A look at
villages in Central Sulawesi shows how a program to stop illegal logging has
been embraced by the locals
Jakarta Globe, Dessy
Sagita, October 8, 2013
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| A member of the community-based organization in Simoro, Central Sulawesi, harvest honeys — a sign that local residents prefer new farming methods that conserve the environment. (JG Photo/Dessy Sagita) |
Sigi,
Central Sulawesi. Until a few years ago, Kalvin P. Boso was still known as the
king of slash-and-burn in his village of Lonca, tucked away in Central
Sulawesi’s Sigi district.
Lonca is
located just eight kilometers from the district capital, Kulawi, but the road
connecting the town to the village is narrow, muddy, with a deep ravine on one
side and a rocky mountain on the other, all surrounded by protected forest.
Like most
villagers in Lonca, Kalvin learned to cut trees and burn them down to clear the
land as a child, unaware of the risks his actions created.
When trees
are present, their roots help to prevent erosion by holding the soil together and
absorbing water. With the roots gone, soil can slide around a lot more and
water is able to build up on the surface, causing flooding and other natural
disasters such as mudslides.
The
practice also threatens the local water supply by damaging the soil’s ability
to retain water.
“My parents
were also farmers, and from when I was a student I was taught how to clear the
land without understanding the consequences to the environment,” Kalvin, now
44, tells the Jakarta Globe.
Every year,
Kalvin said, he cleared at least two square kilometers of forest to grow rice,
corn or cassavas.
“Our
villagers have been blamed for causing the floods in Palu every year,” says
Amos Sumutju, the Lonca village chief referring, to the provincial capital.
Most
villagers make it a habit to clear land and move on again the next year because
they believed the soil is no longer fertile after a single season. This has
placed their own lives in danger of disaster because of the growing expanse of
critically degraded land.
Plan of
action
The
Forestry Ministry says more than 27 million hectares of Indonesia’s forests are
now in critical condition due to illegal deforestation.
But land
clearing by fire was stopped in Lonca village when the government introduced a program
called Strengthening Community-Based Forest and Watershed Management to raise
public awareness about illegal logging.
The program
was established with the help of the United Nations Development Program, which,
along with the Global Environment Facility, donated $7.5 million for the period
2009-2014 to revitalize watershed management in six locations in Indonesia by
involving and empowering local inhabitants.
The six
locations chosen for the project are in the provinces of North Sumatra,
Lampung, Central Java, East Nusa Tenggara, West Nusa Tenggara and Central
Sulawesi.
“We first
started out by approaching the locals,” says Erus Rusyadirus, the regional
facilitator for the program in Central Sulawesi.
“I stayed
for at least three days in every village, talked and spent time with the
villagers, trying to convince them that slashing and burning trees was bad for
their present and future.”
Hearts and
minds
“It was
very hard at first. A farmer once told me ‘I don’t care if you or the
government tell me to stop cutting trees, I will not stop. Who can guarantee my
livelihood or if my family can still eat the next day?’” Erus said.
After
intensive guidance, many of the farmers, including Kalvin, began to understand
that their village was in danger.
“Kalvin,
who used to be known as the king of slashing and burning, is now the head of
the community-based organization,” Amos said, referring to a group set up under
the program.
The CBO
receives a small grant for the program, which it can use to fund its activities.
Every CBO has different programs, but focuses mainly on empowering the locals
to find a new source of livelihood so that the farmers do not have to go back
to slashing and burning trees.
Kalvin, for
one, says the program has changed his life for the better.
“After
listening to Pak Erus’s explanation about how clearing the land with the old
method has put many people’s lives in danger, I started to realize how much I
loved the environment, and as the leader of the group I feel a deep sense of
responsibility to conserve the forest,” he says.
Along with
the other CBO members, Kalvin works to raise awareness in his village and urges
locals to farm on a permanent plot of land rather than clear new land each
year. Most people in Lonca now grow cocoa and vegetables.
The group,
with 16 other CBOs in Sigi, has also planted 240,000 tree seedlings.
