Toro United Nations award contender

Toro United Nations award contender

The Jakarta Post, Margaret Agusta, Contributor

The Toro community of Central Sulawesi is among 26 finalists
for the United Nations Equatorial Prize for environmental
protection to be presented at the ongoing Conference on Parties
7th Convention on Biodiversity, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The six winners will be announced at the international meeting
of representatives of states, traditional equatorial communities,
non-governmental organizations and business people, which is on
now until February 21.

The Equatorial Prize is awarded every two years to traditional
communities living along the equator that successfully protect
their local environments while improving the welfare of their
people.

According to Soeryo Wibowo, a senior researcher at the Bogor
Institute of Agriculture, the Toro villagers of Kublai district
in Donggala regency near the Lore Lindu National Park had been
nominated by the Central Sulawesi office of CARE International in
August 2000 for the US$30,000 Equatorial Prize.

"In mid January, the United Nations development program
formally announced that Toro village was one of 26 finalists for
the Equatorial Prize, and that two Toro villagers were invited to
attend the conference in Malaysia," said Wibowo on Tuesday.

Wibowo has been researching the Toro community's collective
efforts at overcoming their current environmental and economic
problems by reviving their customary law and cultivation
practices since March 2002.

"At the conference, the Toro village representatives will have
the opportunity to meet people from other equatorial communities,
to make a presentation on their efforts, and exchange experiences
on biodiversity protection," Wibowo further said.

The Toro community's biodiversity-protection initiative began
in 1993 with efforts to re-establish their cultural identity as
an important basis for their customary natural resource
management.

Since that time, the villagers have succeeded in re-
establishing environmentally friendly utilization of natural
resources and traditional cultivation practices of crop rotation.

Their efforts at biodiversity protection have already won them
the right from the Lore Lindu National Park authorities to go
into the surrounding protected forest to collect rattan, bark and
other materials for their small-scale craft industries.