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Pangandaran is a coastal area with a population of 38,032 (2007). Although administratively and geographically rural, as a tourism area having been developed since the 1920s, the social structure of Pangandaran community is a heterogeneous melting pot of ethnicities, and employment. The majority of the population is Sundanese (42.8%) and Javanese (44.7%). Both cultures exist with own geographic place of origin and to some extent influences each other. By employment, the population mostly works in agriculture; either as farmers with their own land (45.5%) or as farm labours (13.2%). Only in the community of Pangandaran, is the majority fisherman (52.6%). There is a significant proportion of population with non-agriculture based employment, i.e. in self-employed and service (total of 15.6%); and even larger in the villages where tourism highly flourishes (Pangandaran village and Pananjung village). Although reliable data on the fluctuation of immigrants does not exist, but observation during two years of the project suggests

that the immigrant population mostly resides in the villages where tourism highly flourishes and there is an incredible influx of immigrants during the high season. The immigrant population mostly works in tourism related business, for example as shop owners, restaurant owners, hotel managers or keepers, servants, vendors, etc.

Currently, there is no community leader with enough influence on both the local population and on the immigrant population. The immigrants have no roots in the locality; therefore it is more difficult to get their awareness for the sustainability of the area; while the local population does not have the agility to communicate with them – not even through the village leaders. Adding to this, the spontaneous mass tourism development has created very competitive business atmosphere, thus leading the community to be potentially fragmented. In order to strengthen positions and bargaining power in the development of the area, the community tends

Source: Village Potency 2007; BKSDA, 2007

No ActivitiesVillage

TOTALBabakan Pangandaran Pananjung Wonoharjo Cikembulan

A. Official employee 173 5.3% 226 7.2% 311 17.5% 486 11.8% 84 3.4% 1,280 8.6%

B. Self-Employed 500 15.2% 913 29.0% 475 26.7% 261 6.3% 0 0.0% 2,149 14.5%

C. Farmer 2,150 65.3% 105 3.3% 926 52.1% 1,531 37.1% 2,041 82.3% 6,753 45.5%

D. Contractor 150 4.6% 38 1.2% 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 188 1.3%

E. Farm labour 165 5.0% 206 6.6% 0 0.0% 1,431 34.6% 158 6.4% 1,960 13.2%

F. Retired 80 2.4% 0 0.0% 67 3.8% 184 4.5% 28 1.1% 359 2.4%

G. Fishermen 75 2.3% 1,656 52.7% 0 0.0% 237 5.7% 13 0.5% 1,981 13.4%

H. Services 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 0 0.0% 156 6.3% 156 1.1%

Total 3,293 3,144 1,779 4,130 2,480 14,826

Engaging Local Communities In Linking Tourism and Biodiversity Conservation in Pangandaran

Table 1. Population by Employment

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have attracted many people to get involved only for personal or group benefit. Many recovery projects had successfully distributed aid, but failed to develop community involvement.

Given the context of Pangandaran, it is particularly challenging to involve the community. First is to communicate with various and diverse stakeholders with competing interests. Second is to engage people to get involved for common consensus towards these issues. It is inevitable that people have their own agendas, yet such agendas should not obstruct public interest. Initially, Local Working Group (LWG) had been established to ensure the participatory approach in tourism planning process, with the main task to elaborate the Tourism Management Plan together with technical experts and disseminate the whole process to the wider community. LWG consist of 15 people from 15 community groups. They include hotel associations, guide associations, teacher associations, lifeguards, community radio, fisherman groups, forestry, NGOs, youth and art groups. In the beginning, the situation of LWG illustrates how the relation among the community groups in Pangandaran is. Each member has different capacity, different interest, and there is a lack of communication. These conditions combined with a lack of capacity for sustainable tourism and organization management of the members, create big challenges in how to make LWG work and fulfil their tasks. Considering this situation INDECON conducted a lot of meetings, trainings and decided to put a local facilitator to help LWG in their work, assist problem solving, develop programs and facilitate communication among them or with the wider community. The occurrence of local facilitators also made it less complicated to monitor and evaluate work progress.

Principle for Community Involvement in PangandaranReferring to the process, we believe that the success of community involvement to engage communities to link tourism and biodiversity conservation in Pangandaran relies much on how we maintain communication with the community. The process

should be based on some principles, as discussed below.