“If you
came to our village a few years ago, you’d see the whole area was brown. But
now as you can see, it’s all turning green,” Amos says proudly.
Community
empowerment
Residents
in Simoro, in Sigi’s Gumbasa subdistrict, have proudly embraced their new
livelihood and work enthusiastically to develop various activities improve the
economic status of their village.
“Everything
started to change in 2004 when our village was flooded and we saw giant logs
floating everywhere,” says Herry, the head of the Gumbasa CBO.
Gumbasa was
severely affected by flash flooding that year, which swept away several homes.
“At that
time, slash-and-burn clearing was still very common. People would clear the
land and started farming anywhere they wanted to,” Herry says.
“We even
cleared land inside the Lore Lindu National Park.”
Lore Lindu,
east of Lonca, is a protected forest area that was designated as part of the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s World
Network of Biosphere Reserves. It spans 2,180 square kilometers and is home to
numerous rare species, including 77 birds endemic to Sulawesi.
CBO groups
around it were taught to make the best of their environment by cultivating
honeybees, cows and chicken. They also grow vegetables and fruit, as well as
producing snacks from the produce to sell in Kulawi.
To be able
to join their local CBO, each person has to plant at least 15 trees in a
watershed area.
The village
has planted nearly 70,000 seedlings along the riverbanks since 2011, and an
evaluation shows that more than 60 percent are growing well.
Simoro
village has also issued a regulation that farmers can still farm in Lore Lindu
as long as they are committed to preserving the environment.
“If they
want to use the land inside the national park, they have to plant at least 50
trees and they have to promise they will not cut a single tree inside the
protected forest,” Herry says.
The CBO
there has done so well that it was named the best CBO in Indonesia during an
award ceremony in Bali recently.
Localization
Saeful
Rachman, the national program manager of the SCBWFM, says the project was
created after a report was published about critically degraded watershed areas
in Indonesia.
“Some
changes happened because of natural disasters like floods, climate change and
landslides, but most were due to illegal logging,” he says.
Saeful says
the Forestry Ministry has started replanting trees, but its program is not very
successful due to rapid population growth and declining vegetation area.
“Most of
the time the watershed areas are degraded because of land conversion,” he
explains.
Therefore,
he says, the UNDP and the Forestry Ministry proposed the program to increase
awareness and empower communities so they can find another source of livelihood
that is sustainable.
“Most
farmers were very skeptical at first when we introduced the program, but when
we asked them to be the main actors and the agents of change instead of the
subjects, we saw significant progress,” Saeful says.
“Not only
did they stop cutting down trees, but the villagers actively started working on
regulations to punish illegal loggers. We are so proud of them.
“The
locations were chosen because of their biophysical conditions and the local
government’s readiness to implement the program,” he adds.
Persuading
the locals to stop slashing and burning was a tall order.
In Omu
village, also in Gumbasa, the program had to deal with an indigenous tribe that
had been living inside a protected forest for generations.
Aris
Pasasa, the leader of the local CBO, says that when the project first started
there were 13 families from the indigenous tribe living inside the forest.
“They had
been living inside the protected forest since the 1960s, and every year they
moved to a new location and cleared land,” Aris says.
“Approaching
them was a difficult thing to do, not only because they did not speak
Indonesian, but also because they would hide every time they saw someone who
was not from their tribe.”
With much
effort and the help of a translator, the CBO finally managed to persuade the
families to move out of the forest. Aris even lent his land to the families to
build huts and got other residents to hire them to work on their land.
“Now we
worry less about flash floods or polluted and damaged water sources,” Aris says.
Additional
goals
Saeful says
the main objective of the program is not only to improve the condition of the
watershed area, but also to push for the government to give its support and
encourage local officials to come up with regulations that help the environment.
Aside from
community empowerment to stop people from cutting down trees, the program also
asks the communities to restore the critically degraded areas to pristine
condition.
“Every year
we plant 450,000 to 600,000 seedlings provided by the government, but the
really special thing is that sometimes the villagers themselves are even
willing to spend their own money to buy the seedlings and plant them, and
that’s a very good sign,” he says.
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