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Issue 4, March 12, 2003
2002 Bunaken Arrivals by Country
Taiwan, Italy and UK top the charts for 2002 International Arrivals to Bunaken National Park

Data just released by the Bunaken National Park Management Board (DPTNB) show that Taiwan, Italy and the United Kingdom are the top three countries of origin for international visitors to Bunaken during 2002, with 1431, 1075, and 793 guests, respectively. In total, 8262 visitors from 50 countries purchased international 1-year entrance tags or 1-day entrance tickets - including 250 Indonesian divers who chose to pay the higher international fee (Indonesian nationals are normally granted a special discounted rate to encourage local support for marine conservation).

In addition to the abovementioned countries, Holland, Germany, Japan, Singapore, France and the United States each sent over 300 guests to Bunaken in 2002.

It is interesting to note that while the United Kingdom was third in terms of overall visitor numbers, total fee receipts were highest for UK visitors (Rp 108,850,000 or ~US$12,094). This discrepancy is explained by the high percentage (87%) of UK divers who purchased 1 year tags. While total numbers of Taiwanese and Italian visitors were higher, the majority of these visitors were day-trippers who purchased the cheaper single-day entrance tickets.

The most notable changes from 2001 entrance fee data are the new predominance of the Taiwanese and the significant drop in American visitors. Last year the top three countries were (in order) the UK, USA, and Italy. The changes can be attributed to the introduction of direct international flights to Manado from Taiwan in early 2002 and the American reluctance to travel internationally in the wake of the 11 September 2001 World Trade Center tragedy.

Fortunately, overall visitor arrivals to Bunaken have not declined over the past year of global terrorism activity as drastically as many other tropical diving destinations. This is likely due to a combination of several factors, including Bunaken's growing reputation amongst local Asian divers, the highly commendable actions of the North Sulawesi government to prioritize and maintain religious and ethnic harmony despite the problems in the region, and the strong collaboration of the North Sulawesi Watersports Association (NSWA) and their partners in personalized marketing and maintaining a positive profile for Bunaken internationally. Notably, the magazine Asian Diver has continued to support NSWA and Bunaken management through a commitment to feature articles and news briefs on the park at every opportunity, while the airline SilkAir has worked closely with the NSWA to develop special discounted dive packages to Bunaken and market them worldwide. All of these efforts have contributed to keep tourism alive in Bunaken National Park - which is critical to the continued management and conservation of Bunaken's world-class reefs.

Mark V. Erdmann
Marine Protected Areas Advisor
NRM/EPIQ SULUT
erdmann@nrm.or.id
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Issue 3, February 27, 2003
Bunaken National Park Doubles Yearly Entrance Fee Receipts for 2002
The Bunaken National Park Management Board (DPTNB) recently released its final figures from the 2002 park entrance fee system, indicating total yearly receipts of Rp 983,750,500 (~US$109,305.61). These revenues were generated from a total of 25,697 paying guests, composed of approximately 2/3 local Indonesian guests and 1/3 international visitors. Of the 17,435 Indonesian guests, most were adult guests (14,525), while 2,910 students also were recorded. By contrast, a total of 8262 international guests were recorded from 44 countries. Most of these international guests (5,294) purchased one-year waterproof entrance tags, while an additional 2,968 visitors purchased single-day entrance tickets.

The receipts of Rp 983,750,500 more than double the revenues from the 2001 entrance fee system, when a total of Rp 418,187,500 was collected. This increase in revenues is due to a combination of increased visitation to the park, improved enforcement and compliance with the entrance fee system, and the rate increase which doubled the entrance fee for international guests from Rp 75,000 to Rp 150,000 per visitor per year as of 1 January 2002. The increase in recorded visitation rates from 15,055 guests in 2001 to 25,697 guests in 2002 is largely explained by the fact that visitor numbers for 2001 were only recorded beginning in mid-March 2001, while the 2002 figures represent a full calendar year of data. Moreover, better socialization of the entrance fee system and a patrol boat dedicated to entrance fee checks certainly increased overall compliance with the system, resulting in a higher reported rate of visitation. Nonetheless, the 70% increase in recorded visitors is an important trend to watch as North Sulawesi strives to balance development and conservation in a sustainable manner. The fact that both 2001 and 2002 visitation rates were affected negatively by major global terrorism events late in the year (11 September 2001 World Trade Center tragedy and 12 October 2002 Bali bombings) suggests that yearly park visitation in a normal year might top 30,000 visitors.

