Location:
Indonesia

Background:
Recently, the Government of Indonesia enacted regulations that enable special funding called the Village Fund to finance their village development programs which is ultimately to increase villagers’ livelihood and welfare. To date, much attention has been devoted to how the Village Fund is allocated to speed up infrastructure development in rural areas, such as roads and ponds. Nevertheless, rural communities face multifaceted problems that cannot be solved by infrastructure provision only. For instance, in some regions in Indonesia, rural communities that rely their livelihood on agriculture are still struggling to overcome lengthy land conflicts. There is still limited understanding of how the communities utilize the Village Fund to resolve land conflict as well as increase rural communities’ resilience through livelihood diversification.

Aims and Objectives:
To explore to what extent and how the Village Fund in Indonesia or similar social investment policies in other countries facilitate its utilization for resolving land conflict-related problems and increasing rural communities’ resilience through livelihood diversification.

Scope:
The Village Fund, part of the decentralization processes in Indonesia that started in 2001, decentralizes power from the center to the regions and villages.

Methodology:
– Data collection: desk study, in-depth interviews
– Data analysis: qualitative approach (content analysis, problem tree analysis)