Sustainable land allocation : GIS-based decision support for industrial forest plantation development in Indonesia

A land allocation model for sustainable industrial forest plantation (IFP) project establishment is developed in this research. The model provides the foundation for a spatial decision support system (DSS) that deals with analytical and practical problem solving in IFP land allocation in Indonesia. The model consists of three sub-models: social acceptability, economic viability and ecological soundness. To implement the model, GIS-based procedures were established and data from the case study area, Pulau Laut, South Kalimantan, Indonesia, were used. The development of the model aims to support decisions on land allocation for IFP project areas. IFP development has experienced many problems. Although IFP implementors are empowered by a formal decree from the Government to establish the IFP projects, in reality they are faced with problems such as claims from local people, conflicting uses with other sectors, and other factors. Problems in land allocation decision making have been perceived to be fundamentally the problem of the IFP implementor. To avoid failure of the IFP project, the implementor should find areas for his/her IFP project that give high profits within the constraints of ecological and social values. The concept of sustainability is widely discussed in this thesis and used as the guide for developing the IFP land allocation model. The measure of sustainability is in the range of manageable and simple variables and focuses on considered factors, i.e. social, economic and ecological. The Mintzberg et al. model of decision making phases is used as a tool to analyze the decision making process in IFP land allocation. Allocation of forest land for IFP project development is understood as finding an accommodation between the objectives of various stakeholder groups. The identified IFP stakeholders that should participate in the land allocation decision making are: the local people, the IFP company and the Government. The allocated land for IFP development is considered as a compromise between the determinants of economic viability, ecological soundness and social acceptability. From the IFP implementor's point of view, the problem can be described as how to render the implementor's objectives compatible with those of other stakeholders. This compatibility should satisfy and not violate the stakeholders' objectives. To implement the conceptual model of land allocation, three scenarios were developed, i.e. moderate, optimistic and pessimistic. These scenarios differ in terms of the use of growth factors, i.e. population, GDP and agricultural productivity. The implementation of the model starts with simulating allocation of land according to the objective of the social acceptability sub-model, i.e. projection of agricultural expansion. The information on the projected agricultural areas is used to run the economic viability and the ecological soundness sub-models. The sub-model of economic viability allocates the land for the new IFP project that gives maximal financial benefit to the company. The sub-model of ecological soundness explains the necessity of allocating the land for the benefit of the environment of the area. The identification of conflict areas and the resolution of the conflict are achieved through the integration of the sub-models. In the integration, a policy formulation for consensus building is established, to indicate land use priority when allocating the land for a certain use. The IFP manager can use the information on conflict areas and their conflict resolution as the platform for discussion with other IFP stakeholders in order to reach consensus on preferred and accepted land use planning. The IFP manager may run several iterative processes during the discussion to modify his/her proposal for IFP land allocation. The approaches used in the IFP land allocation model in this research may also be applied for supporting other land use planning, e.g. land use planning at provincial level. The information on projected agricultural expansion, projected area of other land uses, and protected area will help the provincial authorities to structure the problems encountered in land use planning. This research consists of building the model and testing it on field data. A next necessary step is to have the stakeholders actually work with the model in the case study area and other areas.