It is interesting to note that the ratio of 32% international to 68% local guests remained virtually unchanged from 2001 to 2002. Last year (the first in which visitor data was collected), the DPTNB was surprised to learn of this predominance of local guests, and has attempted to revise its budget and workplan to accommodate the differing demands of local beach-going guests from their foreign diver counterparts. Specific examples of this include a focus on beach cleanups and the installation of picnic benches and public toilets on Liang Beach in 2002. In 2003, these improvements will continue with the planned development of a visitors center, a rehabilitated landing dock for Liang Beach, and continued beach cleanups. A long-term strategy of the DPTNB is to eventually aim to capture higher revenues from local guests, who despite their numerical predominance, account for only 4% of overall entrance fee revenues due to the much lower fees charged for locals (only Rp 2,500 per visit).

The 2002 DPTNB financial report also details Rp 1,105,277,988 (~US$122,808) in expenditures, including the combined 20% allocation of total entrance fee receipts to national, provincial, city and district governments. The biggest expenditure categories recorded for 2002 include Rp 451,414,325 for the joint villager/ ranger/ police patrol system (including fuel costs, salaries and bonuses, and equipment) and Rp 349,958,987 for village programs and development projects (including the village radio system, beach cleanups, public toilet and water facilities, paved footpaths, and mangrove rehabilitation programs). These expenditures represent 41% and 32% of the total realized budget, respectively.

It should be noted that while the financial report includes a grant to the DPTNB of Rp 79,063,134 from WWF Wallacea (for patrol costs), the report does not include support from the NRM program for operational costs, staff salaries, and limited equipment procurement (totaling Rp 380,195,000 of direct support and approximately Rp 500,000,000 of in-kind support). The DPTNB is currently revising its accounting system in order that all receipts and expenses can be tracked in a fully transparent and accountable manner in one summary spreadsheet that is available publicly, updated monthly and published on its website. Additionally, the DPTNB's finances are scheduled for public audit in March 2003, with the results to be released soon thereafter.

Mark V. Erdmann
Marine Protected Areas Advisor
NRM/EPIQ SULUT
erdmann@nrm.or.id
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Issue 3, February 27, 2003
Multiple-use Zoning in Marine Protected Areas: Bunaken National Park case study (Indonesia)
Background on Park Establishment
Bunaken National Park (BNP) in North Sulawesi, Indonesia was formally established as a marine national park in October, 1991, and has since become one of Indonesia's most well-known marine ecotourism destinations. The park encompasses 89,056 hectares of land and sea area, divided into a southern mainland section (the Arakan-Wowontulap coast, set aside primarily for its old-growth mangrove forests and dugong population) and a northern island section (with five islands famous for their drop-off fringing coral reefs). Management authority for the park is vested in the Bunaken National Park Office (BTNB), which is controlled by the national-level Department of Nature Conservation (PHKA).

Today, BNP supports almost 30,000 villagers living in 22 villages within the parks borders, as well as an active marine tourism industry with over 20 dive operators that service approximately 20,000 visitors to the park on an annual basis. Besides its high conservation value as an MPA in the epicenter of global marine biodiversity, BNP contributes roughly US$3.8 million/year in fisheries and seaweed aquaculture production and US$4.4 million/year in tourism revenues to the North Sulawesi economy.

Given the strong potential for conflicts of interest between conservation, fisheries and tourism values of the park, a multiple-use zonation system is the centerpiece of the BTNB's park management plan. This zonation scheme is legally mandated in Indonesia's 1990 Biodiversity Conservation Act, which requires that management of Indonesia's national park system be based upon zonation plans. Since the establishment of the park, USAID's Natural Resources Management Project (NRM) has provided technical assistance for the development of the park management plan (including zonation system) and the eventual zonation revision process. This case study represents experiences gained by the NRM program over almost a decade of assistance in BNP.

