The Real Meaning of Sustainability, Part V

Part V: How Aceh Timur and the Leuser Ecosystem Intersect—the good, the bad, and the very scary

 Remember the Sun article in which Mr Dowie stated that in many cases indigenous and local communities were being forced out of their homes in and near rainforests in the name of “environmental protection?”  And that large “conservation NGOs, in order to obtain funds, brokered deals between governments and large corporations for the right to change the designation of protected forest to “production” forest, who make promises to conduct “green” and “environmentally sensitive” clear-cutting, mining, and palm oil agribusiness?

I wanted to find out exactly how much of Aceh Timur is covered by protected forest, and where specifically which parts of these forests our folks in Simpang Jernih are living near.  So my next hunt was for information on the Leuser Ecosystem, which I’ve talked about previously in this blog, as well as other national forests in the area.

  Here is Aceh Timur.  It is about 85 miles long at its longest point, and about 60 miles wide.

 

Here is the Leuser Ecosystem BOUNDARY, in yellow, which includes lots of Aceh Timur as you can see but the part that is in Aceh Timur is not classified as a “national park” and so I do not know if this means it is protected.  This is something we will have to find out.

Source: http://www.grida.no/graphicslib/detail/conservation-areas-and-the-leuser-ecosystem_f6ce

Here is a little information from the Rainforest Action network on the Leuser Ecosystem.  (http://ran.org/act/protect-leuser)

Thousands of Indigenous communities rely on the forests of the Leuser Protected Ecosystem, a forest area on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, for their lives and livelihoods. It is also the last place on Earth where endangered species like the Sumatran orangutan and the Sumatran tiger coexist with elephants, rhinos, and Sunbears.

A sun bear.  Cute as buttons.

But the government of Aceh, the province in which the Leuser Protected Ecosystem lies, is considering a plan that would remove large regions of forest from the protected area, opening them up to palm oil and pulp plantations, logging, mining, and all of the roads and other infrastructure that come with them. The Indonesian government is now considering the plan, and has the power to reject it.

Well, this was news, so I followed that thread and found that this has happened quite recently: April of 2013 is when the story was picked up by many papers, including the Guardian:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/apr/17/mining-indonesian-forest

A Toronto-listed mining company says it is working closely with the Indonesian government to strip the protected status of some 1.6 million hectares forest on the island of Sumatra.

In a statement issued Tuesday, East Asia Minerals Corporation (TSX:EAS) claimed it is actively involved in the process of devising a new spatial plan for Aceh province, Sumatra's western-most province. The proposed changes to the spatial plan, which governs land use in the province, would re-zone large areas of protected forest in Aceh for industrial activities, including nearly a million hectares for mining, 416,086 ha for logging, and 256,250 ha for oil palm plantations.

"The company is working closely with government officials in the country and have company representatives on the ground in Aceh to obtain reclassification of the forestry zone from 'protected forest' to 'production forest'," East Asia Minerals said in a press release announcing the potential implications for its Miwah gold mining project. "Once forestry designation has been reclassified, the company will be granted the ability to continue the drilling program with the goal of expanding the resource at Miwah."

East Asia Minerals added that it "has implemented a new Corporate Social Responsibility program and hired ex-government officials to help them with these efforts." It also noted that the length of the reclassification "is primarily due to dealing with a coalition of environmental groups, and NGOs."

 Which NGO’s, I wonder???  Which environmental groups?

Miwah, it turns out, is in Pidie  District, of which Sigli is the Capital.  Pidie is northwest of Aceh Timur.  However, I’d just like to point out that the Smithsonian Volcano site lists Sigli as a Regency (district), which it is not.  Miwah is “ located near Seulawah Agam and Burni Telong volcanoes. The crater believed to be active resides SE of one of the peaks of the lava dome (Mount Tutung). This narrow crater has a diameter of about 70 m and a depth of 80 m.”

Okay, so this intensive and horrific mining project is not quite in Aceh Timur, but that does not mean we should all be complacent about it; JMD has worked in Pidie before and this is just as catastrophic for communities in those remote areas.

Before we turn to what I think is the best of the articles regarding this, I wanted to print a little info on the East Aceh Minerals Corporation.  Their website is shut down and they have no official statement on line about anything they do.  However, what they exist for solely is evident in articles written about them, like the one below:

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/east-asia-minerals-miwah-gold-project-closer-to-reclassification-in-aceh-indonesia-tsx-venture-eas-1779101.htm

About East Asia Minerals Corporation

East Asia Minerals is an Asian-based, Canadian mineral exploration company with gold and copper exploration properties in Indonesia. The Company has a 70 to 85 percent interest in three advanced gold and gold-copper properties located in Aceh Province, Sumatra, and Sangihe Island, North Sulawesi. The company's Miwah project in Aceh Province has an NI 43-101 compliant inferred resource of 3.14 million ounces of gold and 8.95 million ounces of silver. This is based on an estimated 103.9 million tonne resource averaging 0.94 grams per tonne of gold and 2.68 grams per tonne of silver using 0.20 grams per tonne gold cut-off. East Asia Minerals' shares are listed for trading on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "EAS".

