The island of Borneo, the third largest island in the world, is known as the island of a thousand rivers. Since long ago, the river serves as a source of life and connects various interests from upstream (land) to the coast. Sampan, a means of water transportation, is the primary means by which people connect the mobility of economic, political, social, and cultural life. Naturally, rivers form a very close causal relationship between upstream and coastal conditions, thus preserving the river by preserving the upstream and coastal areas by the community. For people living in upstream and coastal Kalimantan, the term beach is not only identical to coastal seas and estuaries, but also areas that are in the border of rivers and banks of lakes.
In its development, there was a massive economic and political transformation from subsistence activities to the masification of timber, plantation and mining industries in the upstream and coastal areas. Economistic orientation, underpinned by poor forest and land governance practices, makes forests and land and natural resources above and contained therein managed exploitatively.
The river eventually becomes a garbage dump from industrial waste upstream, flowing into the estuary and piling up on the coast. Consequently, there is ecological damage that resulted in the extinction of diversity of flora and fauna of rivers, estuaries and mangrove forests and raptor land area. In addition, there is an emphasis on communities whose livelihood depends on the existence of forests and land, thus impacting the incapability of community resilience in adaptation and mitigation of social change as well as local and global ecological changes (climate change).
Based on this, SAMPAN Kalimantan stands to contribute to saving watersheds from upstream to downstream and its buffer zones and coastal areas from mangrove forests, estuaries and islands within it. Because one of the indicators of fairness, sustainability and sustainability of Kalimantan is in accordance with the principles of good forest governance, it lies in watershed and coastal conditions.
Lhokseumawe, Indonesia