Developing an ecological corridor in the Katingan Kahayan landscape: A social science-based contribution to the project’s baseline diagnostic

This report is the result of a collective internship carried out in March 2019 by 12 students from AgroParisTech's advanced Master in "Forest, Nature and Society, International Management". AgroParisTech, also known as the Paris Institute of Technology for Life, Food and Environmental Science, is a higher education and research institute ("Grande Ecole"). The study we conducted is part of a partnership between AgroParisTech and the Indonesian branch of the international non-governmental organization WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature). The main objective of our work was to conduct a social science-based strategic diagnostic in support of WWF-Indonesia's project to develop an ecological corridor in the Katingan Kahayan landscape that sits between two national parks. The Katingan Kahayan Landscape is located in the province of Central Kalimantan, on the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo. In order to conduct this study, we allocated five weeks which included one week of preparatory work, three weeks of field work in the area of the prospective ecological corridor as well as workshops with WWF teams in Jakarta and Palangkaraya. The partnership comes at a time of recent change in WWF-Indonesia's organizational structure with the recent creation of a Conservation Science Unit (CSU) team, which goal is to address the gaps in knowledge and capacity in multiple disciplines to deliver conservation interventions and meet targets set in the 2016-2018 strategic plan (WWF-INDONESIA, 2018). The collaboration between WWF-Indonesia and AgroParisTech aims at developing scientific and pedagogic exchanges around the use of social science knowledge, methods and tools for conservation. This collaboration offers a great opportunity mutual enrichment between the Advanced Master's students and their supervisors, and WWF-Indonesia CSU as well as local landscape teams.