As part of the Inception Workshop of the Aceh ReGrIn Project: Aceh post-Tsunami rehabilitation, Sonya Dewi and Diah Wulandari from ICRAF, THS. Siregar and Tumar from LRPI and Gerd Dercon from University of Hohenheim, Germany had a field visit to Meulaboh on 22-25 January 2006. The purposes of this trip were  to get a feel of field situation: livelihoods, tree crops impacts of the tsunami, and dif ferent NGOs and local government activities and capacities to explore some potential future collaboration. In this event, we visited several sites in 3 (three) sub-districts: Samatiga, Meurebo and Kuala, and also visited 2 of the biggest NGOs based in Meulaboh (Mercy Corps and Oxfam) and 2 government offices (BAPPEDA and DISHUTBUN).

Basically, one year+ after Tsunami, our very first impression (which stays and even magnifies) upon reaching Meulaboh is the rapid, one-way, enormous change in almost every sectors. True it is that the Tsunami 'only' directly hit and damaged the coastal areas, but the impact does not stay there. The peace agreement between GAM and the Indonesian government adds another layer to driver of changes. 

With the new and open Aceh, natural resource extraction is back and more extensive than ever. Several permits for new gold mine, land conversion, logging is underway. Non-timber forest product extraction, mainly rattan, is increasingly popular. Mine exploration is very active, both by Indonesian and foreign companies. ADB has agreed to fund a resettlement project to the inland, involving 500 households and almost 2000 hectares forestland to be converted to oil palm in the near future. According to the Head of Dishutbun Aceh Barat, this will be the 'pilot' whilst the government plans to develop at least 6000 hectares of oil palm plantation under the same resettlement scheme. This all will put pressure on forest and environment in the inland area.

In the meantime, the local (district level) government does not have yet a firm planning, regulatory framework and also strong capacity to manage their NR. As present, their resources: human, hardware, data and software, are very little. Most of the government officers we met have acknowledged their limitation and upon learning that we came from a research institution, have expressed their interests in collaborating and learning together with us re agroforest and forest related issues. In particular two key persons, one from Dishutbun and one from Bappeda, are really eager to work together on spatial planning. At this moment, among more than 50 NGOs that are still active, some already slowing down and phasing out. These NGOs coordinate among themselves by regular weekly meeting according to the sectors they work on and also the territories they work in. UN-HIC is in general looked at as the informal coordinator among them. The coordination seems to work reasonably well 

Both OXFAM and Mercy Corps mentioned that they are now at the second stage of their medium to long term program. The first, emergency stage is over, and the second stage which involves medium term employment, i.e., cash for annual cropping, trading, fishing, etc, are on going. Approaching the end of the second stage, they will focus on building skills and capacities, both of the local people and the village and sub-district level governments. This is felt as a challenging step, especially because it involves the changing mindset. The third stage scheme is not yet well formulated, but some sort of loan schemes related to long-term livelihoods is foreseen.

This probably will be an area where ICRAF should work together with them for establishing an agroforestry system. As far as we know (both from the district government and the NGOs that we met) ICRAF will be the first research institution working in Meulaboh. Another area to work on, possibly with CIFOR, and district government, is spatial planning. This is an urgent task for the district government to accomplish since the area is facing a very rapid change. 

Further information contact 
Diah Wulandari (d.wulandari@cgiar.org)
Sonya Dewi at (s.dewi@cgiar.org)