Last days in Indonesia

After the community visits, I stay a few more days to enjoy the beautiful Gili Islands - no vehicles apart from horse caridges, sand beaches, turquois water, swimming with the turtles, chilling out - perfect!

Sembalun (Lombok), a Community between Tradition and Modernity

On the steep slopes of Mountain Rinjani, it gets very cold at night when you sleep in a rice ban. But as soon as the sun comes out, a scenic panorama is revealed. Rice, garlic, tomato, chili, cabbage fields unfold in the valley against the background of the still active volcano. The indigenous Sembalun community settling here has scarce space to live. The steeper slopes cannot be cultivated. A part of their traditional land overlaps with the Mount Rinjani National Park, other areas where turned into big, privately- owned, plantations. A huge state-of-the-art greenhouse in the middle of the land traditionally used by the Sembalun for cattle ranching, on the territory of the national park further reduces the land available.

The introduction of modern large-scale agribusiness and private land ownership has over the last decades considerably devastated the natural resources, diminished the forest and threatened the water sources. The customary strict adat rules of land use became seriously eroded. Worried for their livelihoods, a group around Abdulrahman Sembahulun tries to revive the adat rules and to teach sustainable agriculture. They reached an agreement with local authorities and the national park management to base the management of the traditionally protected forest on adat rules agreed by consensus. According to the agreement, the protected forest can only be used for nature tourism, cultural ceremonies, and to harvest fruit or medicine plants for local consumption, not trade. It is forbidden to extract any kind of wood or hunt animals. Whoever wants to fell a tree needs to receive a permission, subject to a proof that 10 new trees have been planted. Newly-married couples have the obligation to plant 4 new trees and care for them.

Traditionally, of the 24 000 hectar belonging to the customary Sembalun land, only about 4000 are converted to be used for fruit and vegetable agriculture, pasture land for livestock, rice fields, settlement and harvest stocks. The remaining area is remains for the biggest part intact nature, consisting mainly of forests. In recent times, cattle running free have become a problem, together with forest fires, damaging the intact or freshly reforested areas.

A Night in an Airport Hotel

In between two exciting, but strenuous trips to visit forest people, I decided to spent one night in a Jakarta airport hotel. The price (40 Euro) being well above my previous standards, I hoped for a bit of luxury and Western-style standards in a place advertised as “features of a 5 star hotel for the price of 3 stars”. It became another experience in cultural differences. The trouble started with the usual language problems in a hotel that has everything written in English only. I called 8 times to arrange my pickup from the airport, having to answer at least 20 times the same questions, but still not being understood. No matter what you say, the hotel staff has exactly 3 sentences as reaction at their disposal: What is your name? What is your position? A moment please (music).

At the check-in, I´m asked to leave a deposit of 1 million Indonesian Rupie in cash (the website mentions the prices in USD and the possibility to pay by credit card). 1 million rupie deposit for one night – that’s the equivalent of 2 internal flights in Indonesia or a bit less than the maximum amount you can withdraw at most ATMs.

The room I´m led to is enormous in size, chrome and glass everywhere – and stinks beyond description. It takes a while to explain why I don’t want to stay in a room previously inhabited by a non-stop smoker.

Finally settled, I make my way to the spa area passing through a chain of Karaoke bars. In the highly fancy showers, the first thing I see is a used (but washed) women’s tampon.

The swimming pool looks like a disco in Saturday Night Fever – the music being the same style and volume. Nobody uses the giant swimming pool. All other guests – exclusively male, old, fat and probably of Chinese origin, sit next to it and smoke, eat and chat loudly. All staff is exclusively young and female (ratio: 5 staff to 1 guest). Suddenly, I spot a female guest in the steam bath. She is wearing black leggings, a long-sleeved dress and a black cardigan. I enter the sauna and stop astonished by the shabbiness of the wood and dirt on the floor. Immediately, 3 girl-staff rush towards me to remind me that the use of towels is not allowed in the sauna. They offer to exchange my towel against a handkerchief-sized new one, wet and fresh from the fridge…In reaction to my remark that this is a bit small to sit on, they open their eyes widely: You want to sit down on the bench in the sauna??? Actually, no. I finally realize that this hotel does not advertise itself in English as it targets Western tourists, but male Asian business men.

I wonder if my Asian friends find anything strange in what I described here. Cultural differences are of course the more striking the less you expect them. I suppose my visit to an Indigenous community in Lombok tomorrow will in that sense be less surprising.