Evolution of Bunaken's Zonation Plan
Bunaken's original zonation plan was completed in 1996 after a 3-year participatory process that involved both scientific input from the local university as well as user group input from dive operators and park village leaders. Unfortunately, the participatory process was not inclusive of the full spectrum of village socioeconomic groups, and the resulting zonation plan was not widely socialized. Moreover, the zonation plan involved up to 8 different zone types, with uninformative names such as water support zone and limited use zone that meant little to local stakeholders and were even further obfuscated by ambiguous rules for each zone (eg, sustainable fishing techniques were allowed in the intensive use zones). Many reefs were divided into a relatively large number of small zones whose borders were not clearly demarcated, making compliance with the system even more difficult and unlikely. Finally, the eventual 1997 ministerial decree recognizing the park management plan offered a slightly different, conflicting version of the zonation system, further dooming the plan to failure.

Fortunately, the conflicting nature of these two zonation plans provided a strong impetus to revise Bunaken's zonation, and Indonesia's transition to democracy and decentralized natural resources management in the late 1990s allowed, if not demanded, a more fully participatory approach to this zonation revision process (Usher and Merrill, 2000). Though an initial attempt to establish a multistakeholder zonation revision team stagnated due to governmental agency infighting, a new strategy focused on involving the two primary park user groups (villagers and dive operators) was implemented in early 2000 and has proven extremely successful in producing a compromise zonation plan with strong stakeholder support.

The basic thrust of this zonation revision has been a highly participatory process that attempts to include all socioeconomic strata of the parks main user groups, accommodating current use patterns to the greatest extent possible while also attempting to guarantee the conservation value of the park using the best ecological data available. Although Indonesia does not formally recognize marine tenure systems, the zonation revision process has attempted to engender strong stakeholder feelings of ownership and responsibility towards the parks reefs by proceeding on a village by village, reef by reef basis. This step-by-step approach has the additional advantage of providing continuous milestones against which the overall zonation process can be measured - which is important given the multiyear nature of this process and the Indonesian publics general distrust of governmental initiatives. To date, four of the parks five islands have completed revised zonation plans, and compliance with the system has been generally very high.

Successful Elements of Bunaken's Zonation System
As indicated above, the relative success of Bunaken's zonation system has been as much a factor of the zonation revision process as it has been the actual zonation product. Below we briefly examine the successful elements of both process and product.

Bunaken's participatory zonation revision process focused primarily on two stakeholder groups: park villagers and dive operators. Parallel meetings were held with these two groups, with the same facilitators working both sets of meetings and communicating results between the groups in a manner that minimized conflict while promoting a spirit of compromise. While the dive operators were readily accessible via meetings with the North Sulawesi Watersports Association, the participatory process in each village was custom-tailored to the particular social dynamics of that village (see Edmunds and Wollenberg, 2001). Special attention was directed towards including all socioeconomic groups, particularly those that are disadvantaged or otherwise unlikely to speak up in public fora - as experience from the first zonation process had shown that these are precisely the groups who are most dependent upon reef resources and hence most effected by a zonation system.

As the process evolved, each island has required a different participatory approach (for more information, read the series of short articles at http://www.divenorthsulawesi.com/nrm_news.html). One island with a strongly-knit traditional society relied upon a series of 28 "townhall meetings that each involved an entire village neighborhood (men, women and teenagers included), while a more prosperous but socially-fractured island required 44 focal group meetings that centered upon groups such as the Islamic women's group, the tuna pole and line fishers, the tourism handicraft vendors, and the nighttime handliners.

Once a compromise zonation plan was drafted for a particular island, this plan was then circulated to all of the groups involved in the process. Surprisingly few final changes were usually requested, after which that plan was socialized in a firestorm of publicity that included mass distribution of color posters with the zonation plan and installation of large aluminum billboards throughout the park showing both maps and regulations. Just as importantly, once a zonation plan was passed, it was immediately enforced by Bunaken's joint villager/ranger patrol team. Even though stakeholder support for the zonation system is generally high, it is imperative to enforce the system against the small minority of users who will invariably attempt to benefit by breaking the law. Occasional temporary lapses in enforcement in BNP during the past 2 years have shown that once normally compliant user groups learn of repeated, unpunished zonation infractions by others, they too will often abandon the zonation system in the well-known tragedy of the commons scenario.

The eventual product from each of these zonation revision processes has invariably been a zonation plan that emphasizes user-friendliness over complex regulatory schemes. While BNPs original zonation system utilized 8 different zone types, stakeholder groups argued strongly to reduce this to 3 types that reflect the three primary values of the park (i.e., conservation, tourism and fisheries values). This greatly simplified system uses zone names that reflect the purpose of each zone: strict conservation zones, tourism use zones, and village use zones.

