A green scenario for sustainable landscape planning: the case study in Sintang Regency, West Kalimantan Province

Sintang Regency is one of the 12 regencies and two cities in West Kalimantan Province, Indonesia. The total area of this regency is approximately 2.2 million hectares (ha) with 59% of the area designated as state forest area which provides high biodiversity and environmental services for adjoining communities. Through multi-stakeholder scenario planning, the government of Sintang Regency committed to protect and preserve forest resources for long-term landscape planning and sustainable utilization. Scenario planning yielded two possible outcomes in 2030 called "green" and "business as usual" (BAU) scenarios. Under the green scenario, future development without deforestation and land permits complied with spatial planning while under the BAU scenario, future conditions will be the result of past conditions without interventions. This study aimed to analyze land-use change in the regency over the past ten years. By applying the Terrset Land Change Modeller (LCM) algorithm, this study predicted the land use and carbon stock change of both scenarios in 2030. Three steps to apply the LCM are by analyzing the changes based on past history, modeling the transition potential and predicting the changes. Time series data of land cover data from 2006 to 2016 were used for this analysis. The results indicated that a green scenario prevents to stop deforestation about 117,136 ha (more than 5%) compared to the BAU scenario. Furthermore, the green scenario prevents the emission of 5 million tons of carbon (tC) for the regency indicating that the multi-stakeholder scenario planning process can be an effective strategy to preserve land and forest resources and promote sustainable development planning. The green scenario requires to prevent deforestation and limit the expansion of plantation areas, which are only allowed inside the current cultivation license and permit areas. (paper)