Frank Rocca, AusIMM, Vice President Exploration of the Company, and a qualified person under National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical information in this press release.

For further information, visit the Company's website at www.eamineral.com. (website is shut down)

Michael Bacherland wrote a compelling, informative article on this situation for the Sydney Morning Herald (April 18, 2013) and I must write to him and see if he has a follow up, because there does not seem to be any more information on line after this April series of “exposes.”

Indonesian forest open for mining, logging

Michael Bachelard , Indonesia correspondent for Fairfax Media

Commercial exploitation: Forests in Aceh are being cleared for mining. Photo: Michael Bachelard

A mining company has boasted of an Indonesian government decision to free up 1.2 million hectares of virgin forest in Aceh for commercial exploitation.

The announcement to the Canadian stock exchange late on Tuesday was met with disbelief by environmental groups worried about endangered orang-utans, Sumatran tigers, rhinos and elephants across the heavily forested region.

But Ed Rochette, chief executive of Canadian mining company East Asia Minerals, celebrated the ''good progress and positive news for mineral extraction in the area''.

The company's announcement quotes Anwar, chairman of the Aceh government's spatial planning committee, as saying the Indonesian forestry ministry had accepted ''almost 100 per cent of the province's new spatial plan'' that would ''zone large blocks of previously protected forest for mineral extraction, timber concessions and oil palm plantations''.

Aceh has the most forest cover of any province in Sumatra, which lost 36 per cent of its forests in the past 20 years,'' the release says. ''The new spatial plan would grant nearly 1 million hectares of land for mining, 416,086 for logging and 256,250 hectares for palm oil.

'The plan would also approve an extensive new network of roads through protected forests.''

Mr Rochette said his company was ''working closely with government officials [in Indonesia] and have company representatives in Aceh to obtain reclassification … from 'protected forest' to 'production forest'.''

The company's Miwah gold concession is in a ''protected forest'' and the company is lobbying for approval for an open-pit mine.

Ian Singleton, of the Sumatran Orang-utan Conservation Program, said the news was ''devastating''. Logging and palm oil concessions would want to operate in increasingly scarce lowland forest ''where the densities of tigers, orang-utans and elephants live'', he said.

''They've been arguing for protected forest to be made into production forest, which is obscene.''

Another environmental expert in Aceh, Graham Usher, warned of ''all sorts of environmental issues for communities downstream''.

Here’s a Map of the mine http://www.mining-atlas.com/project/Miwah_Gold_Silver_Mine_Project.php

It’s near Peuet Sagua seems like Aceh Tenggara, very near Takengon

Coordinates 4°54′50″N 96°19′44″E / 4.914°N 96.329°E  20 miles from the coast;

So for those of you who want to join me down the rabbit hole, here is information on Peuet Sague:

Peuet Sague is a volcanic complex in the northwest of Sumatra, Indonesia. The name peuet in Acehnese language means square in English. The location of the volcanic complex is isolated that needs several journeys on foot from the nearest village to reach the mountain. There are four summits in the complex that all of them are located in the Sigli Regency, Aceh Province. One of the lava dome is called Mount Tutung and it has 70 metres (230 feet) diameter and 80 meters (262.5 feet) deep of an active crater.

http://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=261030&bgvn=1&rnum=region06&snum=sumatra&wvol=peuetsag&tab=1 Smithsonian volcano project

I know that this is all happening a bit to the west of Aceh Timur, but how these incursions are being choreographed and how officials are going about it bears scrutiny.  Forexample, 24HourGold’s website, interested only in what can be extracted from the area, reports that

The Miwah Property is in a very similar volcanic setting to the Martabe gold-silver deposit, also located in North Sumatra (Purnama and Baskara resources: 127.8 million tonnes at 1.4 g/t gold (5.5 million ounces gold) and 15 g/t silver (60 million ounces silver), and the alteration system is of a comparable size. Miwah also exhibits a likeness to the size, style and geometry of the alteration system developed at the Pierina gold deposit in Peru (67.7 Mt grading 2.98 g/t gold and 22 g/t silver, giving a total 6.49 million ounces gold and 47.9 million ounces silver). http://www.24hgold.com/francais/article-compagnie-or-argent-updates-progress-at-aceh-expands-south-miwah-bluff.aspx?articleid=532851

But they are reporting on this drilling in 2010, way before any compact was signed!!!  All these “agreements,” then, seem to be just decoration.  Mining and forest destruction has been going on for quite some time, one would assume, and has not been limited to just this area.