Kasepuhan: A Community living in the foggy mountains of West Java

The first trip to visit forest people with Yuyun leads me to West Java, an area not far from beautiful coastal beaches where the mist turns the mountain tops into a mysterious wonderland. Going up and down the steep slopes, we pass through a rich, lush forest, which looks much more like a real rainforest than the selectively logged one I saw in the Mawas area in Central Kalimantan.

The Kasepuhan, as many indigenous in Indonesia, have been victims of a policy of designing national park boundaries without attention for the communities living in the area. When the Gunang Halimun- Salak National Park was considerably enlarged in 2003, the traditional lands of thousands of Kasepuha were included. Parts of these lands belonged previously to a state-owned forestry company, which recognized in an agreement in 1969 the traditional rights of the Kasepuhan. Now, the park management demanded from the Kasepuhan to abandon their agroforestry lands. In a recent conflict escalation, 8 community members were arrested and sentenced to prison for logging trees they claim to have planted themselves. The community hopes to resolve the conflict with the help of a newly founded commission of the local parliament.

Land-use is strictly reglemented under customary (adat) rules within the Kasepuhan community. They distinguish forest, steep slopes with bamboo groves, agroforestry areas, rice paddies and fish ponds. Rice is cultivated only for their own consumption, while a wide-range of further agricultural produces, mainly fruit and vegetables are sold to the local markets. The forest areas is divided into protected forests (60%), where entry or removal of anything is strictly forbidden without permission of the community leader. In the closed forest (20%), community members may only harvest non-timber products. The open forest (20%) is used for all other purposes (paddy rice fields, rotational agriculture, agroforestry, housing, roads, mosques etc). Most water springs are located in the sacred forest which is also home to rare animal species. The right to log is very restricted, traditionally only allowed for parts of house or furniture construction. Non-timber material such as bamboo for the walls, palm leaves for the roof and palm trunks as supporting columns is extensively used to limit the consumption of precious trees as far as possible. If timber is needed, it is trees planted by the community, not from the virgin forest, which can be felled. Degraded land is reforested.

When we arrive at the first village, we are lucky to be invited to participate in the celebration of a major event: the chief´s baby got 40 days old. We experience how the Kasepuhan merge old customs with new influences, using traditional instruments, dances and costumes alongside with microphones, videos cameras and mobile phones. Apparently, the community has managed to strike the balance between customary and modern use of resources. Customary rules still play an important role as I learn while having to wait for half a day to get an audience with the chief in order to properly bid farewell. On the other hand, young people are welcome to leave the village to study elsewhere and bring new ideas on their frequent visits back home.

Competing views on Forests and REDD: From CIFOR, to Rizaldi Boer to Yuyun Indradi

The 16th of June I spent in Bogor with a marathon of meetings and interviews with Indonesian forest experts. I learned that the variety of views is as wide as known from Europe.

CIFOR
The day starts off with a series of meetings with CIFOR staff - probably the single most important reference for applied forest research world-wide. Amongst others, I get to know Robert, the Program Director for Environmental Services and Sustainable Use of Forests, who is skeptical of efforts to combine reduced emissions, biodiversity and livelihoods and tells me sometimes you have to make hard choices. I meet Yves, the Ecologist, who is convinced of the usefulness of strengthening the land tenure and management rights of local communities to preserve the environmental services of the forests, at the example of the Moluccas model, only blocked by the Indonesian central government. His colleague Carol, an anthropologist, also sees a pivotal role for forest communities. She draws attention to the the fact that even the communities practicing shifting cultivation, burn maybe one hectare of forest for it, while big companies destroy millions of hectares.

Maurice, dubbed “Mr. Palm oil”, doubts these ideas of his CIFOR colleagues. In his eyes, you have to create jobs outside the forests, in the cities for forest people if you want to prevent them from selling their land to the logging and mining companies as soon as they get land-tenure rights. He praises palm oil plantations as providers of a salary for the rural people, while Yves puts a big question mark behind the claims of palm oil companies to manage their plantations in a sustainable way.

