The Jakarta Post, June 05, 2006
Recognizing 'adat' rights to preserve land
Harry Surjadi, Contributor, Bogor
In the middle of each year -- usually in March, April, June and sometimes in July -- we
often read press reports about droughts in some parts of the country.
In March 2005, for instance, The Jakarta Post reported that drought hit 12 regencies
in East Nusa Tenggara and West Nusa Tenggara provinces, drying up hundreds of
hectares of paddy fields. In June the same year, there were reports about drought in
Gunung Kidul regency, Central Java. Cassava crops failed and people struggled to
look for water as most of their wells had dried up.
Indonesia experienced severe droughts in 1982, 1983, 1987, 1993 and 1994.
Still, we hear more reports about floods than droughts. We experience more rain than
dryness, since we are located on the belt of tropical rain forests. Only some areas on
the northern coast of East Java, North and Southeast Bali, most areas of Nusa
Tenggara, Central Sulawesi, and South Maluku are categorized as dry with rainfall
ranging from 500 to 1,800 mm per year.
Rain forests are very humid with rain occurring throughout the year. Thanks to the
plentiful rain and humidity, we never consider that perhaps one day our degraded rain
forests and other forests will turn into deserts. In a 2005 report, the Ministry of
Forestry stated that Indonesia's deforestation rate had reached 2.84 million hectares
per year. Citing satellite data, the ministry said the country's forestry areas total
133.57 million hectares, all of which will disappear within 47 years at the
above-mentioned deforestation rate.
What happens if the forests disappear? Will deserts replace them?
Scientists say that a forest ecosystem controls the runoff of surface water with trees
maintaining cooling shade, and the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide by
photosynthesis maintaining the composition of the Earth's atmosphere. No one knows
exactly what will happen if Indonesian's tropical forests are completely destroyed.
According to the ministry, degraded and critical land in the country in 2006 reached
59.5 million hectares. And degradation will increase if more trees are felled.
If a small area of tropical forest is cut down, the temperature of the area will fluctuate
from extremely hot during the day to cool at night. If deforestation affects a quite large
area, the area's weather pattern will be altered. We do not have to cut down large
tracts of forest to feel the weather change. Bogor is a good example. As more and
more people have moved to Bogor, more trees have been cut down, and now it is
hotter in Bogor than it was 10 or 20 years ago.
Rain forests are not highly fertile. Fertile soil is made up largely of humus, the partially
decomposed remains of plants and animals. Nutrients in rain forests are locked in the
tissue of live plants. The top-soil in rain forests is very thin. Every year tons of leaves
and dead plants fall onto the forest floor. This organic matter quickly decomposes
since high temperature and moisture are ideal for decomposer organisms. The
decomposed matter becomes top soil. But the minerals released during the
decomposition process are rapidly taken up again by plants, and so almost all the
nutrients of the forest are locked within the bodies of living organism.
When rain forests are cut down and converted into agricultural land, the small
quantities of nutrients in the top soil are rapidly depleted. In many cases, the soil
bakes into a rock-hard layer within a few years, and then the agricultural land must be
abandoned. When traveling across Balikpapan, East Kalimantan, by plane, white
sand can be seen along the sides of the road from the airport to your hotel. Imagine if
Kalimantan no longer had any forests. Would the island become a very large desert?
Would it become arid? Maybe. Should that happen, it may take centuries for the
forests to regrow. If the damage is severe, the forests may never grow again.
In order to deal with desertification, the Earth Summit in 1992 proposed the signing of
the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).
Indonesia has no deserts, except for some "sandy areas" in Parangtritis and Bromo
and dry land in some parts of the country. Most of the world's deserts are located in
Africa. Yet Indonesia signed the UNCCD on Oct. 15, 1994 and ratified it on Aug. 31,
1998. Now 191 countries have ratified the UNCCD.
To stress the importance of the threat of desertification, the 58th ordinary session of
the General Assembly of United Nations declared 2006 as the International Year of
Desert and Desertification. And the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP)
has selected "Desert and Desertification" as a theme of Environmental Day 2006, with
the slogan "Don't Desert Drylands!".
UNEP's executive director Klaus Toepfer said in a press release, "Land is -- next to
water and air -- the very base of all life. But unlike air and water which can be cleaned
up and rehabilitated, once soils are lost it can take millennia for nature to recreate
them."
Many people misconceive desertification as a natural expansion of existing deserts. In
fact, desertification denotes land degradation: the loss of lands' biological and
economic productivities. Desertification is the process through which a non-desert
environment is transformed into a desert environment. It is a gradual process of soil
productivity loss and the thinning out of the vegetation cover because of human
activities and climatic variations such as prolonged droughts and floods. Vegetation
degradation affects cropland and rangeland as well as forests.
The WorldWatch Institute estimates that the Earth's landmasses lose as much as 24
billion tons of top soil every year. It has potentially devastating consequences in terms
of social and economic costs.
Among human causal factors are over-cultivation, overgrazing, deforestation and poor
irrigation practices. Such over exploitation is generally caused by economic and
social pressure, ignorance and drought.
What should we do then to combat land degradation? Because poverty forces the very
people who depend on land for their livelihoods to overexploit their land for food,
energy, housing and source of income, and land degradation is both the cause and
consequence of poverty. The government must address poverty at the core of its
strategy to combat land degradation.
The government has failed to protect the forests. But adat (traditional) people have
proven that they can manage their adat forests sustainably. The Dayak Iban tribe of
Utik River in West Kalimantan has preserved its 9,452 hectare forest while forests in
surrounding areas have been severely degraded due to logging.
Like many natural resource-dependent communities of indigenous people around the
world, they are legally marginalized. Their indigenous rights have been subordinated
by the state, often to powerful business interests that constantly encroach on their
ancestral lands.
Now the government must take into account the social structures and land ownership.
Indigenous or local people need some security of tenure to protect and manage forest
areas. The recognition of community-based adat or customary property rights and the
promulgation and institutionalizing of fair resource management policies are keys to
sustain the richest of Indonesian forests. Therefore, in the spirit of combating land
degradation, it is time to hand over forestry lands to the original owners. Put the
indigenous people in the center of the efforts to combat land degradation.
The writer is a freelance environmental journalist and executive director of the Society
of Indonesian Environmental Journalists.
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