VarietyCommunity groups have different interests, power to influence, and possibility to be affected. Each communication has different objectives: some information only needs to be shared with the community, but many require feedback from the community to be followed up. In this process, INDECON and LWG learnt that it is necessary to develop various layers of communication for the most influential groups, directly affected groups, and the general community. Each needs different means and technique of communication. Two groups might need two different newsletters; because the different way they read the information. LWG – in this case – identified which group that can simply receive newsletter and which group needs to be revisited after reading the newsletter. These intricate processes have been were underestimated initially by the project. Nevertheless, it is surely a priceless experience for community involvement process in Indonesia.

ContinuityLocal community in Pangandaran has long been ignored and neglected in the development process, so that people are not accustomed to look for, receive, and digest information. They are accustomed to give feedback in order to participate in the development process. Most community groups and individuals need to be revisited continuously after receiving information.

FlexibilityIt is essential to keep certain flexibility for the type, number, frequency, budget, and focus of the communication. INDECON and LWG learnt that people adapt and react to the information they received; often differently than assumed beforehand. Many community groups changed their position in the power structure analysis once they received the initial information. The community involvement plan should be flexible enough to be adjusted to this situation along the project implementation.

to group itself based on one thing people have in common: interest in their economic benefit. Over the course of the project, there have been more than 60 community groups identified and the number keeps growing. However, there are many conflicts of interest flavoured by jealousy, intrigue, and wild assumptions amongst these groups, especially between those of same profession. Clear information to the wider community (public) is often a luxury. Thus, the situation has discouraged a transparent and accountable process for any planning or development in the area.

Challenge for Community Involvement in PangandaranAs described above, Pangandaran has another complexity when it comes to a participatory planning approach. The government initiatives to improve tourism development and biodiversity conservation

are far too limited to handle all the problems. Local government has too little resources and too rigid bureaucracy to be able to adapt to the complex and dynamic community in Pangandaran. The current community initiatives are conducted by, and affect only certain groups of people. Thus, even if they are good, they are too small in scale, fragmented, and lack a sustainability scheme. Tourism and biodiversity conservation affect all populations, all kinds of employment, create both short and long term impacts, and requires careful planning. It is clear that in order to achieve wider, successful, and more sustainable results it is necessary to involve the local community.

After the tsunami in 2006, Pangandaran was flooded by recovery projects both from donors, government, and private sectors. All carried the same theme: community involvement. The influx and financial incentives provided by these projects

Image 1. Vast Array of Employment : Food Seller, Fish Seller, Fisher(wo)man, Becak Driver, Bike Rental, Cloth Vendor, Souvenir Vendor, Shop Owner, Government Employee, Dancer, Restaurant Owner, Servant, and Public Toilet Rental

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FilmThe first film is titled “Ngarumat Pangandaran: Not Only the Beach and the Sun”. It shows the actual tourism attractions and problems in Pangandaran – as an awareness raising media for local community. The film was shown to the public at the “Art Festival” in August 2008, at Stakeholder Meetings, and to almost all audiences involved in the project. The second film shows the process to develop the Tourism Management Plan. It is mainly used to promote the participatory process to other interested parties. Following the Tourism Management Plan, the third film was produced to show Pangandaran on the move towards more responsible tourism. Copies of all films are attached in the project folder.

Art and Traditional Food FestivalThe Food Festival is the initiative of LWG and local youth group in the Pangandaran community. It was held to commemorate the Indonesia Independence Day in August 2008. The festival provides arrays of traditional food prepared for women groups for competition. The cooking and serving activities became an attraction for tourists and local community members, who can taste the food after the winner selection. The festival included traditional art performances in the evening. Considered to be a success story, the festival was held for the second time in 2009 by inviting more participants and a private sponsor.

IntegrationCommunicating with and engaging the community takes a lot of effort and time. It should also be done in a focused and continuous way. Therefore, although implemented as an individual component, it should be integrated into a larger development scheme. Each mean has its own objective but also contributes to the larger objective of the development.

