Sustainable Landscape Utilization Using Go and No Go Area

Jakarta, March 15, 2022 – Utilization of landscape sustainability is one of the important factors to keep agricultural land sustainable. Maintained environmental sustainability will result in good landscape sustainability for the next generation.

Therefore, the Cocoa Sustainability Partnership invited one of members representatives, Yayasan Inisiatif Dagang Hijau Indonesia (IDH), to have a discussion regarding the direction of sustainable landscape management. IDH performed a landscape analysis on land to determine which lands could be maximized for agricultural and plantation commodities.

The eastern part of the Leuser Ecosystem was chosen as the venue for analysis using the Multi-criteria Spatial Ground Checking method which formulated the Highest and Best Uses (HBU). The Multi-criteria Spatial Ground Checking method is a combination of the overlay concept in the scope of geographic information systems and the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) concept which also considers soil conditions.

Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a method that can imitate humans in realizing goals for complex and unstructured problems using an easy way.

The Highest and Best Uses is the maximum usability of the land physically and most likely to be used. In order to support this sustainable landscape analysis program, IDH also collaborated with team from Bogor Agricultural Institute (IPB University).

IDH introduced the Go and No Go Area. The Go Area is an area that has good potential to be planted with agroforestry commodities, especially cocoa, which is located in the outer of Leuser Ecosystem (KEL), and the No Go Area as a protected forest area or conservation area within the KEL.

There are several criteria used to distinguish Go and No Go Area lands, one of which uses High Conservation Value (HCV) and High Carbon Stock (HCS). Another factor that can affect a landscape plan to become a No Go Area is the presence of a wildlife area.

Most of the Go Area has good potential to be used as a cocoa plantation. Another advantage of cacao plants does not affect the lives of elephants around the Leuser Ecosystem area.

The outside of the Leuser Ecosystem area, the application of agroforestry in cocoa plantation is also good. CSP and stakeholders must work together in establishing the sustainability of good spatial planning so Leuser Ecosystem maintained and not damaged by human activities.

CSP together with stakeholders assisted by IDH strive to apply the Go and No Go Area method to preserve forest and wildlife. It is hoped that it can be applied throughout Indonesia and farmers can realize how important it is to maintain a sustainable landscape.(CSP/AV)