Indonesia is the world's top palm oil producer, but that has led to land grabs and violence against indigenous people. Demand for palm oil and energy in Indonesia continues to drive deforestation and displacement of local communities in a country that has already lost 64 million hectares of tropical forests to agribusiness in the past five decades.
"If we sell off our forests, our children will be landless. They will have their own children, and what would they do?" asked Anang Sugito the village secretary for the 7,000 household strong community of Gohong. "We depend on the forest for livelihood. The trees, our culture and sacred sites, are all rooted in the land. We are going to commit to this battle together."
In a country where indigenous activists and leaders defending their land are sometimes intimidated, harassed, and killed by palm oil companies and their collaborators, many Dayak villagers - who have practiced shifting cultivation in forests in Central Kalimantan for hundreds of years - do not understand why they have to go to court to defend forests against conversion to mono-crop palm plantations.
"It is only natural, and as it should be, that we do everything in our power to hold onto our land," said Abdul Muin, an ethnic Dayak hailing from the neighbouring village of Sei Dusun, where villagers have filed lawsuits against oil palm corporations with concessions to 11,000 hectares of peatland forest. The economic benefits of the multi-million dollar industry are not filtering down to indigenous communities, who say they are losing everything. "There is no way we can cultivate livelihoods in this environment. Oil palm plantations make everything dead, even there are no more birds," said Muin.
Indigenous groups in Central Kalimantan, and their advocates, continue to call for recognition of their rights in the context of land development, to stop human rights violations against their communities and preserve their way of life. In May 2013, the government extended its moratorium on deforestation initiated in 2011 for two years, and at the same time a landmark Constitutional Court ruling distinguished customary forests from state forests, finally acknowledging indigenous rights after more than 10 years of struggle by 2,000 indigenous groups countrywide represented in government negotiations by the Indigenous People's of the Archipelago Alliance. The Dayaks have endured a history of displacement because of land development projects, mostly logging and palm oil. In Borneo, roughly 2.5 million people have been displaced since the 1970s, according to Minority Rights Group International, a London-based advocacy campaign.
The killing of an activist in Jambi, Sumatra, earlier this month indicates the "lawlessness of the frontier", said Forest Peoples programme director Marcus Colchester, adding intimidation and harassment are all too common. Forcible evictions and ignoring indigenous rights while attempting to cultivate palm oil has had had "dire cultural, social and economic consequences" on populations, said a study by Rainforest Foundation Norway in 2013.
"There has been longstanding resistance by the government to take local rights seriously, as a result of the tremendous pressure from companies for licenses," said Sunderlin, the head of research for forest conservation with the Bogor-based Center for International Forestry Research. "Tenure issues may seem local but their origins are often national in character."
"The abundance of natural resources [on our land] has not been a blessing. It has been the opposite for me and my family," said Nisil Tuman, an ethnic Dayak villager hailing from Buntoi in Central Kalimantan, where residents were repeatedly approached to sell their land between 2008 to 2013.
Upon the 2,000 villagers' steadfast refusal, thousands of hectares of native peatland were seized by palm oil companies regardless.
"The gains need to be shared more equally among the communities ... the problem is that the communities are often not a big enough of a consumer market [to be of consequence] for the companies," said UN Development Programme’s Indonesia's manager for sustainable energy,Verania Andria.
In the three years since the first moratorium was announced, an additional five million hectares of forest have been lost, according to Greenpeace Indonesia. Palm oil plantations near Gohong, subsidiaries of the Singapore-based Wilmar International Group, are now infringing on 8,000 hectares of customary lands owned by three villages near Gohong, and offering 250,000 Indonesian rupiahs (US$22) per hectare.
"Legal rights on paper count to nothing if they cannot be enforced," said Sunderlin,
Farming on peatland, which requires both drying out the soil and creating irrigation canals, also releases large amounts of greenhouse gases (GHG) that are stored in peatland soil.
"Once you plant with palm oil, the rainforest will never regrow. Dry peat lands release enormous amounts of GHG emissions to the atmosphere and easily burns. The haze from forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan currently causes respiratory illnesses and forces schools to shut down in the region, even as far as in Singapore and Malaysia," said Anja Lillegraven, the coordinator for Rainforest Foundation Norway's Southeast Asia Program based in Oslo.
