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.