Here's some nice bureaucratic language on how to do corporate work in a protected forest:

Industrial tree plantation (ITP) concessions.

An ITP concession is a right granted by a government to develop an area of land into an industrial monoculture timber plantation (e.g. Acacia mangium, Hevea or Eucalyptus spp.). In Indonesia, ITP permits are issued by the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry on lands classified as ‘production forests’. Production forests’ (HPH Hutan Produksi<300 asl="" em="" m="">. and HPT Hutan Produksi Terbatas>300–500 m asl) comprise areas allocated for commercial logging, where conversion to another land-use is prohibited. However, the conversion of natural forests to timber plantations is not recognized as deforestation by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change because tree plantations are legally defined as ‘forest’ [38]. In Sarawak and Sabah, ITP permits are issued by the Forestry Department on lands classified as Commercial Forest Reserves (equivalent to Indonesia's production forests). In Sarawak, maps of industrial timber plantation concessions (called Reforestation Licenses, LPF) current as of 2008 were obtained from the Bruno Manser fund report in pdf format [39], scanned and digitized in ArcGIS. For Sabah, maps of Industrial tree plantations (called ITPs) were obtained from digitised Landsat 2000 data (derived from WWF Germany).

Logging concessions in natural forests.

Companies possessing logging concession licenses have the right to extract natural timber from natural forests. Deforestation (or open clearing) is prohibited in logging concessions, as timber should be extracted in a sustainable manner. For Kalimantan, maps of logging concessions were obtained from the national spatial planning agency (BAPLAN) of the Ministry of Forestry, in 1:250,000 scale and in digital format. The maps are current as of 2009–2010. For Sabah, a map of ‘production forest’ areas partitioned into forest management units was obtained from the Sabah Forestry Department. For Sarawak, maps of logging concessions for year 1996 were obtained from the Bruno Manser Fund report in pdf format [39], scanned and digitized in ArcGIS. In the absence of official up-to-date government maps for Sarawak, we cannot verify the accuracy of the logging concession map we used in our analysis.

Source: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0049142

Oh, we’re not done by any means.

Next: More on Leuser and Aceh Timur, plus: The Jakarta Post warned of Illegal logging in the rainforest  a month before the mining story appeared

 

The Real Meaning of Sustainability, Part IV

Part IV: Cultural Survival and a Post-Conflict Update

Today, just to keep a bit on top of things in this narrative, I looked up Steven Shewfelt, who as you recall did his dissertation (in 2007) on the different attitudes people had towards returning towards their homes in Aceh after the peace accord, and conducted an examination of their respective emotional and perceived economic states. As I read further in his dissertation I think I’m seeing that this study may not be as useful to us as I first thought, because it seems that he did not interview a representative sample of the communities, which include many women, children, and elderly/disabled. I believe that everyone he interviewed was from Java. It’s true that great many people from Java lived in and continue to live in Aceh (and Aceh Timur); this is mostly as a result of the transmigration program initiated by Jakarta in order to alleviate overcrowding in Java and populate the more “troublesome”regions of the country (cf East Timor during the 1979-99 occupation). So although many Javanese consider Aceh their home, their responses are by no means indicative of the thoughts, fears, hopes, aspirations, or collective memory of the Gayo and other indigenous groups who had inhabited those areas for generations.

For example, here’s some world factbook information on Aceh:

Ethnic Groups: 45% Javanese, 14% Sundanese, 7.5% Malays 7.5% Madurese,
26% , Other
26% “Other.” That’s a lot of “other!!!”
Languages: Bahasa Indonesia (official), English, Dutch, over 1,000 indigenous languages
One Thousand. Count ‘em.
Motto: Unity in Diversity
And yet . . . a post-conflict assessment that studies only half of 45% of the population (Javanese women being excluded)?

He reports at one point during his field interviews, “As the peace agreement has been implemented with considerable success, people who live in the province and see the day-to-day improvements in the security situation, even if they have not returned to their homes of origin, are less likely to hold on to the polarized sentiments through which they see a potential enemy in everyone who is not a known compatriot. This dynamic was evident in a focus group discussion with people who were still displaced but lived in Aceh." [I believe all these “people” were from Java; I must ask him about this.]

Interviewer: “Now, after the MOU, are you worried, afraid of experiencing prejudice or something?”

Respondent 1: “There is no prejudice anymore, because it’s not only Javanese here, there are also people from Gayo, Sumatra and Aceh. No matter here or anywhere else, the people of Aceh are now united. And there are ex-GAM members, for example in Sindang Balik, and they live here now, so [there is] no more prejudice and we are not worried.”

This type of finding is hard to evaluate, because Javanese would be far less likely to be the subject of any prejudice and could comfortably say that they felt no prejudice and so that because Gayo were living with them, everything was fine. That sounds vaguely like whites arguing that there isn’t any discrimination anymore because they see people of color everywhere. So I’ll have to talk to him about that if he responds.

