Please note: due to the completion of the project, this website is now in archive status. Visit the new Blue Communities legacy website here for final outputs and any future updates.
16 June 2020
By Carya Maharja and Dr. Jito Sugardjito, The Centre for Sustainable Energy and Resources Management Universitas Nasional
 

From February to March 2020, the Indonesian team undertook a series of research fieldworks at the Taka Bonerate Kepulauan Selayar Biosphere Reserve. 

At that time, the Indonesian government had yet to issue any directives in regards to the CoVID-19 situation in Indonesia. The decision to do the fieldwork was taken after consulting local facilitators and government officials who advised the Indonesian team that their proposed plan of activities can still be performed safely in the biosphere reserve. Prior to the fieldwork, we also performed thorough health check-ups for all the fieldwork team members.

The fieldwork was performed consisting of stakeholder engagement for scenario building (Project 12), survey data collection (Project 6), providing assistance to local government for tourism development in Selayar and interviews with government officials and local residents (Project 2). The activities for Project 12 and Project 2 were completed. The data collection for Project 6 however had to be stopped, with 22 respondents sampled out of the approximately 300 targeted. All of these activities were performed prior to the government’s requirements for physical distancing.
 
In the middle of the fieldwork, the national authority started to publish data on CoVID-19 infection rates in Indonesia. The local government of the biosphere reserve responded by planning a lockdown measure that involved stopping flight routes to Selayar, limiting visitors and restricting the movement of the residents. We decided to halt the fieldwork after a series of email consultations and meetings, discussing the steps to be taken with the view of ensuring the safety of our research team and participants. In this kind of situation, it was unanimously agreed to prioritise safety with the research team returning to Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, on the 23rd of March 2020.

Two weeks after our return, the regional government of Jakarta implemented a partial lockdown measure, dubbed as PSBB (Large Scale Social Restriction), consisting of stopping activities deemed unessential, restricting the incoming movement of people to the city and encouraging the adoption of physical distancing measures for individuals living in the city. 
 
After the team returned to Jakarta, the team members were all instructed to self-isolate and work from home, with all coordination meetings to be done online. We diverted our attention to desk-based works, such as those related to Project 1 (collecting literatures that can be used as evidence for systematic review), Project 2 (preparing a research paper on tourism as alternative livelihood) and Project 6 (organising the data collected).

At the moment, we are still in the progress of conducting desk-based work, without any plans in the foreseeable future to resume fieldwork, especially with the government easing up the restriction measures alongside the ever increasing number of CoVID-19 cases in the country. Our approach for the moment is to wait and see, while keeping close communications with each project lead about what can be done for the time being. The priority at the moment is to minimise health risk and ensure the safety of our research team and participants.


Project 4 introduction
Images from fieldwork

6_RS_(1).jpg






 

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