One distinguishing characteristic of Indonesia’s fire and haze problem is the lack of consensus: many actors fundamentally disagree over the causes of fire. This not only limits problem-solving, but has proved a source of tensions between communities and companies. Moreover, the benefits and burdens of fire are unevenly experienced across actors.
One of our leading methodological challenges is to understand how different groups think about fire and haze, including about prospective solutions as well as leading costs and benefits. CIFOR together with the United Nations Office for REDD+ Coordination in Indonesia (UNORCID) hosted a policy dialogue and expert meeting to generate discussion on these and deliver insights to the policy making community. In addition, semi-quanitative research is underway at CIFOR to collect evidence based understanding of the various perceptions held.
We are borrowing a tool from social psychology to understand peoples’ viewpoints, called Q-method. In this method, researchers first compile a set of statements that represent a broad range perceptions about the topic in question. In our study, statements include:
“Increase government enforcement
against corporations that allow use of fire”
“Give incentives to local government units
to encourage them to prevent fire”
We are interested to know how different actors respond to these proposed solutions to fire and haze. To that end, the statements are printed on cards, and participants respond to each of them by placing them along a scale in a forced normal distribution. This will allows us to understand each participant’s viewpoints on each of these statements.
Analyzing these responses serves to identify the key discourses characterized by different arrangements of the statements cards. This will allow us to understand common collections of views about how people perceive the costs and benefits of fire and prospective solutions to fire and haze.
We are currently wrapping up the data collection and have close to 170 respondents to our Q-method. These include a diverse range of actors within Riau Province, Sumatra (e.g., industry, small farmers, investors, decision-makers), as well as with decision-makers in Jakarta and Singapore.
This research component is led by Rachel Carmenta, Post Doctoral Fellow, CIFOR
(Caption: Community members in Dumai District, Riau Province help the CIFOR researchers trial their Q-method instrument, Credit: J.Phelps)
