Social Skills: Urgency in managing conservation areas in Indonesia

The Paradox of the Indonesian Conservation Area

Danau Bian Wildlife Reserve, Merauke,
South Papua. ©Thomas Oni Veriasa

Until now, conservation areas in Indonesia have faced various pressures, such as illegal actions (hunting and logging), forest arson, and access claims from parties. In general, problems occur because of history where the determination of conservation areas was carried out without consultation with the parties and did not consider the community’s existence in the area. As a
result, conservation areas lose biodiversity andecosystem services. Decisions to involve and empower communities around conservation areas frequently emerge as a response to these problems.

Managing conservation areas requires attention to the social dimension, namely human resources with qualified social skills. These social skills are needed to develop humanist conservation strategies and improve the management of conservation areas to ensure the sustainability of their resources. The conservation strategy should enhance harmonious relations between conservation area management agencies and the surrounding community. With a harmonious relationship, they can collaborate to achieve the sustainable function of conservation areas for future generations.

What and why Social Skills?
Social skills are interrelated with soft skills, a combination of personal and social skills. Personal skills are mainly related to cognitive skills, such as knowledge and thinking abilities. In contrast, social skills refer to relationships with other people. Vital social skills that must be possessed include personal and public communication, leadership capacity, teamwork, self-motivation, creativity, problem-solving, conflict resolution, decision-making, and managerial capacity.

Having good and qualified social skills allows you to communicate, relate to, and connect with others. It is essential for establishing friendships and navigating life with better satisfaction. In managing conservation areas, enhancing harmonious relations between the parties requires human resources to manage conservation areas with these skills.

Social Skills in better management of conservation areas
Referring to the evaluation results of the Sumatra Tiger Project-STP UNDP and the Ministry of Environment and Forestry (MoEF) on social skills training for national park staff in Sumatra show
Danau Bian Wildlife Reserve, Merauke, South Papua. ©Thomas Oni Veriasa that social skills are urgently needed by national park staff, especially forest rangers who are at the forefront of protecting the area.

The participants significantly increased their knowledge, understanding, and skills in social aspects such as communication strategy (initiative or motivation, communication, networking, and lobbying), business planning, collaborative management, and conflict resolution. This increase reflects the relatively new topic and rarely mastered conservation area staff. Sharing knowledge and experience between participants and experts helps solve their problems. The impact of this social skills training can be seen from the simplest of open communication between the staff of the conservation area and the community because of conflicting interests. More advanced achievements can be seen from the ability to network and negotiate with broader parties.

An important note from this evaluation is the suitability of educational background, work experience, and the experience of participating in similar training significantly influence an individual’s social skill enhancement. Of course, this is related to recruiting conservation areastaff, who should ideally also meet formal educational standards that align with the work to be
delegated.

Effective collaboration in managing Indonesia’s conservation areas can be accelerated by increasing the social skills of conservation area staff. As goals for biodiversity conservation,
area management should also have economic development and inclusion and social benefitsharing objectives.

Social approaches and community empowerment by conservation area managers are important to achieve positive conservation results. Staff should liaise with community members
in all management aspects, from planning and decision-making to implementation.

It is how to achieve conservation management success and ensure the livelihoods of surrounding communities and ecological sustainability.

Author: Thomas Oni Veriasa (Lembaga Alam Tropika Indonesia)
Original source: https://doi.org/10.7226/jtfm.27.te.9