Vegetation cover is a critical indicator and sensitive in degradation land. This study aims to explore the comparative analysis of vegetation index in the ex-mine reclamation area. The study is conducted on 2.03 ha area reclamation planted in 2017. The analysis is performed by measure Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from 2017 to 2020 using the Sentinel-2 satellite imagery dataset and processed by ArcGIS Pro 2.6 software. RGB drone photogrammetry acquired in April 2020 and vegetation photos featured with geotagging is used to validate vegetation index analysis. The result shows NDVI first and second-year revegetation demonstrates no significant improvement (less than 0.33), nevertheless third and fourth-year revegetation shows dramatically increase of NDVI, respectively 0.369 and 0.417 with the percentage of healthy vegetation 68.13% and 81.39%. This shows that NDVI and the percentage of vegetation health improve over the year.

Payment for ecosystem services is a conservation strategy designed to offer farmers financial incentives for managing land to provide ecological benefits without disturbing livelihoods. However, the distribution of spatial financial feasibility is challenging when implementing this strategy on watershed scale. This study aimed to develop payment for ecosystem services model to improve quality in lake water catchment. The model estimated incentive values based on the costs of farmers’ losses, water yields, and pollution loads. The potential loss was calculated by determining the income of farmers in lake water catchment spent on land conversion from intensive agriculture to agroforestry. Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) modeling tool was used to calculate water yield and pollution load. The model was tested with case study approach at Lake Rawa Pening in Indonesia, consisting of nine sub-basins and 75 village administrations. The results showed that the reference compensation for farmers was 1,255.97 USD/ha/year. Considering the spatial distribution of water yields, the incentive for each village varied widely from 891.54 USD/ha/year to 1,557.06 USD/ha/year, even within the same sub-basin. Ten villages had an incentive above 1,450.00 USD/ha/year. However, considering the water pollution load, 26 villages had an incentive above 1,450.00 USD/ha/year with a maximum of 2,024.17 USD/ha/year. Therefore, village boundary should be an analysis unit for determining spatial incentive feasibility rather than a sub-basin boundary. Moreover, the level of water pollution load can become an additional variable to justify the amount of incentives received by farmers.

A paradigm shift is required to transform current natural resource management (NRM) in Indonesia’s decision to move into low-carbon development to achieve the greenhouse gas emission target. No study has been conducted to assess whether or not the current approaches are reliable in anticipating the conundrum of the new juncture. We reviewed 10 cases of NRM practices in Indonesia from 2019–2023 collected from the Scopus dataset by integrating the prisoner’s dilemma approach into the socio-ecological framework to analyze the practices and the anticipated gaps. Our finding revealed that socio-economic governance is the dominant view in interpreting the competition between personal and collective interests in NRM. Seeing NRM as an allocation problem and the excessive use of the legal normative approach in interpreting and addressing the problem are flaws in the approach. Combining the prisoner’s dilemma approach with the socio-ecological governance framework enabled us to address the flaws. Promoting polycentric governance that accommodates social trust, reciprocities, and socio-ecological beliefs and reduces uncertainties about ownership and the resources necessary to reduce defective behavior is a solution to transform the structure of the competition. Revising the socio-economic payoff into a socio-ecological value-oriented institution is the strategy to address the conundrum.

A riverbank revitalization program is being carried out to overcome the problem of slum areas and restore the role of the river. Many local governments in Indonesia are working to revitalize riverbanks, with Yogyakarta being one of them. As a special region in Indonesia, the Yogyakarta government has implemented the Mundur, Munggah, Madhep Kali (M3K) program, under Government Regulation (PP) No. 38 of 2011, to manage the conservation, development, and control of the destructive power of river water. This study aimed to ascertain how changes to the riverbanks affect both people’s quality of life and the river itself. The factors that influenced the changes in the environment, society, and culture of the community after the M3K program were also determined in this study. This study used a descriptive method with qualitative and quantitative data analyses. The statistical analysis method used was logistic regression. The findings obtained show that the M3K program has transformed people’s mindsets and habits toward keeping the environment clean, particularly the river area. According to the findings of the logistic regression analysis, the variables that determine the changes in the social and cultural environment of the community affected by M3K are age, education, employment opportunities, and income.