An anthropologist by training, Dr Dedi Adhuri has more than 20 years’ experience in researching social conflict, ethnicity, marine resource management and governance, fisheries conflict, post-disaster coastal and fisheries rehabilitation and development, and community development.
In the past five years, as a coordinator of the Maritime Study Group at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), Dr Adhuri has become increasingly involved in studies on coastal communities and climate change, as well as cultural heritage management in Indonesia.
Together with Prof Helen Ross of The University of Queensland, he is co-leading a study of adaptive coastal governance and management in villages at Selayar, Indonesia.
“Our project is about developing participatory methods to help communities, with government, to manage their marine resources and livelihoods. We are collaborating with community and government to establish coastal resource management processes,” says Dr Adhuri.
Dr Adhuri is responsible for leading data collection, networking and facilitating the collaboration of various stakeholders.
Outputs from the project will be a ‘toolkit’ explaining how communities and governments in other places can work (framework and processes); and a set of strategies that communities can use. It will also deliver examples of how particular individuals, or communities, have worked to make important changes such as stopping destructive fishing, managing community-declared protected areas, and fishing rules.
So what attracted him to CCRES?
“CCRES is a strategic project for supporting coastal fisheries which are very important for food security, poverty alleviation and coastal resource sustainability in Indonesia,” says Dr Adhuri.
“We need multidisciplinary projects like CCRES to tackle the problems of coastal fisheries comprehensively.”
Dr Adhuri himself has a history of tacking big problems. He has been involved as an expert witness in two historic legal cases that did much to protect coastal communities. One case in the constitutional court challenged certain verses (clauses) in the Law of Coastal and Small Islands Management which would have potentially marginalised fishers and coastal communities.
“The constitutional judges cancelled the verses that we saw as potentially threatening the lives and livelihoods of fishers and coastal communities,” says Dr Adhui.
In the second case, three poor fishers were being prosecuted for fishing in the Ujung Kulon National Park in Western Java, however they were freed and avoided any criminal conviction. Dr Adhuri is very proud of his role as an academic advocate in these two cases.
“A conservation approach that excludes the community and small-scale fishers will not work and will just create conflict,” he says. I have been a part of helping to change perspectives from working against fishers to working collaboratively and incorporating their needs.
“It’s proof that our science can really help local communities.”
For more information, contact Dr Dedi Adhuri
