State of the Rainforest 2014

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

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.

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STATE OF THE RAINFOREST 2014

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