Stakeholder groups further demanded that for each of these zone types, explicit rules should detail allowable and disallowed activities. These rules were derived from a matrix produced early in the participatory process that listed all human activities (extractive and otherwise) that currently or might eventually exist on Bunakens reefs and in which zone types each activity might be appropriately allowed. In finalizing these rules, ambiguous terms such as sustainable fishing techniques were fastidiously avoided, instead individually listing allowable and disallowed fishing gears and techniques (using their local names).

All groups also emphasized the need for clearly demarcated zone borders, with an agreed upon lowest common denominator being the feasibility of an artisanal handline fisher in a dugout canoe at night determining his/her position relative to the zonation plan. This requirement argued strongly for the use of a minimum number of large contiguous zones with natural or otherwise well-known borders such as reef channels, village borders, natural capes, etc.

The actual siting of individual zones was based upon a combination of scientific and stakeholder input and a commitment to include at least 20% of each islands reef area in no-take zones where fishing is not allowed (in accordance with the US Coral Reef Initiative and a number of other MPA design guidance papers). Both the strict conservation and tourism use zones are no-take, and were sited to include known reef fish spawning aggregation sites, unique reef features and long-established dive sites. Village fishers were persuaded to agree to these 20% closures using careful explanations of the fisheries enhancing benefits of no-take zones.

To date, these revised zonation plans have been extremely successful in terms of compliance and the overarching objective of allowing multiple uses of this highly valuable national asset while preventing stakeholder conflict. The resource base has also shown marked improvements; on Bunaken Island alone, the reefs have shown an incredible 11.3% increase in live coral cover and significant increases in size and abundance of commercially valuable fish species in the two years since the zonation plan was agreed upon (Erdmann, unpub. data). This success has encouraged Indonesia's Department of Nature Conservation to use the Bunaken experience as a basis for their new national technical guidance paper on MPA zonation (PHKA, 2002).

Elements that Needed Changing
As detailed in the second section of this study, Bunaken's original zonation plan involved a number of elements that urgently needed changing in order to produce a functional zonation system. Most of these were easily dealt with by focusing on strong stakeholder participation in the zonation revision process and on producing a user friendlyzonation scheme that was readily enforceable using the modest enforcement facilities available to park management.

However, a primary concern with the current zonation system in BNP is that the eventual siting of zones (especially no-take zones) has been based largely on a process of compromise between user groups, rather than exclusively on strong scientific or ecological justification. While the zonation revision process was largely facilitated by professional marine biologists (whose input was especially well-received by the marine tourism sector), the zonation system remains open to criticism by those who would argue for a more rigorous scientifically-based system. Bunakens park management is aware of this issue and intends to utilize the best science available in future iterations of the zonation revision process, but everyone involved also feels strongly that the relative success of the current zonation system is largely due to the strong support engendered by the participatory revision process. Clearly a balance between inputs from science and stakeholder participation is necessary in producing a functional and enforceable multiple-use zonation plan.

One additional element of the Bunaken zonation revision process that is strongly in need of improvement is the involvement of local park managers and/or rangers in the zonation facilitation process. Unfortunately, the participatory zonation process relies strongly upon excellent facilitation skills that are generally lacking in park management staff; training opportunities to acquire these skills are also noticeably absent. It is highly likely that this situation is endemic to developing country MPAs, and conservation and development aid organizations interested in promoting effective MPAs should pay particular notice to this widespread need for better community facilitation skills in park managers.

Lessons Learned
A number of useful lessons learned that may have wider applicability (especially to developing country tropical MPAs) can be drawn from the Bunaken zonation experience. These include:

Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of USAIDs Indonesia mission and the Natural Resources Management Project, and the sponsorship of the Indonesian Ministry of Forestrys Department of Nature Conservation (PHKA). Special thanks are owed to the following individuals and groups who have worked hard to make Bunakens zonation a success: M. Mongdong, R. Pangalila, P. Bahowo, Z. Harahap, J. Djuang, G. Usher, I. Arsyad, the North Sulawesi Watersports Association, the Bunaken Concerned Citizens Forum, and the Bunaken patrol team.

Literature Cited

Mark V Erdmann and Peter R. Merrill
USAIDs Natural Resources Management Project
erdmann@nrm.or.id, reedm@nrm.or.id
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