Village takes stand against logging

Village takes stand against logging

Sebastien Blanc, Agence France-Presse/Setulang

The Borneo village of Setulang was offered US$300,000 by loggers
who wanted to hack down their trees. The villagers considered the
offer, then in a rare stand against the illegal felling that has
laid waste to Indonesia's jungles, they refused.

It wasn't an easy choice for the 200 people of Setulang, who
live nestled under a canopy of immense, valuable and sometimes
extremely rare trees.

Many among the village's ethnic Kenyah Uma' Long farmers would
have gladly taken the money to improve their basic quality of
life. But the residents of Setulang are dependent on the forest
for their existence.

"In our community, opinions were divided between those who
wanted to make a deal with the loggers and the others," says
Ramses Iwan, a member of the village's council.

"But some of us have worked in Malaysia where trees have been
cut. They told us of the difficulties finding resources. We have
thought about our children and we have said no."

Indonesia, third only to Brazil and Democratic Republic of
Congo in terms of forest cover, has been pillaged by "timber
barons", merchants who bribe highly placed government officials
to ensure they can exploit forests with impunity.

The dilemma faced by the people of Setulang is repeated almost
daily across Southeast Asia, where an area of forest equivalent
to half the size of Switzerland is being lost annually in
Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.

"This is the typical modus operandi of the timber barons. And
on the first approach, many villagers say 'yes'," says Hapsoro, a
forest campaigner for Greenpeace in Southeast Asia who uses only
one name.

For many villagers the offer of cash is seized upon as it is
the first tangible return they have seen from the government-
owned land on which they live, Hapsoro says.

"But after the forest is gone, they realize they have been
cheated. They do not have anything left to fulfill their needs,
their resources are gone and they are finished."

Setulang's decision earned it a commendation at a summit in
Kyoto, the Japanese city which in 1997 gave its name to a
protocol to combat global warming.

On the banks of the Malinau river, which once carried only
dugout canoes to Setulang, gaps in the greenery testify to the
demolition in progress. The cacophony of wildlife is being
replaced by the rumble of bulldozers, loading logs onto barges
bound for Malaysia, China and Vietnam.

Experts say that most of lowland Borneo's trees will have
vanished in 20 years -- in the same way they will have
disappeared from the Indonesian regions of Sulawesi and Papua.
Deforestation in Indonesia is often secret and illegal, abetted
by the confusion caused by a power decentralization in 2000 that
put many decisions over logging in the hands of easily-
manipulated local officials.

It is not only the people who suffer. The forests of
Kalimantan -- the Indonesian part of Borneo where Setulang, 1,400
kilometers (870 miles) northeast of Jakarta, is located -- are
home to unique animal and plant species.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural
Resources says that because of deforestation, there are now as
few as 30,000 orangutans left in the wild, most of them in
Kalimantan.

Despite Setulang's stand, the unchecked felling of nearby
forest has taken its toll on the Kenyah Uma' Long, polluting the
rivers where they fish and destroying the habitat of the wild
boars that are their main source of meat.

Without the trees, says Iwan, his people would struggle to
survive.

"The forest answers many of our needs, from wood for
construction, medicine to many types of fruit. It is like a
safety net if we run out of rice."

Not all the people of Setulang are able to resist, joining the
loggers to earn cash they hope will allow them to leave their
traditional life behind.

Unscrupulous forestry firms often take advantage of their
skill in handling tropical wood, paying them low wages to work as
far afield as Brazil, Trinidad, Gabon and Guyana.

In and around Setulang, experts from the Centre for
International Forestry Research avoid telling the Kenyah Uma'
Long not to cut down trees, but offer them advice on ways to
limit the damage when felling.

"If their logging practices were a bit better, a lot of animal
species could be preserved." says David Kaimowitz, director
general of the centre.

Among their success stories is Lukas Sarun, a 35-year-old who
worked with exploitative logging gangs in Malaysia, using
helicopters -- an expensive method but one which limits damage by
extracting valuable logs without having to clear the land around
them.

Sarun studied further with the centre on returning to Setulang
and is now a fierce advocate of environmental protection, wearing
a T-shirt with the logo "responsible logging".

But the villagers of Setulang remain in the minority says
Greenpeace's Hapsoro, as despite pledges from the president to
combat logging and the arrest of officials, the government is not
educating forest communities.