Indonesia is currently the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions after the US and China, despite having a smaller population. Emissions are attributed to high rates of deforestation.
Taken from Al Jazeera
"If we sell off our forests, our children will be landless. They will have their own children, and what would they do?" asked Anang Sugito the village secretary for the 7,000 household strong community of Gohong. "We depend on the forest for livelihood. The trees, our culture and sacred sites, are all rooted in the land. We are going to commit to this battle together."
In a country where indigenous activists and leaders defending their land are sometimes intimidated, harassed, and killed by palm oil companies and their collaborators, many Dayak villagers - who have practiced shifting cultivation in forests in Central Kalimantan for hundreds of years - do not understand why they have to go to court to defend forests against conversion to mono-crop palm plantations.
"It is only natural, and as it should be, that we do everything in our power to hold onto our land," said Abdul Muin, an ethnic Dayak hailing from the neighbouring village of Sei Dusun, where villagers have filed lawsuits against oil palm corporations with concessions to 11,000 hectares of peatland forest. The economic benefits of the multi-million dollar industry are not filtering down to indigenous communities, who say they are losing everything. "There is no way we can cultivate livelihoods in this environment. Oil palm plantations make everything dead, even there are no more birds," said Muin.
Indigenous groups in Central Kalimantan, and their advocates, continue to call for recognition of their rights in the context of land development, to stop human rights violations against their communities and preserve their way of life. In May 2013, the government extended its moratorium on deforestation initiated in 2011 for two years, and at the same time a landmark Constitutional Court ruling distinguished customary forests from state forests, finally acknowledging indigenous rights after more than 10 years of struggle by 2,000 indigenous groups countrywide represented in government negotiations by the Indigenous People's of the Archipelago Alliance. The Dayaks have endured a history of displacement because of land development projects, mostly logging and palm oil. In Borneo, roughly 2.5 million people have been displaced since the 1970s, according to Minority Rights Group International, a London-based advocacy campaign.
The killing of an activist in Jambi, Sumatra, earlier this month indicates the "lawlessness of the frontier", said Forest Peoples programme director Marcus Colchester, adding intimidation and harassment are all too common. Forcible evictions and ignoring indigenous rights while attempting to cultivate palm oil has had had "dire cultural, social and economic consequences" on populations, said a study by Rainforest Foundation Norway in 2013.
"There has been longstanding resistance by the government to take local rights seriously, as a result of the tremendous pressure from companies for licenses," said Sunderlin, the head of research for forest conservation with the Bogor-based Center for International Forestry Research. "Tenure issues may seem local but their origins are often national in character."
"The abundance of natural resources [on our land] has not been a blessing. It has been the opposite for me and my family," said Nisil Tuman, an ethnic Dayak villager hailing from Buntoi in Central Kalimantan, where residents were repeatedly approached to sell their land between 2008 to 2013.
Upon the 2,000 villagers' steadfast refusal, thousands of hectares of native peatland were seized by palm oil companies regardless.
"The gains need to be shared more equally among the communities ... the problem is that the communities are often not a big enough of a consumer market [to be of consequence] for the companies," said UN Development Programme’s Indonesia's manager for sustainable energy,Verania Andria.
In the three years since the first moratorium was announced, an additional five million hectares of forest have been lost, according to Greenpeace Indonesia. Palm oil plantations near Gohong, subsidiaries of the Singapore-based Wilmar International Group, are now infringing on 8,000 hectares of customary lands owned by three villages near Gohong, and offering 250,000 Indonesian rupiahs (US$22) per hectare.
"Legal rights on paper count to nothing if they cannot be enforced," said Sunderlin,
Farming on peatland, which requires both drying out the soil and creating irrigation canals, also releases large amounts of greenhouse gases (GHG) that are stored in peatland soil.
"Once you plant with palm oil, the rainforest will never regrow. Dry peat lands release enormous amounts of GHG emissions to the atmosphere and easily burns. The haze from forest fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan currently causes respiratory illnesses and forces schools to shut down in the region, even as far as in Singapore and Malaysia," said Anja Lillegraven, the coordinator for Rainforest Foundation Norway's Southeast Asia Program based in Oslo.
Indonesia is currently the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions after the US and China, despite having a smaller population. Emissions are attributed to high rates of deforestation.
Taken from Al Jazeera
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