El Nino, man-made disaster threaten Dayaks

By Carol Colfer

BOGOR (JP): Pictures of the dramatic flooding that characterizes El Nino in the western hemisphere have been rampant in recent weeks. But there is a different side of El Nino in the eastern hemisphere: drought. It may provide less dramatic disaster photographs but the effects on local people are just as profound.

I first went to Kalimantan in 1979, to do ethnographic research on the interactions between people and forests. I became a part of the Dayak community of Long Segar, in a sense, and have maintained my connections with the people and my interest in their way of life ever since.

One of my studies is land-use history, which looks at people's use of land and forest since the people first moved to Long Segar from their homeland further inland, in 1962. I first did this study in 1980, returned for an update in 1991, and yet again this past June.

El Nino did not prompt these studies, but its importance has been obvious from the beginning. There was a serious El Nino in 1971 to 1972. The most obvious impact on local people can be seen in their rice production, their most important food, crop and the main source of their subsistence. People averaged 72 kilograms of rice per hectare in 1972 (in contrast to their overall average of 1.2 tons).

In the 1982 to 1983 period, El Nino was more famous globally because it resulted in serious forest fires that razed some three million hectares, including the area surrounding Long Segar.

They were able to save their village from fire only by heroic efforts. That year, their rice harvests averaged 143 kg per hectare.

The increased destruction from the 1982 to 1983 El Nino was obvious, even though rice yields were better than they had been in 1971 to 1972, suggesting a possibly less severe drought. Could the added carnage be -- related to the fact that the surrounding area had been logged in the interim -- drying out the forest and making it more prone to burning?

During their harvest festival in Long Segar in 1995, local farmers reported that it was their fourth year of drought, with predictably bad harvests yet again.

Was it an accurate commentary on their past four years or just a human tendency to exaggerate in the midst of misfortune?

Some alarm bells rang though because now, in addition to the logging activity that had been underway since the mid-1970s, 53,000 hectares of nearby logged forest were being cleared for industrial timber plantations, part of the Indonesian government's policy to provide trees for pulp and paper production.

The company had cleared 23,000 hectares already and brought in four communities of transmigrants to work on this plantation. Since the early 1980s, another huge transmigration area -- based on food and tree crops -- had sprung up north of Long Segar, bringing thousands of families who appeared to be increasingly reliant on shifting cultivation to meet their daily needs.

My latest study raised a frightening specter. Rice harvests since 1991 have declined from the previous average of 1.2 tons/hectare to one ton; the people lived through two successive years of harvests averaging only 0.7 ton/ha; the third and fourth year's production were only 0.9 ton/ha and 1.0 ton/ha, respectively.

In the previous 28 year data set, there were only five years where average production fell below 900 kg; and only one two-year stretch of yields this low (1971 to 1972 and 1972 to 1973).

There had been no declining trend in rice fields over time. From a global standpoint, 1991 to 1992, 1994 to 1995 and now 1997 to 1998 have all been classified as El Nio years, with this year showing all signs of being a whopper.

Fires have been blazing all over Sumatra and Kalimantan throughout September. Water levels in East Kalimantan's Mahakam river have been so low throughout the month that Samarinda has been without piped water due to saltwater intrusion from the ocean.

Airports throughout Borneo have regularly been closed because of poor visibility related to the forest fires. The Straits Times reported on Sept. 20, 1997, that pollution in the Bornean state of Sabah surpassed the maximum 500 mark on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Pollutants Standard Index, registering 658 on Malaysia's Air Pollution Index, and was endangering people's health.

Malaysia declared Sarawak a disaster area (International Herald Tribune Sept. 20, and Sept. 21). Indonesia reported evacuating people from one Riau village because of air pollution levels. Predictions are that the rains will not come until November or December.

I have no doubt that this year, rice yields will again be below 100 kg per hectare. I fear even more devastating fires.

In the past, the people of Long Segar, and other forest communities, have had the surrounding forest as a back up food supply. Animals could be hunted, forest foods could be gathered (ferns, palm hearts, edible leaves, fruits), forest fibers and medicines could be gathered for sale.

But now, much of the forest has been cut (for government- planned transmigration and plantations).

The forest people, whose much maligned "slash and burn" agricultural systems allowed them to coexist with and benefit -- along with the rest of us -- from the forest for centuries, may now genuinely be about to lose it and lose out completely.

The writer is an anthropologist a the Center for International Forestry Research.