Making a difference? Accounting for nongovernmental organizations in the Comanagement of Lore Lindu National Park, Indonesia

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are often found playing a critical role in facilitating aspects of protected area comanagement in the Global South. In Lore Lindu National Park, Indonesia, three NGOs facilitated comanagement between 1998 and 2006. This article assesses the extent to which the comanagement strategies and approaches of these NGOs were aligned with their policy aims. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) focused on biodiversity conservation, whereas Yayasan Tanah Merdeka (YTM) and Yayasan Jambata (YJ) supported indigenous rights to resource extraction. Their strategies appeared to be consistent with their aims. Both YTM and YJ concentrated their efforts in indigenous communities with fewer customary rights and larger proportions of their territories located inside the park. By contrast, TNC targeted a much larger number of communities with larger territories and forest areas, which were vulnerable to the spread of cocoa cultivation. The evidence for an alignment between aims and approaches is mixed. The NGOs’ approaches were influenced by local actors, particularly indigenous leaders and institutions, who used comanagement as a means of strengthening claims to customary territories. Communities obtained extraction rights, and many negotiated the right to exclude outsiders from their territories, which may have helped contain the spread of cocoa cultivation.