed during
a study of seven communities in the forest-rich upper portion of the Malinau
watershed in East Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. A village-based survey
collected a wide range of qualitative and quantitative information about the
judgments, needs, culture, institutions and aspirations of the communities,
and examined general perceptions of the local landscape. A parallel field
survey assessed sample sites and recorded soil, vegetation and other site
characteristics through both 'scientific' and indigenous approaches. These
field methods emphasized landscape-scale characterization through high
replication of small data-rich samples, and assessments of community
territories based on these samples. Two hundred research plots were
established and about 2000 plant species recorded, representing a
'baseline', 'exploratory' or 'diagnostic' phase within a longer- term
research strategy. Decision makers require guidance on how to deal with the
needs of local communities and biodiversity in landscapes. This book for the
first time brings together a suite of effective methods to address this. The
techniques provide conventional biophysical descriptions of the landscape
and explicitly relate this information to local needs, preferences and value
systems. These methods can be used to guide future research and to make
recommendations on options about land use and policy. The methods described
in this report also provide a foundation for deeper dialogue with the forest
communities.
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