But now, as promised, we go back a week or so when I was still trying to find information about how the province was faring post-conflict. Cultural Survivial is an interesting group and I grew excited when I found their web page with information on the Aceh Conflict.

http://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/indonesia/aceh-conflict-reconciliation

Here is an excerpt.

It is easy to understand why the Indonesian nation-state has denied Aceh independence. Jakarta wishes not only to preserve national unity, but also to develop other areas of Indonesia using profits derived from exploitation of the oil and gas deposits in Aceh. Aceh supplies 50 percent of Indonesian oil and gas. Aceh territory is also considered resettlement ground for Javanese migrants. The Acehnese, however, are opposed to this use of their land and have long aspired to independence. [my italics added.]

I was glad to read this because it gets closer to what we need to point out to more people in the position of affecting public and social policy regarding smallholder and indigenous rights in Aceh Timur.

However, as I feared, the article did not go far enough, in that these days, in fact for many years now, the Aceh provincial government wants to exploit this for themselves. This is what is thwarting attempts to assist the rural poor in these resource-rich areas of the province. This is why we can’t get a good-sized sustainable development grant for smallholders to save our souls. The Acehnese, it turns out, are NOT “opposed to this use of their land,” if by “Acehnese” we mean government officials and people who see their economic survival as dependent on large and destructive mining and agribusiness interests. It’s pretty hard for someone who can’t feed his family or get medicine for the baby to say no to a job in a gold mine because he knows inherently that this is destroying his ancestral home.

However, many good points are made:

During this struggle for independence, their human rights have systematically been disregarded -- they have been pillaged, raped, and disappeared. Thousands have been forced to leave their homes due to targeting by Indonesian military operations. At least 5,000 people have been killed in the last decade -- 345 in the first four months of 2000 alone. They have been forbidden to write in their own language, and their freedoms of expression, religion, and culture have been repressed. In response to those violations, the Free Aceh Movement, led by Hasan di Tiro, has been striving since 1976 (both militarily and diplomatically) to establish an independent state. GAM's leaders currently live in exile in Stockholm.

Sadly, Mr de Tiro died in 2010 after finally being allowed to return to Aceh, and receiving his citizenship back one day before his death. I believe that since the article first was published (2000) all GAM leaders have ceased living in exile.

Human rights violations are not the only reasons compelling Acehnese to seek independence. They feel that they are economically disadvantaged since most of the profits derived from their oil, gas and other products benefit other provinces. Instead of enjoying an improved standard of living, most Acehnese live in poverty. Jakarta's transmigration policy, [note: see above entry on Dr Shewfelt’s dissertation] which relocates workers from the overcrowded Java to other islands, is reviled. As a result of transmigration, Javanese immigrants populate the mountains and the industrial zones on the coast of Aceh, cutting off Acehnese access to the fish and rice necessary for subsistence. Perhaps most importantly, religion has dominated concerns for independence. Acehnese take issue with the fact that while Indonesia is 87 percent Muslim, it is not an Islamic state. The Acehnese have made several attempts to establish an Islamic state and continue to aspire to this goal. - See more at: http://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/indonesia/aceh-conflict-reconciliation#sthash.G13E2EUl.dpuf

 So it would seem to be helpful to know exactly: Who are the people living in Aceh Timur? Where did they come from? How many are indigenous, and how are we going to describe that? Are they Gayo? Malay? What per cent are Javanese?

Next Time:

How Aceh Timur and the Leuser Ecosystem Intersect—the good, the bad, and the very scary

The Real Meaning of Sustainability, Part III

Part III: East Aceh Post-Conflict

 Before we grab our administrative machetes and go deep into the Leuser Ecosystem to find out how the rainforest defines the people who live there, we’re going to talk a little about conflict, because as you will recall, I was wondering how to explain to potential donors that everyone in that area was conflict affected.  The thing about Southeast Asia and humanitarian assistance is that very little goes to trauma counseling, and so in areas like Aceh and East Timor you have people walking around literally like zombies, or else carrying these enormous psychic weights with them.  Different people have different ways of coping with tragedy.  But eventually I think that you have to acknowledge the bad thing, and what it did to you, and to your perception of what you thought this life was going to be like.  And if you are lucky there will be helpful people around who can gently guide you and support you as you come to your own terms with being a part of a club that no one wants to join.  And for many people, in fact the majority of Acehnese who lived through the conflict—I mean lived through it, as in it ran through their back yards and killed their animals and their husbands and then came back again and again, both sides, trampling over everything you ever owned or dreamed of—as far as I know, no agency or group ever came to them and said “So, how are you doing?  Would you like to talk about what happened?  Would you like to know it’s okay to cry and grieve and feel angry?” And don’t tell me that this culture does not need or want that.  I have seen this culture and these people want that, and not get it.