REDD & Climate Change: From Rizaldi Boer to Yuyun Indradi
At the end of the day, I meet two Indonesians who are just back from the Bonn climate change talks: Rizaldi Boer and Yuyun Indradi. Rizaldi is a co-author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Reports and by many in the Climate Change community considered as Indonesian REDD coryphée. Yuyun has earned a reputation as community-forestry and biodiversity expert in the NGO community. Two men, two schools of thought. Rizaldi teaches at the Bogor Agricultural University, Yuyun studied at the agricultural faculty in Yogyakarta. Rizaldi´s main topic is creating incentive-structures for companies to reduces emissions and to include aforestation and reforestation of degraded land into REDD. Yuyun´s main concern is about recognizing the rights and sustainable forest management practices of forest communities. Rizaldi´s main message to the EU is: Open up the European carbon market for forest credits. Yuyun advocates in contrast Greenpeace´s proposal to keep the markets separate with industrialized countries taking over responsibility for avoided deforestation measures in developing countries on top of substantial emissions reductions achieved by them back home.

Only half a year remains to build bridges to overcome such cleavages of opinion for an agreement in Copenhagen which caters for as many needs and circumvents as many risks as possible.

Ramayana Ballet

One of the most wonderful performances I have every seen in my life, Ramayana ballet in front of the Prambanan temple

Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil

On my flight back from Palangka Raya, I sit next to a representative from Wilmar, an Malaysian company trading in palm oil. He´s on his way to a biodiversity forum of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil in Jakarta. This forum is highly controversial , dubbed by some as greenwashers, by others as laudable, realistic economic initiative to render the production of palm oil less destructive. My interlocutor tells me, that the reason for his company to join the Roundtable was the difficulty to penetrate the EU market without it. Only 5% out of Wilmar´s about 2 million hectars are yet certified. In 5 to 7 years, they hope all plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia to be certified. But Wilmar also holds concessions outside these countries, in Africa (Ivory Coast, Uganda), and there no talk about including them in the certification process...Sounds like the certified oil is only destinated for the European market and in parallel the other growing markets, like China will be served by the non-certified palm oil.

Certification includes a huge number of criteria and indicators to be met. Wilmar tries not to repeat the mistakes of the past for instance by creating a buffer zone between its plantations and the water sheds, I am told. In Kalimantan, they have just decided not to touch 2000 hectars of land of particular ecological importance. Wilmar does not plan to buy new concessions either, but they already hold concessions for 200 000 hectars in Kalimantan, of which they only use half up to now. So they could still double their plantations....Still, the future lies in improving the yields of the existing plantations by better water management, using better species, more effective milling, according to my interlocutor.

REDD discussed in Jakarta Post

The Reader´s Forum of the Jakarta Post asked its readers to comment on the request of the Indonesian government to the international community to pay 4 bn USD to stop forest conversion. The letter are very interesting. "It´s ridiculous that the Indonesian government needs grants from the internationale community to avert deforestation. The problem caused by the failure of our government agencies to impose law enforcement, which has resulted in illegal logging and forest conversion in protected conservation areas, should be solved by our own authorities and own resources" is one comment. Others demand the eradication of corruption in forest governance and a solid plan of the government before pledges are requested. Again others welcome the demand, if it is used to improve the livelihoods of the local people. Seems the debate in the country is not too far away from debates in Europe about these questions....

The Mawas Project: REDD, Orangutans and People

The Mawas project
The project I´m going to visit during the next days for my publication on best-practice forest management schemes combines in a unique way reduced emissions from deforestation, biodiversity and ecosystem conservation and livelihood concerns for local people.

The peat lands of Central Kalimantan store extremely high amounts of carbon, and release them when drying out, in combination with the powerful climate gas methane. Peat domes regulate the water household of the entire region. Southern Central Kalimantan is flat up to the coast. During the rain season, peat domes take in huge amounts of water like a sponge, thereby avoiding large floods.

About 3000 wild orang-utans live in the area.

There are about 100 000 people living in 58 settlements on the margins of the project area. About 40% of them are indigenous dayaks, and about 60% domestic migrants from other islands of Indonesia, such as Java, explains the Programme Development Manager Juliartia Bramasa Ottag. Those migrants are originally farmers who were hired by former dictator Soeharto for a giant rural development project in the late 1990sb. Soeharto wanted to transform the “unproductive” peat lands into mega rice fields. The project failed, but repercussions are still felt heavily in the area. Long canals were built for the rice cultivation which cut the peat domes into pieces, the water drained and the land dried out. The Mawas project works with international experts to restore such a big peat dome. The domestic migrants were left without the promised economic basis and many resorted to destructive logging, mining and plantation activities. To develop alternative, sustainable, non-destructive but still profitable economic activities with them is one of the big challenges of the Mawas project. Another challenge is the reconciliation and establishment of structures for peaceful co-existence of dayak and migrants. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, violent conflicts between these two groups erupted. For the dayaks, the Mawas management proposes to grant them rights of access to the site to continue their traditional, small-scale economic activities such as selective logging of individual trees, collection of other forest products. Unfortunately, this concept of “right to access for limited, small-scale traditional activities” is not yet recognized under Indonesian law for conservation areas. Another challenge is to ensure that such access rights are not abused by other outside actors who incite the local people to extract more than needed for their own consumption against payment. Small-scale rubber, rattan, rice cultivation, cattle ranching and fish pond maintenance on degraded land are further activities developed on the outskirts of the area. Important is the diversification and economical as well as ecological sustainability. In order to avoid the recurrence of the devastating forest fires of the past, local fire brigades are build and knowledge on fire prevention disseminated. Climate change and destructive land-use practices have made the land much more prone to large-scale fires, than it was the case in the past.

