Promoting sustainable learning for cacao farmers

Concept of farmers' labs

Many provinces could be turned into major cacao producing areas through an intensification program. However, a sustainable agriculture concept should be adopted so that the intensification program would not harm the environment.

Sustainable practices are applied by some farmer groups in Indonesia. Yet many farmers still use the traditional approach to agriculture, which harms the environment and brings little benefit. Immediately after harvesting, they strive to sell their cacao beans to middlemen in order to get quick money, without considering the sustainable market for their product and enhancing their own income.

The main barrier to pro-environmental and sustainable practices is the personal attitude of the farmers. They do not put much effort into gaining knowledge about the negative impacts of their agricultural practices, which can result in a more vulnerable situation for their livelihood. The mind-set of the farmers makes them act and react based on the experiences of their forefathers, not based on knowledge and science. This value creates perceptions among the farmers that their forefathers who used old farming practices for a long time are more reliable than the knowledge that comes from external actors.

Why do we need social scientists in environmental research?

Risk governance framework

There are many environmental challenges which are threatening ecosystem and global biodiversity. Environmental issue is an interdisciplinary topic which has complex interaction between human with nature system. It has substantive uncertainty and strategic-institutional uncertainty among the stakeholders. Scientific research is required to manage risk of the uncertainties. Scientists have to collaborate in interdisciplinary research to solve wicked environmental problems. Interdisciplinary research generally refers to the process of coordination, collaboration, or investigation by researchers are combined into a public issue with sharing, invention, and knowledge mix between disciplines.

The social sciences research produces strong output that contributes to environmental studies. Social scientists are studying humans in some form or another, this output is required to produce various kinds of socially robust knowledge to address environmental issues. Consequently, it creates potential for knowledge transfer and scalability, praxis planning and policy-making bridges to implement solution for the problems. Scientific research on societal environmental issues requires a full collaborative role of social scientists. 

Fragmented climate governance in Indonesia

Fragmentation theory focuses on interaction among different institutions on the architecture of an institutional setting. Competition among different national entities resulting in fragmentation reflects the persistence of domestic power relations.

This situation is happening with climate governance in Indonesia, which includes different cases from various institutions and platforms. One such case is the biogas program as one of the climate change mitigation strategies in the Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Action. This climate governance involves NGOs, local and national governments, businesses and international development organizations. 

Dilemma of energy used for cooking in Indonesia

Indonesia still relies on imports to cope with a shortage of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), which is expected to worsen in the coming years because of surging demand. Indonesia’s consumption of LPG rose to 6.67 million metric tons last year, up 1.5 percent from 2015, according to the data from the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry. The domestic production of LPG, however, dropped to 2...

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