 So when I thought that we could develop a project that specifically targeted “children of conflict” (who are now In many cases in their 20’s and older) I thought that the first thing to do was to see if anyone had done any type of study or investigation into the specific region in Aceh where not only did the conflict take place, it was part of daily life.  Many families in Aceh Timur supported GAM.   Many communities felt that the peace accord would allow former combatants to join the provincial government staff and be part of the decision-making process, or be given pensions, or be offered services that allowed them to rebuild their lives as part of a “unified Indonesia.”  Ten years later, the majority of those people are still waiting for these things to happen.

 So far I found two possible places that will offer some assistance and shed some light.

One is an agency called Search For common Ground; it was founded in 1984, is very well-known and respected (I’d never heard of it), has an Indonesia component, and its mission “to transform the way the world deals with conflict - away from adversarial approaches and towards collaborative problem solving. We use a multi-faceted approach, employing media initiatives and working with local partners in government and civil society, to find culturally appropriate means to strengthen societies' capacity to deal with conflicts constructively: to understand the differences and act on the commonalities.”   http://www.sfcg.org/programmes/indonesia/index.html

They did a radio program in 2010 for youth, engaging 2 stations in Aceh Timur.

I’m going to look at their web page a bit more closely to see if I know any of these characters from “the old days.”  They also seem like a good agency to partner with in our search for specific Aceh Timur-related info.  Will report back later.

 The other interesting person I found is named Steven Shewfelt and he received his doctorate from Yale in about 2010; he did his dissertation on post-conflict life in Aceh and North Sumatra. (“An examination of the return and reconciliation process for displaced people in a post-conflict setting with a focus on Indonesia”) His interviews were conducted in 2007, though, and so the views of people may have changed over 6 years. I read parts of his dissertation and I have to write to him and ask him for some clarification of terms. I don’t understand his use “polarization,” for example, and it seems to be quite important in his study of the perceived needs of IDPs (Javanese men living in Aceh who fled their homes in Aceh to another part of Aceh, versus Javanese men now living in North Sumatra (the area to the south of Aceh, whose capital is Medan). I also question his blind faith in the responses of his respondents; when people say “the only thing that bothers me is I don’t have enough money” he states something like “well, that’s good that they aren’t suffering PTSD.”  He does, however, focus on Aceh Timur and Bireun as the 2 “oddball” districts of the province in terms of how they see themselves in relation to the central government.  Still, it doesn’t seem as if he is asking his questions of a diverse group, a true community sapling.  People living in Aceh Timur are Gayo, Javanese, and other indigenous groups.  No women or youth were interviewed.  He does reference a UNDP/IOM survey, and he mentions the 2006 Village Survey in Aceh, called An Assessment of Village Infrastructure and Social Conditions by the Kecamatan Development Program, which I am going to curl up with right now and see if it answers any of the questions to yesterday’s blog entry.  But I wonder what Steven is up to now, and will try to track him down. I’d like to ask him if he’s done any recent research. He may now have some good info on Aceh Timur youth post-conflict.

Or he may have decided to open a pet store in Brussels.  We shall see.

 But as I was reading all this material, I got to thinking that maybe what JMD needed was something very, very simple, a la Jane Goodall. Someone who goes into the sub-district for a month or two and just starts hanging out with the kids.  A documentary. Yakking with them, asking them anything and everything, then talking a bit to their parents, following them to their hangouts, just sort of a field observer.  Of course, the observer would have to have a list of things they’d want to find out or make assumptions about based on interactions, but it wouldn’t have to be a formal study.  Plus, I’ll bet that once “in,” the person could learn of other people who had left Simpang Jernih who could give another perspective. In this way we could find out, on a micro-level, what would it take to make people want to stay and raise their families in Simpang Jernih?

 Next: The Cultural Survival web page (and perhaps a wee summary of the Aceh Village Survey, should I live that long).  Do not worry: forest info is right around the corner!

The Real Meaning of Sustainability, Part II

Part II: The Sun Magazine and “Conservation Refugees”

 A few months ago, a colleague shared the 2005 issue of The Sun magazine with me.  It’s a great publication and its long-time (and I mean long, as in over 30 years) editor, Sy Safransky, seems to have limitless energy and enthusiasm for tackling tough issues all over the globe including, human rights, the environment, religious and cultural traditions, and personal/social responsibility [http://thesunmagazine.org].

 The editorial notes in this issue included heartfelt commentaries on the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and its aftermath; specifically Mr Safransky was remarking on the fast ebbing of interest in the recovery of those southeast Asian communities hardest hit, Aceh in particular.  The aftermath of the tsunami and how it affected him personally kept appearing in his writing throughout the magazine.  He acknowledged the existence of the Multi-Donor Fund but found it disturbing that the majority of the global community felt that reconstruction funding alone would make the area’s long-term political, social and economic issues miraculously evaporate.  So as early as late 2005 the Sun was noting the waning public interest in the people of Aceh, the devastation caused by the 30-year civil war that was curtailed only because the central government calculated that the tsunami had done what the Indonesian military could not, and the further marginalization of an already struggling population.