Conflicting priorities for land-use
A major problem in Central Kalimantan is the lack of coherent spatial planning. For years now, the district, provincial and national administrations pursue contradictory plans. The district level often favours more palm oil plantations (the revenues from concessions going to them), the provincial level wants to enhance settlements and agriculture and the national level advocates logging (revenues going to them) and conservation. On the ground, regulation is anyways often pure theory, with many illegal and unlicensed activities going on.

Financing Mawas by offsetting?
Apart from the governmental endorsement of the Mawas management plan, financing is a major challenge. Development cooperation funds only finance the development and implementation of a project, but do not provide long-term financial flows. Private and public investors are interested in off-setting and greenwashing their own destructive activities. Shell wants to offset its carbon footprint, the government of Australia as well in order to avoid domestic emission reductions and the roundtable on sustainable palm oil is looking for biodiversity compensation areas for its plantations. More altruistic donors are difficult to find.

Visit to the Mawas project of BOS (Borneo Orangutan Survival)

BOS
BOS (Borneo Orangutan Survival)is an NGO trying to rescue the last remaining orangutans, mankinds close relatives. The word `orangutans`, stands for “man of the forest” in Indonesian. According to a legend, the orangutans are humans that pretend not to speak in order to avoid being forced to work. The orangutans live high up in the trees on Borneo/Kalimantan and a few in Sumatra. Of once millions of orangutans, only about 60 000 thousand are still alive, and if the destruction of their habitat continues, they will be extinct in some years. BOS tries to secure some safe habitats for them. They collect orangutans found for instance in the palm oil plantations, cure them, if needed (many carry human diseases or are hurt from bad treatment) and step-by-step release them to their new homes.

Palangkaraya

Palangka Raya
I immediately fall in love with the architecture in Palangka Raya. Coming from the airport, we drive through newly build quarters. Construction work is going on everywhere. The houses are in traditional, style, but modern versions. The roof tiles shine in all colors, red, blue, green, with adorable wooden decorations. You can see that the city got rich recently, to a large extent due to the economic activities which destroy the rainforest: gold and coal mining, oil drilling, plantations, logging, as Nina, my friendly guide from BOS for the next days explains. She takes me to a restaurant featuring the local indigenous dayak cuisine. I enjoy rattan and grass with sweet water shrimps and fish from the rivers of the region. Delicious!

Interview with an adviser on REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) to ASEAN

My visit to the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta

Yesterday I met up with an adviser to the ASEAN Secretariat on REDD questions.
ASEAN is trying to formulate a joint REDD position, as it does not feel sufficiently represented by other groupings such as the G7. Indonesia as the country with the largest remaining forests (almost half of all ASEAN forest cover) and the largest total deforestation rate, was designated to take the lead.

In Indonesia, a major hindrance to effectively curb deforestation is the fragmented competences over forest issues. In Kalimantan, where I go today, local governments continue to hand out licenses for coal mining on land, which is declared conservation forest by the national government. The decentralization of competences a few years ago showed mixed results: many local and regional politicians are closely linked to the businesses which engage in large-scale deforestation activities. I´m reminded that Indonesia is only a young democracy, where democratic scrutiny and oversight by the people does not (yet?) function very well.

Asked for the priorities to tackle deforestation in Indonesia effectively, I am told that first and foremost, the different policies of the different state actors need to be brought into line and contradicting decisions on forest use eliminated. Another vital stepping stone would be a reformed, clearer tenure right, with improved rights for local people and communities and simplified procedures for them.