Communicating With the Community in PangandaranThe implementation of Community Involvement Plan (please refer to the CIP Report) is not planned or allocated with specific designated officers and time frames. Few means are included in the general work plan of the project. Yet, recognizing the complexity of the community in Pangandaran, INDECON realized that more efforts were needed to achieve the objective and to ensure the sustainability of the initiative itself for Pangandaran. More means indicated in the CIP were then implemented with some revision as suggested by LWG accordingly to the situation, as described below.

All communication and campaign in the project is named “Ngarumat Pangandaran”

Radio Program Together with a local community radio named “Radio Komunitas”, a radio program was developed and broadcasted two times a week for one year. The program was named OSELIP, which discussed various topics on tourism, biodiversity conservation, and any other local issues. In the second year, the partnership

was expanded with commercial radios. A live and interactive program has been broadcasted weekly at 106.64FM Radio RIS and is re-broadcasted at the other 3 radio stations in the same week. OSELIP now also incorporates a Quiz Program on tourism and biodiversity issues.

NewsletterA newsletter has been issued periodically, although not yet regularly to disseminate information to tourists and local stakeholders. Besides contributions by technical experts, LWG members were encouraged to submit articles and have shown good progress ever since. The newsletter is distributed to

community members, at local events, at planning workshops, at information boards, etc. The main targets are local communities, although it is also used to provide information about Pangandaran to other parties. It was quite successful in obtaining attention, considering the many comments and input received.

Poster and BannerPosters aimed to raise public awareness of the tourism development and biodiversity conservation. They were clustered into 4 themes: (i) natural resources, (ii) cultural resources, (iii) participatory planning, and (iv) need for conservation. These posters have been used at the stakeholder meetings, at the information centre in NRP, and at the project secretariat. Banners are used to disseminate specific information or events.

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Meetings / Workshops / Planning Days / Focus Group DiscussionsAfter several months of communication process, participants of our workshops have expanded nearly five times in number and showed great interests to join. Different focus group discussions were also held with target community groups to discuss particular issues.

Interactive GamesInteractive games have successfully transformed the usual boring planning day workshop into an activity to be enjoyed. Interactive games aim to bridge communication gaps due to different educational background, social level, employment rank, ethnicity, or gender. Games can also depict conflicts without directly putting pressure on individuals. The games are under various themes, for example: partnership, problem solving, strategy development, and visioning.

Logo CompetitionA participatory logo competition was organized in order to increase community involvement in image creation and the branding process of sustainable tourism products and the Pangandaran destination. The competition was held in two tiers: first, a board of jury selected three nominees out of all submissions; second, the community voted for their logo out of the three nominees. The organization of the competition itself is new and a learn-by-doing process for the community of Pangandaran.

HomepageThe project homepage www.ngarumatpangandaran.org provides information about the project and tourism activities in Pangandaran. Once oriented as the project’s website, the homepage is under restructuring to serve as promotion media for Pangandaran.

Individual ConsultationIndividual consultation provides very powerful ways of direct communication; especially to influence community figures. These prominent figures, such as head of villages, head of Presidium Committee of Pangandaran regency, head of Hotel Association, head of Guide Association; are expected to influence the other members of these community groups.

Information Board Two information boards are provided in each village of the project area. The project provides non-commercial information about project activities, as well as related issues on tourism, conservation, and culture. Local villages and local governments are also invited to use the media for public purposes. To be added: map of information boards

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Future ChallengeThe next question for engaging the community would be whose responsibility it is to communicate with the community and whether such function will end at some point in time. It is recommended to incrementally share this responsibility as much as possible with community initiated groups (LWG) because giving this role to external parties will not be sustainable. However, it is essential to ensure successful knowledge transfer between INDECON and LWG. This process is not impossible but requires constant facilitation, gradual content development, and many exercises.

In the context of a spontaneous mass tourism destination like Pangandaran, it is recommended to develop an information network mechanism. A team, which consists of several community members, guided by a public communication facilitator, will function as the main campaign group. The team is responsible for identifying persons from each community groups as core team or focal points, preparing the materials, preparing the means of communication, distributing the materials, training the core team, evaluating, and revising continuously.

As this function will not end and will only be upgraded; the true challenge is of course how to encourage LWG to gradually take over the role and function of INDECON to disseminate information, to communicate with the community, and to engage the wider community in linking tourism and biodiversity conservation.