 I was wondering if we should write to Mr Safransky now, since he had been so empathetic regarding this event, and ask if he’d be interested in doing a follow-up story on Aceh 10 years after the tsunami (which will be 2014).  I’d been interviewed by ABC Australia and the New York Times in 2010 regarding the province’s progress, but I didn’t know currently of any media outlet that would be packing its travel bag to find out how, 10 years later, all those millions in aid had helped locals rebuild their lives.

 I thought that the Sun could write an article from the viewpoint of a teeny NGO nearly crushed from the weight of post tsunami “assistance,” that spoke to the inability of local NGOs to survive or be supported by the government in the face of international NGO “competition,” the continuing effects of the internal conflict and the miniscule assistance those victims received, etc.

 But I procrastinated a bit.  Then, a couple of weeks ago, intent on looking up poor Mr. S before he joined that great editorial board in the sky, I went online to get his contact information and came across one of the main articles in this month’s issue, called “Keep Off The Grasslands: Mark Dowie On Conservation Refugees” by Joel Whitney.

What Dowie is saying (and it would be interesting to see if his book has anything about the rainforest in Aceh in it) is that true conservation includes conservation of the people who live in the area to be conserved, and that “wilderness protection” is mostly a western construct dreamed up by the wealthy and powerful to enjoy “nature” all by themselves.  He argues that conservation groups have grown even more conservative than they started out, and in order to attract “easy” donations they get in bed with corporations who promise to conduct “environmentally friendly” activities that have no place being called anything but what they are: mining, oil drilling, clear-cutting, agribusiness.  In this way, the big NGOs “greenwash” the corporations’ involvement –they get big $$ from the corporation in exchange for brokering deals with this or that international or national government entity, and then the corporation gets to do whatever it likes.  But at the same time they operate in a backwards conservation mode: the people who once survived in the “wilderness” are now not permitted to enter it. They are disenfranchised, angry, and more likely to commit ecological crimes (both to sustain themselves and out of anger at the new rules).

So I started thinking about the Leuser Ecosystem and the protected forests in Aceh. This is, after all, the vast green backdrop for our work and our involvement with people in Aceh. If we want to know about people/youth living there, I think we have to know their contexts. One of the contexts is the conflict, to be sure, but the other is their environment. And their environment is now not their own. This is a very, very big deal.

 

So as I was reading this article, I started to ask questions (some I used to know the answers to, some I have the information for but will have to look it u again and post it during this posting series):

·         Who founded The Leuser Ecosystem?

·         Do Leuser and other organizations have “deals” with the Indonesian government in which “ecologically friendly” palm oil farming and mining are allowed to take place in exchange for big donations to their agencies?

·         Would Fauna & Flora International, with whom we almost implemented a Community Ranger Initiative  in 5 districts know anything about this?

·         When is the line drawn, and by whom, between subsistence hunting/farming and excessive/harmful use of the resource by local residents?

·         In Aceh Timur, should people who live on the buffer be allowed to hunt and get wood from the forest? And how much?  Can each family get, for example, one tree per year? One elephant?  Can you protect your family from a tiger? If you kill the tiger to save your child, can you sell it to a foreigner for a lot of money? 

·         What are the rules currently for the use of the forests in Aceh Timur and Simpang Jernih sub-district?

·         Who is supposed to enforce these rules?

·         Who made up the rules?

·         Who are the large concerns (oil, mining, agribusiness) operating in that area? With whom do they have agreements (conservation NGOs, givernment/provincial agencies, etc) and what are these agreements for?

·         If “Ali Citizen” in Aceh Timur is seduced into poaching, cutting trees and growing marijuana in the rainforest for money, who is he doing it for? A big company?  A private rich guy?  A GAM supporter who is planning “the revolution” and uses the $ to stock up arms and train the new army?

I just don’t know any of these things and it seems that if we are trying to figure out how East Aceh ticks, this backdrop is one of the places to start. The scenery for our play is the jungle.  It’s what gives everything and everyone life and purpose.  And I don’t think we understand it all that well.

I then started on a hunt for this information.  I put the word out to JMD’s staff that I’ll be asking a lot of questions to which they probably know lots of answers but which they never usually get asked.

“Let’s protect the wilderness” is a lot different, as this author points out, than “Let’s protect and improve the quality of life of people who have always lived here, who are probably the best stewards of the land when they are not starved into hurting it.”

