Forest ecosystem restoration (FER) projects have been encouraged as part of mitigating the environmental crisis. Applying rural-urban interface perspective, this paper views ecosystem restoration as a process of transferring the environmental burden from urban areas to the farmers who live in the upstream of watersheds. Ecosystem restoration is a techno-science effort to change the degraded landscape to overcome environmental problems. To some extent, the implementation of restoration has changed land use practices that influence the livelihoods of farmers at the upstream areas. Changes in land use created by FER project are the crisis which the farmers should deal with.
Our qualitative research in West Java and Lombok shows how discourse on the relation between degraded upstream watershed ecosystems and the environmental crisis in the downstream area is powerful in mobilizing fundings, scientific research, technology, and practices to change the landscape of upstream rural areas which are dominated by agricultural activities. FER is also an arena for negotiating differences in interpreting the natural crisis defined by urban communities in the downstream and the farmers in the upstream rural. In the case of West Java and Lombok, the potential natural disasters or the scarcity of clean water to urban residents, and the limitations of farmers to access their lands are two narratives of the crisis that must be overcome through FER. The agroforestry promoted by restoration experts, governments, donors, project implementers and farmers, is an assemblage considered capable in mitigating the environmental crisis in downstream urban while advancing the economic interests of farmers in the upstream rural area.
