and sponsor policy seminars and research.  Membership included Bappenas, and the Ministries 

of Forestry (MoFr, now the Ministry of Forestry and Estate Crops), Finance, and Environment.  

A smaller group, the Project Coordinating Committee (PCC), was established from within the 

PWG to oversee Project implementation issues (e.g., review of workplans and assess 

progress).  In hindsight, NRMP was perhaps overly complex in design and overly optimistic in 

terms of the degree of impact independent policy analysis would have upon national policy 

agendas.  The usefulness of NRMP support and intervention was unquestionable in some 

cases, and the chapters of this book serve to clarify that conclusion. 

Lessons Learned 

A great many "lessons learned" for natural resources management are available from within and 

outside Indonesia.  These lessons have been learned from projects dealing with community or 

social forestry, integrated conservation and development projects or ICDP s, integrated coastal 

management, conservation area management planning and implementation, rural community 

organizing, village development facilitation, enabling policy development, sustainable timber 

forest management, and institutional strengthening. 

It is the intention of this book not to add to the confusion and repetition of intuitive "lessons 

learned", but rather to highlight particular experiences from the seven years of NRMP 

implementation in Indonesia that may be instructive to future planners and managers of natural 

resources in Indonesia.  It must be stressed, however, that some lessons are site specific and 

may not be applicable to other sites or conditions.  The reader should be careful not to assume 

that these lessons are general  truths  or that they are of relevance to all future projects.  The 

lessons learned comprise more a body of observations from NRMP project planning and 

implementation experiences at a particular time and place and under particular conditions.  

Much like hypotheses, these lessons cannot be proven correct, they can only be shown to be 

consistent with observations until shown to be invalid under a similar set of conditions.  

Nevertheless, these  lessons learned  or  results observed  through the NRMP experience have 

relevance, and should be considered for planning and implementing other natural resources 

management projects in Indonesia and elsewhere. 

That said, it can be concluded that a key lesson learned from NRMP implementation, 

underpinning all others, is the need to involve multiple key stakeholders at both local and 

national levels in policy dialogue.  Using a multi stakeholder and decentralized policy 

process should be the most fundamental requirement to achieve wise and appropriate policy 

decisions.  Sound policy decisions may then be translated into sound natural resources 

management practices and sustainability.  Subsequent decisions made at the appropriate scale 

and jurisdictional level ensure that relevant information on natural resources management 

problems and policy consequences could encourage appropriate behaviors to overcome the 

problems.  Multi stakeholder processes also enable other considerations (e.g., distribution of 

policy costs and benefits) to be better utilized for decision making at local and national levels. 

During the seven year implementation of NRMP, a number of lessons were learned concerning 

development and implementation of a participatory policy process.  However, poor 

understanding existed as to what constitutes effective public involvement and participation.  

Participation to many only meant some form of consultation; however, real benefits of 

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