9404722 HART-MAYER International attention has focused on the crisis of deforestation in Southeast Asia, and highlighted efforts to conserve ancient rain forests in the wake of commercial logging, new settlements, and agricultural land clearing along the region's forest frontiers. The Indonesian state and timber companies are responding to calls for a more sustainable forest use by superimposing timber plantations on landscapes that indigenous communities have long managed according to distinctive agroforestry traditions. The Indonesian government asserts that timber plantations protect ecological values by reducing pressure to log natural forests, generate rural development through plantation employment, and promote urban development around wood processing facilities. Environmentalists counter that timber plantations destroy the biological diversity of native ecosystems and displace, emiserate, and victimize both local communities and migrants brought in for plantation work. This study will investigate the complex transformations taking place in the vicinity of expanding plantations, their effects on local populations' own uses of land and forest resources, and the changing ecological conditions of the land and forests themselves. The research will involve intensive interviews with villagers, community leaders, business people, and other affected individuals located around and within an Indonesian timber plantation. A survey of past and present land uses will also be conducted and detailed maps will be constructed in the field using a hand-held global positioning system (GPS) to identify locations accurately. The GPS will also be used to construct vegetation and land use transects to describe village agroforestry strategies. This research will contribute to both theoretical and practical understandings of the tension between commercial interests, state policy, and indigenous populations over the preservation of biological sensitive regions. It wi ll add to our theoretical understanding of political ecology, social institutions, and frontier development. It will further provide valuable insights into the specific situation in Indonesia, one of the world's most important tropical forest regions. As a doctoral dissertation research improvement award, this project will also provide strong support to enable a promising student to establish an independent research career.