I’m still thinking of writing to the Sun, and seeing if Mr Safransky is interested in doing a 10-year follow-up in Aceh Jaya, which is where JMD has implemented of its post-tsunami initiatives.  I’ve also got to ask him permission to use some of Joel Whitney’s interview on this blog.  In the meantime, I highly recommend that you read the Sun, especially this article (most of which is available to read online).  Below is its synopsis.

Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict Between Global Conservation and Native Peoples

By Mark Dowie (MIT Press (MA), Paperback, 9780262516006, 341pp.) Publication Date: February 2011

Description

Since 1900, more than 108,000 officially protected conservation areas have been established worldwide, largely at the urging of five international conservation organizations. About half of these areas were occupied or regularly used by indigenous peoples. Millions who had been living sustainably on their land for generations were displaced in the interests of conservation. In Conservation Refugees, Mark Dowie tells this story. This is a "good guy vs. good guy" story, Dowie writes; the indigenous peoples' movement and conservation organizations have a vital common goal--to protect biological diversity--and could work effectively and powerfully together to protect the planet and preserve biological diversity. Yet for more than a hundred years, these two forces have been at odds. The result: thousands of unmanageable protected areas and native peoples reduced to poaching and trespassing on their ancestral lands or "assimilated" but permanently indentured on the lowest rungs of the money economy. Dowie begins with the story of Yosemite National Park, which by the turn of the twentieth century established a template for bitter encounters between native peoples and conservation. He then describes the experiences of other groups, ranging from the Ogiek and Maasai of eastern Africa and the Pygmies of Central Africa to the Karen of Thailand and the Adevasis of India. He also discusses such issues as differing definitions of "nature" and "wilderness," the influence of the "BINGOs" (Big International NGOs, including the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Conservation International, and The Nature Conservancy), the need for Western scientists to respect and honor traditional lifeways, and the need for native peoples to blend their traditional knowledge with the knowledge of modern ecology. When conservationists and native peoples acknowledge the interdependence of biodiversity conservation and cultural survival, Dowie writes, they can together create a new and much more effective paradigm for conservation.

Next: Answering the questions above, one by one, is not as straightforward as it seems

 

The Real Meaning of Sustainability (a several-part series), Part I

Introduction:
How're You Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Cocoa Farm?

I’ve been spending the past two weeks alternating between elation, frustration, deep depression, and white fury as I try to sort out what seemed to be a simple, straightforward approach to one of the issues JMD will face and is facing in the implementation of this 36-month Phase III of the Women’s Cocoa Initiative in Aceh Timur.

The next few blog posts (possibly interspersed with some news that doesn’t make me want to leap out a window) will be a sort of chronological reporting of the scavenger hunt that has been my search for information about the true nature of the community in East Aceh.

It all started with a meeting I had with an old friend last December in Jakarta; he’s head of a pretty large company with a branch in Indonesia and was eager to see what he could do about getting the company to donate funds to one of our agriculture initiatives, specifically one that included goats. It was perfect timing because we were about to start Phase III of the Aceh Timur cocoa project, and we were curious about whether we could establish another group in the district that had never worked their cocoa fields before, and basically had to start from scratch. With this group we’d also start doing 100% organic fertilizer right away, without having to “wean” the trees (and the farmers) off the chemical stuff. This would require a lot of animal manure so there was (happily) and goat breeding/fattening component to the project. We sent Robert the intrepid Field Officer off to the more westerly wilds of Simpang Jernih sub-district to find some suitable villages, and we had great success. My friend assured me that the funding was practically a done deal. We submitted the application and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Then came the news that the Board of Directors needed to review the proposal. No, everything looked good, nothing wrong.

Then more silence.

Then, after another gentle prod on our parts, we got the sense that funding yet another agriculture project to yet another group of women was somehow. . . boring to these corporate philanthropists. We racked our brains to think of what could “sell” this project.

And we thought we found it in the body of a GTZ-funded project in Sierra Leone overseen by ACDI/VOCA through their Agribusiness Systems International (ASI) program. What appears to capture the interest of global donors these days is providing projects for people in post-conflict areas. And if you can serve youth in post-conflict areas, more’s the better. Now, BBF and JMD have been serving post-conflict individuals since the agency started, and I am too much of a gentlewoman to remind those who need to be reminded that although we begged BRR and the Indonesian government and World Bank AND the Multi-Donor fund to share the tsunami recovery money with conflict-affected communities, we were in effect shooed out of the building.

