Peasant versus Government Perception and Use of the Environment : A Case Study of Banjarese Ecology and River Basin Development in South Kalimantan

The purpose of this paper is to carry out an ‘emic’ analysis not of the subjects of rural development but of its agents, the development planners, to illustrate how development plans fail, why they fail, and how this might be corrected. I take as a case study a single river basin in the Indonesian province of South Kalimantan. I begin with a brief description of the research site and of the hydroelectric project that has dominated development planning in the area for fifteen years. In succeeding sections, I analyze the impact of this project on the two major agroecosystems in the study area: forest-based swidden agriculture, and grassland-based permanent field farming. In each case I describe the peasant system, discuss government policy towards it, and then analyze the empirical basis or lack of basis for this policy. In the final section I attempt to explain why government policy has failed to meet so many of its stated objectives, and in particular why this policy has triggered such negative responses from both the physical and social environment