Indonesia’s 1999–2004 decentralisation reforms created opportunities for land-use planning that reflected local conditions and local people’s needs. The authors report on seven years of work in the District of Malinau in Indonesian Borneo that attempted to reconnect government land-use plans to local people’s values, priorities and practices. Four principles are proposed to support more interactive planning between government and local land users: Support local groups to make their local knowledge, experience and aspirations more visible in formal land-use planning and decision making; create channels of communication, feedback, and transparency to support the adaptive capacities and accountability of district leadership and institutions; use system frameworks to understand the drivers of change and resulting scenarios and trade-offs; and link analysis and intervention across multiple levels, from the local land user to the district and national levels. We describe the application of these principles in Malinau and the resulting challenges.
