Towards sustainable coexistence: People and wild mammals in Baluran National Park, Indonesia

The paper offers a critical discussion of resource use in a national park, Baluran, in Indonesia. In general, an increasing accept of the need for livelihood security, also for people living in or near natural conservation areas, are challenging traditional systems of national park governance. Finding ways to balance the needs of local populations against the necessity to secure biodiversity and environmental sustainability becomes important, and the main question in our research is how to accommodate an existing society in Baluran without a further negative impact on endangered mammals. Based on common pool resource management and co-management theories and thorough empirical investigations among the population living in Baluran, we conclude that alternative solutions exist for combining the interests of livelihood and conservation, but that resolute restrictions must be set by central government authorities, and that local institutions and livelihood practices must be developed based on experiences gained in the region through the last decades. Our findings may have relevance for solving similar problems of coexistence in other conservation areas.