Her main hope for Copenhagen is accordingly a firm and clear agreement on REDD, including a new forest definition which distinguished between natural, pristine forests as conservation priority and other forests (plantations, a/reforested land). She insists that we cannot have REDD without good governance. Therefore, FLEG remains relevant and inseparable with REDD and should be one of the building blocks of REDD.

Concerning the new Indonesian regulation on REDD (the first of its kind worldwide), I hear that a main immediate purpose is to regulate the various ongoing voluntary REDD activities for carbon-offsetting in the country. With this regulation, the national government wants to stop foreign investors to by-pass it and to negotiate directly with the sub-national administration. The regulation is to set national standards and to ensure a share of the revenues for the national level.

Asked whether different aspects of forest governance such as biodiversity and livelihoods are dealt with in the ASEAN REDD network discussions are denied. As in general, competences over these different forest-related issues are fragmented in ASEAN. Putting forest governance on a higher political agenda is seen as the only way to incorporate these different aspects and reach effective and coherent policies. Another problem is the lack of donor interest in funding regional, trans-national approaches.

2nd day in Jakarta

Ok, I admit, Jakarta is a very exhausting city. No way to get around as pedestrian, you don’t even manage to cross the street or walk 50 to 100 meters on a side-walk. There are just no traffic lights foreseen for pedestrians and side-walk end after a few meters, leaving you the choice to continue walking directly on a street with very dense traffic (without any traffic breaks) or calling a vehicle to transport you. Its hard to breath, the fumes from the traffic are heavy.

Problems to adapt physically
After 3 days, my body has still problems adapting to the time difference, the very different daily rhythm (people get up very early in the morning, often after the morning prayer at 4am and go to bed early) the heat and steamy air (it´s about 36 C), the constant quick changes between heat outside and air-conditioning inside buildings and cars, the air pollution (my nose is running non-stop), the food (tummy revolting)…I write these lines at midnight, being happy that I have been able to sleep a few hours between 20h and 23:30h, knowing that the muezzin will wake me up at 4h again, if I manage to sleep until then…

Kind, open people
There are hardly any foreigners in Jakarta. People look at me with curiosity, children and adults alike. Some try to enter into contact, in Bahasa Indonesian (it´s indeed very difficult to get along without the language, even drivers of the reputed bluebird taxis, recommended by tourist guides, don’t speak a word of English nor do they necessary know to read an address or a map) or English. The percentage of women wearing the Indonesian-style head-scarf which leaves the face free, but not a glimpse if hair is about 50% I guess in Jakarta, and it starts already in very early childhood.

First day in Jakarta

Interesting new encounters already on the flight and first eve in Jakarta. I spend the flight next to a very friendly woman working for the German(socialdemocrat) Friedrich Ebert foundation in Jakarta. She gave me a crash course in Indonesian culture and language. In theory, Bahasa Indonesian is not very difficult, but after hours and hours of trying, the unfamiliar words dont want to stick in my memory. In particular the expression for `thank you` (terima kashi) and the many different ways to say `good morning` (always closely watch your watch to chose the right form). The Friedrich-Ebert foundation works a lot with trade unions on questions like workers rights and minimum salary.

Once in Jakarta, I`m impressed by the city at night. Jakarta was described to me as a moloch, a monsterous city you should avoid as far as possible. But now I enjoy the glittering city, stretching my head as far back as possible to try to get a glimpse of the top of the high-rise buildings.

The evening in my very basic losmen (guesthouse), I get to know a Belgian and an Dutch-Indonesian guy. they take me out to a local street-side restaurant. The food comes from a particular city on Sumatra, Padang. It`s particularity consists in the fact that it is composed of many different dishes, none of them containing any veggies, only meat, sauce, rice. Another particularity of this region of Sumatra is that local people practice the matriachat. We spend the eve chatting in Dutch. The two friends came to Indonesia for a special business: they want to hire cheap Indonesian workforce for Dutch companies who are to work in the Middle East on oil plants. According to them, Indonesians can touch this way a salary 10 times higher of what they get in Indonesia (about 100 euro/month). They also work in collaboration with the trade unions to hire their staff.

On the way home, we pass under a train bridge. People sleep on tables on the street, next to the bridge. Not long ago, I`m told, these homeless still lived under the bridge which protected them from the heavy rains. Now a company bought the space, put a fence around and uses it as a parking space. Expansive cars can now park on the newly sealed clean ground, the homeless have lost their improvised shelter.

Now I got to leave, off to my first interview in the ASEAN Secretariat.