STATE OF THE RAINFOREST 2014
64
Her mother agrees, as she knows what it feels like to be tricked.
The village where she used to live lost much of its land to a palm
oil plantation. ‘We did not have the power to protect our land. We
believed the government would control the plantations, so they
couldn’t expand onto our lands. But the government just told us that
the land had been given to the company, and that we had to leave’, she
recalls, with anger in her voice. Her family even had a title to the land.
Indo Laku is not the only one who has encountered the world of oil
palm. Apa Serli returned to the forest village with his family a few
years ago, after experiencing life as a plantation worker: ‘Life is very
hard in the plantations. The workers have to work so hard they almost
die, and the pay is very low’, he tells us. Like Indo Laku, he prefers to
cultivate gardens, and get what else the family needs from the forest.
Indo Laku also has vast knowledge about medicinal plants, and the
other villagers often ask her for advice. ‘I learned from my father and
the elders’, she tells us. ‘This is our forefathers’ land, and we want to
keep it for our forest and our gardens. When the sawit people came,
they told us to sell the land and said it would make us rich, like them.’
‘Didn’t you want to get rich?’ I ask. They laugh, and go on to explain:
‘Life in the forest is happier. The company said we could continue to
live here, but that would be inside the plantation. It would be hard to
live without the forest and the gardens. We need rattan, and we need
food from the forest. This is our life.’
Senamat Ulu, Central Sumatra
In the landscape of Sumatra, one can see the full impact of large
scale forest exploitation and conversion of forest to plantations – the
same development that was starting to crawl inland from the coast
in Sulawesi. Most of Sumatra Island’s lowland rainforest is gone.
Increasingly, the forests in carbon rich peat swamps are targeted for
large scale deforestation and conversion by plantation companies.
Forest communities in the once densely forested Sumatra face
a strikingly different reality than the forest people of Sulawesi.
Monoculture tree plantations and oil palm dominate the landscape.
For the 220 families in Senamat Ulu village, the challenge is to protect
what is left of natural forest in between the plantations, and to find
ways to improve living conditions based on sustainable management
of the local resources.
Down by the river which runs through the village, a waterwheel is
turning slowly as the water flows by. ‘It generates electricity for a
handful of households. There is no pollution, no noise and almost
no maintenance costs ’, Datuk Rio, a village leader, explains. The
alternative is a diesel generator if one can afford it. A bit further
down in the village, we meet Razi, who has found another solution
for energy supply. In the garden behind his house he has installed a
biogas plant, where he produces gas for cooking, made from dung
from the village cows and buffaloes. In the kitchen his wife turns on
the gas and explains how she appreciates not having to cook in the
midst of the dense smoke from an open fire place. As we continue the
walk through the village, we pass the handicraft center where locally
available resources are used to make beautiful handbags and baskets,
and the site where a micro hydro plant is being installed.
Watching the forest
The families in Senamat Ulu are farmers and forest people, who
practice agroforestry - mixing trees and crops on their land. They
depend upon forest resources for a number of everyday needs, and
as in Sulawesi rattan is used for a wide range of purposes. Medicinal
plants are collected from the forest and cultivated in their gardens.
The villagers’ technical inventiveness and knowledge and creativity
in forest use is matched by an ‘administrative creativity’ – necessary
navigate Indonesia’s complicated administrative framework of forest
management categories, forest permits and concessions in search of
ways for the village to maintain control over their traditional forests.
There is no recognition of the rights of local forest communities
and indigenous peoples to their traditional areas. Forest belongs to
the state in Indonesia, and often logging or mining concessions, or
licenses for plantations, are granted before communities’ use of the
forest is taken into consideration.
‘We have established a village forest, and it is approved by the
government. This means that we set aside some of our forest for
conservation and for protection of the watershed. We have rules for
the use of the forest and a committee to oversee the rules’, Datuk
Rio explains. ‘Protection forest’ is a category that is recognized by the
government. Getting forest areas registered for protection is one way
for the villagers to retain control over some of their forests.
A recent ruling in Indonesia’s Constitutional Court creates hope that in
the years to come, collective rights for indigenous peoples or traditional
forest communities can be recognized in some traditional lands. The
Salisarao Lako
teacher with son
and father
