Exploring the social science of tropical peatland restoration: Towards more effective community empowerment initiatives for the Aceh peatland ecosystem

Peat swamp forest in Aceh Province is one of the Indonesian peatland ecosystems that is undergoing systemic degradation due to land conversion. Strong corporate domination of land conversion activities has also degraded livelihood opportunities for local communities, driving them into poverty and conditions of under-development. Despite government interventions aiming to improve both ecosystem and social sustainability that have included initiatives in community empowerment, the peatland has continued to suffer degradation. This raises concerns about the effectiveness of social aspects of the interventions. Our study analysed correlations amongst indicators of community empowerment on the one hand, and environmental, economic and social sustainability on the other, with a view to devising an improved approach for future sustainable development initiatives. Quantitative interview methods were used to survey 112 local residents, then qualitative and Structural Equation Model (SEM) analyses based on Likert scoring were employed to interpret the data. The results show that the social factor is the main reason for low empowerment of the community. In order to build capacity for independent and sustainable utilisation of the peatland, a new social-based learning approach to community empowerment is proposed.