:: 25 September 2006

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In this issue

• Message from RUPES Project Office
• Mind your spread! - Jam and Jellies from Kalahan
• Another Step towards Regulated Environmental Services in Indonesia 
• The Future in Environmental Service Reward Scheme in Singkarak
• Featured link
• New Publication

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Message from RUPES Project Office

Jam, coffee and lake. If we make up a story about these three stuffs, we can start with "A beautiful girl is spreading her jam on a crunchy toast, while having a hot coffee in a small cafeteria on the edge of a lake." 

For a RUPES Newsletter, these can be different. Let me start with the jam. The jam comes from a forest that is managed sustainably by the Kalahan community under the RUPES Program. The coffee relates to four coffee breaks in a two day meetings of Indonesian government and its expert team. They were developing a government regulation on forest environmental services. Finally, the lake - we want to show you the success of RUPES Singkarak team in strengthening local institutions at Nagari surrounding the Singkarak Lake.

As an initial announcement, we'd like to inform you that RUPES with its partners will conduct a global event on Payment for Environmental Services on January 22-27, 2007. The event will take place in Lombok, Indonesia. We will circulate further notification to you all very soon.

Enjoy our three "jam, coffee and lake" articles!

Beria Leimona (l.beria@cgiar.org)
RUPES Project Officer
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Mind your spread! - Jam and Jellies from Kalahan

If you are tired of spreading the usual jams on your toasts every morning … here are some new flavors to try. Introducing the Cordillera Grape jelly and Dagwey jelly preserves! These are the latest products developed by the Ikalahans, indigenous tribe of Nueva Vizcaya to market their very own native plants.

The Cordillera Grape (Embelia philippinensis) or traditionally known as "dikay" is an endemic vine while Dagwey (Saurauia subglabra) is a medium-size tree found only in the forests of the Cordillera Regions in the Philippines. These fruits are part of traditional edible fruits of the Ikalahans. When processed, these fruits taste like raspberries and grapes. They are among the favorites in the market labeled as "Mountain Fresh".

These products are sold in 10 major shopping centers in Manila (e.g. Rustans, Landmark, SM supermarkets) and started to export to the United States, Japan and Germany. Each bottle costs at around USD 2-3$ depending on the size.

"The increasing demand from the public allowed us to establish a marketing strategy for our jams and jellies, and just this year we have an accounting system in placed. Farmers bring these wild fruits to us weekly and they are happy about it as additional income for them. In this way, they see the need to protect the forest for this purpose. " - Tom Oliano, Livelihood Coordinator - Kalahan Educational Foundation (KEF).

Under Rewarding Upland Poor for Environmental Services (RUPES) project, the Ikalahans are exploring the potentials of marketing their rich plant diversity. Other plant species utilized for preparing jams and jellies are Ginger (Zingiber officinale), Passion fruit (Passiflora edulis), Roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa), Santol (Sandoricum koetjape) and Guava. Also, Ikalahans are testing the potentials of these plants for pickles, juices and condiments production (e.g. teas ginger powder and teas out of herbs).

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Another Step towards Regulated Environmental Services in Indonesia

RUPES in collaboration with COMMITTEES - Indonesian national network on environmental services - is facilitating the development of government regulation (Peraturan Pemerintah - PP in Bahasa) on forest environmental services.

Currently, funds from environmental services such as sustaining water quality and availability go to the general treasury. The proposed regulations would ensure that revenues from these services would go to a proposed new financial institution, to be used directly on forest and watershed conservation.

In a two-day meeting in September, the team of government, NGO and university representatives agreed that the regulations should cover four types of environmental services, in line with the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment:

• watershed function 

• biodiversity conservation 

• carbon sequestration, and 

• landscape beauty.

Regulations under the Ministry of Forestry would apply only to state-owned forest area. Nevertheless, communities could work with their local governments to apply the principles to their own lands.

"This PP will provide a strong legal basis for conserving forests and watersheds by focusing on environmental services. It should give a boost to various sustainable activities, including commercializing non-timber forest products," says Nanang Roffandi, Chief of COMMITTEES.

The regulations are being designed under the initiative of the Ministry of Forestry, specifically the Directorate of Environmental Services and Ecotourism, and the Bureau of Forest Law. [Beria Leimona]

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Enabling local institutional system for the implementation of environmental services program is one of the objectives of RUPES Singkarak project. To meet this objective, a number of meetings and discussions has been held to develop the institutional design and process of village level environmental management body or Badan Pengelola Lingkungan Hidup (BPLH) in the villages or nagaris surrounding Singkarak Lake in West Sumatra of Indonesia.

Nagari Paninggahan was the first village pioneering the establishment of BPLH. Currently, a total of 13 BPLH has been structured and is committed to support activities to enhance local role in environmental management. The structure of a BPLH is nagari-specific, meaning that local condition and need are taken into account. 

The development of rules and operational system of BPLH is still in the process. RUPES Singkarak Team is currently working closely with each BPLH at each nagari. Included to be established are rules on how to select type of environmental services and its implementation for rewards, BPLH's internal organizational rule, proposal concerning the rights and obligation of participant who will provide environmental services, a criteria related to rights to gain incentives. In the future, each BPLH will have an opportunity to submit a proposal of environmental service program to a joint committee. The joint committee is the place where potential buyers and sellers (e.g. BPLH or nagari) discuss and agree on an environmental service reward program. [Farida].

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