A Battle Is Under Way For The Forests Of Borneo - Part 2 | WPN World People News

Lands Stripped Away

Many Dayaks see it as just a matter of time before paved roads reach their villages and palm oil companies buy their land to convert into plantations.

Palm oil plantations cover the hills of western Borneo, where the world's oldest rainforests once stood.

Farmer Lambai Sudian sold his 25 acres of land for the equivalent of about $1,000. He says the company offered locals jobs on the plantation, water, roads and 20 percent of the palm oil profits. Four years later, none of it has materialized.

"Of course I regret selling," he says. "I regret it because the company didn't do what it said it would. If it did, we would be getting a share of the profits, and we'd be fine."

Sujarni Alloy is an activist with a civic group called the Indigenous People's Alliance of the Archipelago. He says his village's land was sold to a palm oil company without residents' knowledge or consent.

"In the future, the children and grandchildren of the indigenous people will not own these lands," he says. "They will become beggars or criminals, because the bounty before their eyes is no longer theirs."

Overcoming Political Hurdles

Some of Indonesia's laws and policies recognize indigenous people's rights to their traditional lands. But the constitution says all land and resources belong to the state.

Andy White, a coordinator at the Washington, D.C.-based Rights and Resources Initiative, a coalition of groups focusing on land rights, says this confusion over rights is a recipe for conflict.

"Seventy percent of the territory of the country, tens of millions of people are essentially squatters on their own historic lands," he says. "And over 20,000 villages are in this contested status, basically sitting on land that they think is their own and the ministry of forestry claims as their own."

Corruption is endemic at all levels of government in Indonesia, but some observers point to the forestry ministry as an egregious example. A recent expose in Indonesia's Tempo magazine accuses officials from the forestry ministry of filling their political party's war chests with bribes, which businessmen pay in exchange for tracts of forested land.

The ministry denies the allegations. But Kuntoro Mangkusobroto, a troubleshooter for Indonesia's president and the chairman of a government task force on deforestation and climate change, says the reports are "not surprising."

Indonesia's Corruption Eradication Commission will investigate suspected illegal grants of forested land, but Kuntoro says that the problem has become deeply entrenched and hard to root out.

"Forests are a means for the power holder to maintain his power, by giving concessions to the military commander in the regions, governors or those who can support the regime," he explains. "You cut trees, you got money, OK? And it's been practiced like that for 40 years."

Future Of Indigenous Cultures

Conservationists' hopes of saving Borneo's rainforests and its inhabitants' traditions may be unrealistic, romantic, or simply too late. They may also obscure indigenous peoples' fight to control the terms on which they develop and modernize. Some Indonesians see the Dayaks as culturally backwards, and many Dayaks themselves seem unsentimental about shedding the ways of their forefathers.

White, of the Rights and Resources Initiative, notes that forests can be re-grown to support communities and store carbon. Indigenous people have the right to choose their own path of development, he adds, and the issue of rights will not go away with the destruction Indonesia's forests.

"Of course it's sad, of course it should be stopped, but that does not diminish the importance of this issue," he says, "or the potential of these lands to be restored and for these communities to live much better lives in the future and for these areas to contribute much, much more to their country's development."

Source: NPR