Knowledge systems approaches for enhancing project impacts in complex settings: community fire management and peatland restoration in Indonesia.

Knowledge systems approaches for enhancing the impact of research are well established and tend to focus on the ways in which researchers can adapt their engagement with stakeholders to achieve a better "fit" between research and action agendas. Yet, these approaches are often based on explicit or implicit assumptions of a skilled and willing research team, and stable and well-defined stakeholders, who have consistent and reasonably well-defined needs. This paper discusses how knowledge systems approaches were developed and deployed in the first phase of the Gambut Kita (Our Peatland) project on community fire management and peatland restoration in Indonesia (2017-2021). This was a complex project with a large multi-disciplinary team situated across dynamic institutions in Indonesia and Australia, and addressing a politically controversial topic. To capture the diverse experience of the researchers, and to focus on the needs of stakeholders, we developed a sequence of whole-of-project approaches comprising the following: (i) stakeholder mapping exercises at three nested scales combining stakeholder analysis, knowledge systems mapping and impact pathways analysis; (ii) a project coordinating committee of high-level Indonesian policy-makers and policy-influencers; (iii) a stakeholder engagement forum and (iv) online policy dialogues. We demonstrate its effects through the case of developing an Indonesian Peat Fire Danger Rating System (Peat FDRS), as a core project deliverable. Over 4 years, these structured stakeholder engagement processes gave rise to a Peat FDRS Stakeholder Engagement Network (a multi-institutional working group), which is making significant progress in navigating the complexity inherent in realising an accurate Indonesian Peat FDRS.

Policies, Political-Economy, and Swidden in Southeast Asia.

For centuries swidden was an important farming practice found across the girth of Southeast Asia. Today, however, these systems are changing and sometimes disappearing at a pace never before experienced. In order to explain the demise or transitioning of swidden we need to understand the rapid and massive changes that have and are occurring in the political and economic environment in which these farmers operate. Swidden farming has always been characterized by change, but since the onset of modern independent nation states, governments and markets in Southeast Asia have transformed the terms of swiddeners' everyday lives to a degree that is significantly different from that ever experienced before. In this paper we identified six factors that have contributed to the demise or transformation of swidden systems, and support these arguments with examples from China (Xishuangbanna), Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. These trends include classifying swiddeners as ethnic minorities within nation-states, dividing the landscape into forest and permanent agriculture, expansion of forest departments and the rise of conservation, resettlement, privatization and commoditization of land and land-based production, and expansion of market infrastructure and the promotion of industrial agriculture. In addition we note a growing trend toward a transition from rural to urban livelihoods and expanding urban-labor markets.