Jambi indigenous people losing their jungle

Jambi indigenous people losing their jungle

By Pandaya

BANGKO, Jambi (JP): Although he has no clock, Nudin was as
punctual as a Swiss watch.

When a group of visitors came to his shack in Rejosari village
at an appointed time, he would be there, having just gotten back
from hunting and clutching a dead giant monitor lizard in his
right hand and a sickle in his left.

Accompanied with an interpreter, he would lead his guests into
the complex of shacks in the bush by a country road where he
lived with four relatives. His home consisted of four rudimentary
benches made of raw tree trunks. Two shacks had black plastic
roofs and the other was roofless.

"Life is getting hard now while the forest is dwindling," said
Nudin, one of an estimated 1,000 isolated Kubu tribespeople
living in Bukit Duabelas, a five-hour drive east of Bangko.

The lizard, measuring about one meter from head to tail, was
his only catch for the day. Gone were the days when Orang Rimba
(indigenous people, as the Kubu proudly call themselves) took
home pigs and deer.

Nudin and several dozen tribe members were displaced from
their home and have settled at the edge of the forest. Unlike
other fellow tribespeople in the jungle, they already had much
contact with outsiders and were accustomed to the modern economy.

Bukit Duabelas, home to 1,024 of the estimated 2,670 Kubu
people across Jambi, is in grave danger due to rampant illegal
logging.

According to Warsi, a Bangko-based nongovernmental
environmental group that sponsored a media tour to Bukit Duabelas
last week, the forest's destruction is unstoppable because it
involves a conspiracy between corrupt government officials from
all levels and greedy businessmen.

Many tribespeople, who see the jungle as their single source
of livelihood, believe that the end of the world is coming soon.
They cannot do anything to stop the chainsaws and sawmills that
are devouring their forest.

Statistics at the provincial forestry office showed that in
1997, Jambi had registered nine plywood factories, 73 sawmills
and one pulp factory. Illegal sawmills are believed to outnumber
licensed ones.

The indigenous people are quickly losing their jungle where
they have lived for generation after generation.

They have always lived on the generosity of mother nature.
They collect forest products like wild tubers, animals, honey and
fruit, aside from their cash crops of rattan and resin they sell
to tauke (city entrepreneurs, usually Chinese, who come regularly
to the forest).

"Where else can we go when all the trees are chopped down and
every inch of the forest has been turned into oil palm
plantations," asked Tumenggung Mija, a Kubu tribal chief of
Kejasung Kecil.

Bordering Batanghari river in the north, Tabir river in the
west, Merangin river in the south and Tembesi river in the east,
Bukit Duabelas supports the indigenous people with its fertility
and rich biodiversity.

Since much of Bukit Duabelas has turned into desert, the
government has concentrated conservation efforts on the 26,800-
hectare hilly biosphere in the center. Most of the people live in
the low-lying area north of the hill, where forests are thin. The
government has earmarked land there for plantations, housing and
farming.

Bukit Duabelas has been increasingly threatened since the
1970s when the Indonesian government offered a private company,
PT Alas Kesuma, a concession to cut trees.

As the government has heavily relied on forest products and
oil for foreign exchange, it has issued more permits to various
timber companies to exploit Bukit Duabelas and forests elsewhere
in Jambi since then.

The tragedy for the indigenous tribe at Kejasung Kecil is the
total loss of over 20,000 hectares of forest. The land is now a
desert and there is no activity there.

The state-owned forestry company, Inhutani V, in cooperation
with the private company, PT Sumatera Utama Timber, has set up a
joint venture called PT Sumber Hutan Lestari (PT SHL) to make the
denuded land an industrial forest estate.

To assure the public that the project was well-intentioned,
they recruited people under the state-sponsored transmigration
program. But there are no signs of the project starting.

The project was strongly opposed by environmentalists and the
public because converting the area into an industrial forest
would mean PT SHL was licensed to indiscriminately cut the
remaining trees.

"We will defend our forest if our home is at risk, no matter
what may happen," Mija said.

Agus, a Warsi activist, said the 20,000-hectare area was now
denuded and the surrounding forest was designated as a selective
production forest where no tree under 60 centimeters in diameter
was allowed to be cut.

But destruction of forests in the area and elsewhere in Jambi
continues despite protests from all quarters. Last week, hundreds
of students staged a demonstration demanding that the provincial
government do something to stop the illegal logging across Jambi.

In their petition, they said that the looting of timber was
made possible due to the involvement of corrupt government
officials.

Theft of timber was also reported to have destroyed much of
Bukit Tigapuluh and Bukit Berbak reserve forests in Jambi.

"We have done our best to stop illegal logging at Bukit Berbak
in cooperation with the Army and police but we did not succeed,"
Supriadi, chief of Bukit Berbak reserve forest, told Antara.

As in Kejasung Kecil, Bukit Tigapuluh and in other places,
illegal logging in Bukit Berbak involves local villagers that
tauke pay to cut trees for them.

Minister of Forestry and Plantation Muslimin Nasution promised
improvements to forest conservation efforts when he visited Jambi
last week.

Nasution pledged to revoke the permit the local government
issued for PT SHL to turn Kejasung Kecil into plantations. He
said the (denuded) forest should be relinquished to the
indigenous people who have customary rights to it. He also
lamented the lenient punishment served on those found guilty of
illegal logging.

He ordered the local forestry office to question the light
punishment the local court handed to 14 cases of timber thefts
between 1997 and 1998. The criminals were put on probation and
ordered to pay small fines.

"I declare war on illegal loggers," he said.

Although Nasution's statement for journalists and
environmentalists sounded sincere, its implementation may not be
that easy as supervision in the field is a tough job.

It is a jungle out there. The culprits, involving corrupt
government officials, security authorities, tauke, journalists,
villagers and hoodlums are well-organized.

Warsi pointed out the most damaging policy was Inhutani V
which awarded the timber use permit (IPK) that allows loggers to
cut trees outside the area agreed to without authorities being
able to do anything to stop it.

A group of reporters and environmental activists who visited a
quay at Batanghari river, a port used for shipping stolen timber,
were confronted by a group of hoodlums. They threatened to kill
the uninvited guests.

In this same area, four Kubu protesters were killed and the
case was never taken to court.

Marid, another Kubu tribal chief, said the logging companies
in his area threatened to kill anybody who insisted on cutting
their trees.

"We are afraid of their guns... we don't have anything to
stop them," he said.