This presentation will discuss the complexity of upgrading community-based  coastal management in Papua. In so doing, it will look at a project of the Indonesia Locally Marine Managed Area Foundation (ILLMA) based in Biak, Papua. The project aims at crafting and passing a village regulation (peraturan desa) on coastal management.   The paper will argue that the village law is not merely a codification of tradition but a combination of several efforts. These include  a process of re-framing tradition into a resource management regime, blending contemporary management instrument with tradition and formalization of oral tradition into a legal text. These efforts bring about some consequences that add to the complexity of the matter. Although some elements are taken from their tradition, for the community, the village law is a new construction of a coastal management regime. Thus, the socialization of the law should go beyond just returning what people had, but should also involve the process of ‘installing’ the understanding of this new construction to be accepted as their tradition. Furthermore, the legalization in the form of village law requires harmonization with Indonesian legal system. In this regard, the village regulation should be harmonized with higher level regulations in the Indonesian legal system, otherwise it will be considered illegal, thus overridden. For the latter the challenge is greater changing nature of Indonesian legal policy, particularly in reference to the passing of the Law on Local Government No. 23/2014 which withdraws the right of district/municipality to manage the first 1/3 of 12 miles coastal water and transfer it to provincial government.

Key words: Community-based coastal management, Papua, Legal system.

Dedi S. Adhuri (dediadhuri@hotmail.com)

Research Center for Society and Culture

Indonesian Institute of Sciences,

Jakarta