Peasant versus Government Perception and Use of the Environment: A Case-study of Banjarese Ecology and River Basin Development in South Kalimantan

Abstract

I began this paper with a critique of current analyses of development problems, which I suggested were not “sociological” enough. I proposed to illustrate this by analyzing the recent development history of the Riam Kanan valley in South Kalimantan. Following a brief description of the valley, its inhabitants, and the hydroelectric project that has become the dominant factor in its development planning, the two major agroecosystems of the Riam Kanan valley were discussed in some detail: forest-based swidden agriculture, and grassland-based permanent field farming. Each system was found to be the object of both negative perceptions and prescriptive policies on the part of local government. I concluded, however, that there is little or no empirical basis for these perceptions and policies and that this explains the disruption and conflict to which development planning in the valley has led. The underlying problem is that government planners have automatically tended to equate their values with those of development, and the values of development with those of the environment—whereas in fact the values and interest of each of these are quite different. This should be recognized as a major problem in contemporary development, and as one with which the common paradigm of “top-down/bottom-up” cannot and does not deal. When a more sociological approach enables us to distinguish between disguised conflicts of interest and genuine development problems, the latter are found to be far less intractable than imagined. The conflicts of interest may still prove to be intractable, but better that they be seen as such, as inherent constraints on government policy, than as inherent problems of peasant ecology and economy.