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.