There is a reason why the awig-awig institution was created. To know this, we need to know a little history of the Indonesian government’s policies towards natural resource management, especially the decentralization of their fisheries sectors over time. The country saw a transfer of roles from central to provincial governments while still remaining under central government control, followed by another change which is the centralization of marine management operations. The latter change was a top-down approach to management, rendering local action towards management and authority redundant. The resultant enforcement failure resulted in depletion of the marine resource and conflicts among fishing communities.

Following that, there was yet another change that lasted till the present time now; that is the transfer of marine responsibilities from Ministry of Agriculture to the newly set-up Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries. Because of this, there was a transfer of duties to localized governments, who received new sets of authorities from the central government on marine management within their authorized water area. Despite the transfer of duties to local representatives, the lack of funding for officials and enforcement operations cost MPA in the Gili Islands its protection. Thus the awig-awig insitition was set-up, so as to create funding to support private enforcement of MPA laws.

The awig-awig is an agreement that outlines rules governing the rights and responsibilities of resource use, as define by the Gili Ecotrust. Its goal was to stop coral reefs destruction and was first signed in 2001 by the Gili Ecotrust, dive schools and fishermen. It outlines each party’s rights and responsibilities, areas that are excluded to fishing and the penalties for non-compliance.

This case is an extremely heartening story to read about as it shows that one need not rely on official big government bodies to protect the environment. Power is in our own hands. The stakeholders in this situation witnessed and understood the importance of the coral reefs, not just for their benefits, but also for future generations’ as well, and had thus taken matters into their own hands.