Since President Soeharto stepped down, decentralization has offered a better governance system for this nation of more than 220 million people of varied ethnic groups spread over more than 15,000 islands. Despite its potential, implementation of decentralization has been riddled with unexpected problems. Decentralization turned out to have created problems, ranging from conflicts among people who refused regional fragmentation, conflicts between newly-created districts and the original, larger district from which they were created, and between local and central government.

Decisions on land use in Vietnam are often only based on biophysical and economical assessments, with little consideration for the local people’s opinions or perspectives. This can lead to conflicts over natural resources management, unsustainable land use and decisions that are unfair to local people. In the landscape surrounding Khe Tran, a village in Central Vietnam lives a Pahy minority group. The driving force in this area has been different land use policies, resulting mainly from a government ‘top down’ approach, and the consequent changes in local forest status.

CIFOR facilitated 27 communities in the Upper Malinau watershed to develop agreements about their village boundaries and map them through participatory methods. Decentralization reforms created new values of forest resources and uncertainties that increased conflict over local resources. The authors report on the nature of these conflicts, the stability of agreements and the factors affecting how agreements were reached.

The desire for research to be policy relevant has caused many social science studies to have “engineering” dimensions. With respect to the engineering of property rights, economic approaches indicate that we require knowledge regarding the makeup of current property rights structures, how changes to current structures affect the use and management of natural resources, and how property rights have evolved.

This book focuses primarily on changes that have taken place in the Malinau area in East Kalimantan in recent years. The Punan Malinau, who inhabit the area, are former nomads who subsist on a wide range of forest-oriented activities, including swidden agriculture, hunting and the collection of and trade in forest products. During the past ten years, the arrival of a growing number of powerful outsiders, including NGO's, timber and mining companies, has contributed to increasing competition for land and for various new sources of income.

This article examines community-driven multiple use water services (MUS) as pioneered by the Rural Village Water Resources Management Project (RVWRMP) in the Far and Mid-Western development regions of Nepal. These regions are characterised by poverty, remoteness, rugged terrain, food insecurity, water scarcity, and post-conflict legacy. Water provision for domestic and productive uses provides opportunities to address poverty and livelihoods in environments with highly decentralised governance. This study explores the first-hand lessons learned in the RVWRMP in Nepal since 2006.

This case study report examines relevant factors influencing village life and household well-being since decentralization has been practiced in local government of Kutai in Indonesia. The principal aim is to understand the impacts of these processes and to compare local government’s policies on Kutai and Dayak Benuaq villages. This report looks on changes that had taken place in Jambuq and Jerang Melayu villages since the new district of Kutai Barat was established in 1999.

This study examines the socioeconomic features that underpin the expansion of groundwater-dependent irrigation in Northern State, Sudan. Groundwater development in the region serves as an economic lifeline given the poor Nile-based irrigation infrastructure and future changes in Nile hydrology. Groundwater-dependent irrigation is found to be expanding in previously uncultivated regions increasingly distant from the Nile.

The report describes the impacts of forestry decentralization on district finance, local communities and spatial planning, drawing on an 18-month research project in Bulungan District in East Kalimantan Province. It describes forestry management policies following the implementation of regional autonomy, and their impacts on district revenue and local livelihoods. The authors analyze district spatial planning, forest land use and community control over forest lands.