Tambrauw Conservation and Customary Right Recognition Drafts Regulation Were Publicly Disccused

About 70 participants representing village leader, customary community groups, district government institution, sub-district chief, resorts police and army commander  joined one full day discussion of two draft of District Regulation about conservation and recognition and protection of customary rights. This two draft are part of the initiative regulation that the parliament of Tambrauw is prioritizing this year to support the political commitment of current Bupati about mainstreaming conservation as the development code and support the protection and recognition customary rights in Tambrauw. On his opening remarks the Bupati of Tambrauw pointed out the real development challenge in Tambrauw is how to put in balance the interests and targets on spatial development, regional and community economic growth, protection the rights of people and sustainable environment. This to regulation are part of his commitment to realize that. Gradually the government and all stakeholders are actualization their commitment on (1) non massive destructive investment such as mining and oilpalm and (2) develop the green investment pilots such as micro hydro for electricity and (3) supports the customary meeting in each sub-districts.

Opening Panel; Photo: Yunus Yumte 

Moderated by the legislative division head in the Tambrauw Parliament Mr. Petrus Yewen the discussion was went well and robust with active comments, inputs, correction and suggestion from the audiences. One keys messages on his speech was "Mainstreaming conservation to realize the objective of protection the forests covers and it natural function is by integrating 'frezzz" academic conservation mainstream into more dynamic and local specific to makes community have a legal certainty to be the main conservation action to their 1,2 million ha of forests and land". Four resources people were includes: Nonette Royo - the Executive Director of Samdhana Institute shared the core thinking of rights recognition and appreciation to the Bupati of Tambrauw, Yunus Yumte showed the indicative mapping results, Yance Arizona from Epistema Institute presented the substance of customary rights recognition regulation draft and Jhony Marwa from Papua State University shared the substance of conservation regulation draft. 

In summary there were 4 points comes up during the review and discussion: 

1. There are remaining a lot of missing substantial information and data about clans, tribes and family and how their autonomy of rights and decision making are works. Which of the customary structure are holding the basic authority in lands usage? Both facilitator and community representative agreed sharpening the academic script of the regulation that appropriately legally regulate the rights and its elements are the next steps after the discussion. 
2. Positioning the core intention on recognize, designates and governance among customary knowledge with the official government regulation are crucial to enable conservation and rights recognition pathways could works in the on going development platform be understood and implemented by all the actor  in Tambrauw. 
3. Reviewing and re-analyzing the substance of conservation regulation drafts that mentioning the legal binding and criminal sanction should be undertaken to make sure that the regulation would not banning community for their illegal activities to fulfill their livelihood needs. 
4. Concrete supports and sharing resources to supports the improvement draft to the finalization process are important to accelerating the public discussion until legal approval. 

Most of the participants were criticized the content of conservation from the perspective of low conflict and accommodate local development needs and livelihood of community. Make sure that Tambrauw with its vision and regulation are not taking the frozen step in interpreting and implementing conservation are crucial to connects the content of local rights, spatial plan and conservation needs. Keys recommendation as next steps were appeared such as: supports the gradual community meeting in each sub-district discussing the rights and development, continues supports to customary boundary mapping and gradual discussion on the substance of legal draft before legally approval are came up at the ending summary of the meeting.