Community-Based Monitoring for Customary Territory Defence and Multispecies Eco-Justice: A Case Study of the Enggano Indigenous People, Bengkulu

Vollständiger Abstract

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Enggano Island holds high endemic biodiversity, yet pressure on its forests keeps rising. This article examines the community-based monitoring (CBM) carried out by the Enggano indigenous people together with the Enggano Monitoring Team in February and March 2025. The monitoring covered Protection Forest and Limited Production Forest areas of roughly 125 ha spread across six grids. The methods combined ground checks, line transects, bird point counts, feed-plant inventories, resident interviews, and satellite imagery and geographic information system (GIS) analysis through the QField application. The team recorded 43 animal signs, several direct encounters with endemic species such as the Enggano myna and the Enggano imperial pigeon, and a clear dominance of wildlife feed plants and other useful plants. The 2024 land cover data show that forest still covers 55.97 percent of the island. These findings position CBM not merely as a tool for collecting ecological data, but as an instrument for defending customary territory, a means of restoring the relationship between residents and their forest, and a way of preparing a local discourse on multispecies eco-justice. The authors argue that resident-generated data strengthen the bargaining position of the indigenous people in the customary forest recognition process that followed Constitutional Court Decision No. 35/PUU-X/2012, while also building an evidentiary basis for treating nonhuman beings as holders of justice claims.