Lessons Learned from Bunaken 

Overall, the Bunaken experience has shown that while efforts to engage in a participatory 

planning process were made, at least in the form of a consultative process, a blueprint approach 

to management planning that desires and promotes participation is not necessarily feasible.  An 

important issue is ownership of the planning process and durability of implementation and on 

going planning beyond the life of the initial supporting project.  Several lessons are described 

pertaining to: i) defining the community, ii) traditional approaches to natural resources 

management, iii) responsive management planning, iv) competing political interests, and v) 

ownership of the management planning process. 

Lesson One: Defining the Community 

As the Bunaken experience shows, community participation must be redefined in the context of 

a multi stakeholder process, where stakeholders are comprised of the many disparate groups of 

the community and are recognized as having different, often conflicting, interests that need to 

be negotiated.  Participatory management also requires extending rights for resources 

management and decision making to the various stakeholders, with responsible, sustainable 

use of these resources being the requisite condition for the continuation of those rights. 

One of the primary lessons learned from these local community participation development 

endeavors was that there was great disparity even within this distinct subgroup of the national 

park community.  Each settlement had a unique set of issues relative to the park.  Within each 

settlement, and often within the same families or households, people had different perceptions 

of the national park.  In some villages (e.g., Rap Rap) there existed clear distinctions between 

the Christian farming community and the Muslim fishing community. Within a fishing community, 

different individuals seek different resources.  For example, some are pelagic fishers, others 

utilize reef resources, while others earn a living through exploiting the tidal mangrove forests.  

Mangrove forests may be adjacent to the village, but could just as likely be on another island 

and next to another village.  Except for their proximity to the park, the people of these local 

communities actually have very little in common with one another. 

Community participation efforts by NRMP failed to recognize the diversity of local communities.  

Instead, each settlement was treated as a homogenous group.  Community meetings were 

routinely relied upon as equitable forums for bringing together people concerned about shared 

values. In reality, community meetings tended to attract only a small portion of a given 

settlement, and meeting participants often had little to lose or gain from a particular meeting's 

subject matter.  It is important to note that specific target groups using resources avoided the 

meetings. 

The NRMP sustainable mangrove management study was particularly instructive in this regard.  

Community meetings and forums were initiated to understand local use of mangroves and to 

ultimately develop a community based sustainable resources management plan based on a 

zoning system.  Some of the meetings drew large crowds; others did not.  In some villages, it 

was virtually impossible to even schedule a meeting.  The main problem was failure to involve 

those people economically linked directly to the mangrove forests and their rapid destruction.  

Quite sensibly, these people avoided the opportunity to participate in community based 

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