But now, post-conflict is the new black. And in Sierra Leone, a multi-million dollar cocoa and coffee improvement project was established that would “target youth employment through agricultural development” and “implement interventions that utilize[d] training, organizational and operational skill development, and increased access to agricultural production to integrate young people and increase youth employment.” Trainings would include “materials that will be used to increase production and marketing opportunities in coffee and cocoa for program beneficiaries,” and staff would be charged with “organiz[ing] and lead[ing] youth in forming marketing associations, LLCs, and/or linking with existing coffee and marketing organizations to sell coffee and/or cocoa products.” The project would also “work with producer organizations and other program beneficiaries to increase their understanding of the qualities and quantities required by international buyers and identify new markets,” and “explore existing end market opportunities for local cocoa producers and marketing associations and . . . facilitate value chain workshops for coffee, cocoa and other agricultural value chains that are important to [the area’s] agricultural industry.”

So I thought two things:

1) When did we create a parallel proposal for Sierra Leone?

2) If this is the new angle (get youth to do it,) maybe my friend’s company would like our proposal better if we mentioned that we also used “children of conflict” in our projects, not just those conflict widows and female heads of households who’s plight was so passé these days. In fact, some of our most successful goat-rearing projects involved pairing a widow with a young man from another family who was at risk of engaging in criminal activity (illegal logging, poaching in the protected forest, growing marijuana) just to have income for his own family.

So in July we called ACDI/VOCA to see if they were doing similar projects in Aceh (which we knew they weren’t because no international NGO is doing anything there these days in the field of sustainable livelihoods, and local NGOs don’t exist anymore). But we wanted to let them know that if they were thinking of establishing one, or wanted a local partner to implement one, JMD was the agency to call. It’s now August and although we have contacted people who have put us in touch with other people and everyone has assured us they’d get back to us, silence has reigned supreme.

Nothing new.

But I digress.

In the meantime, of course, was our successful first training in Pante Kera. Lots of community members attended. Women brought their kids. I started to think: will these kids want to be cocoa farmers? Will the sub-district be in the position to take a stand and “declare” that smallholder cocoa farming is how they want to “brand” their region? It was then that I started thinking about what true “sustainability”means. After JMD leaves Simpang Jernih and Pante Kera, the women farmers will have had enough positive reinforcement through more money and a better quality of life to continue the practices that they’ve used for the past three years. Okay so far. And maybe other community members join in the association. But what happens in the next generation? Will these people be able to convince their kids, and their kids, that the family business is not only lucrative but fun and fulfilling and helping their region become culturally alive and educationally superior? In other words, how you gonna keep em down on the cocoa farm?

We hear a whole lot about NGOs going into places and providing a service or developing a project that the NGO, not the community, thinks should be in place. Wouldn’t it be helpful, in this wild and desolate rainforest scarred by guerilla war and hospitable to only those who have known it for generations, to understand what makes those people tick? JMD’s staff has many close friends and colleagues in Aceh Timur, and from an agricultural, training, and in some instances a “case management” perspective, they know the people and their cultures and traditions better than most outside agencies do. But if we want to do pilot projects in Simpang Jernih that eventually tie in with the women’s cocoa initiative, if we want to insure that cocoa production is a part of all generations of the community like fishing is to Gloucester or cattle ranching is to Texas or tourism is to Athens, then we have to have in addition to specific demographic information a real sense of who are the next generation of East Acehnese men and women. What are their hopes and dreams, do they see themselves leaving as soon as they can (have some of them left only to return because they were not able to survive outside the district), do they continue to live in their villages out of obligation or lack of options, are they very religious, do they like Kayne West and Beyoncé and Indonesian Idol, do they play games and cause mischief, can their current educations get them good jobs outside the area, do they love the lives they have?

Do they remember what it was like when people were fighting and dying? Do they still think about that? Do they fear the government—and if so . . . which one? Do they think that they should protect the rainforest, or do they care? Are their parents dead or disabled? Do they hold grudges? Do they believe that the mainland has forgotten them?

It seemed like the stuff of a documentary. And it seemed really important that we know it in order to truly work towards sustainability of a project that has so many strikes against it I can’t begin to count: economy of scale, poor infrastructure, competition from mining, petroleum and palm oil interests, lack of government services including healthcare and education, and a global community that thinks that Aceh has received “enough” aid and now it’s time for corporations to roll in and extract wealth, throw money at “environmental” groups to “purchase” production rights and begin to wipe the third largest rainforest in the world and all its inhabitants right off the map.

 

Next time: the start of the hunt for actual information on Aceh Timur and its residents.

 

Our First Training in Pante Kera: A Community Affair

The first training in the village of Pante Kera at the end of July was by all accounts a rousing success.  We now have 24 beneficiary farmers—all women.  Also participating were community members (some who were actually men) who were not cocoa farmers but who wanted to learn more about best agriculture practices, “green” farming, organic composting, and pest control for their own benefit.

Women cocoa farmers and community members receiveinformation about the week's activities, plus are given an overview of the entire project and how the rest of the trainings will build upon previous ones, eventually discussing farmer/production plant relationships, the value chain, marketing, and expanding/formalizing the association.

An interesting thing that JMD staff did this time was to create a “pre-test” that combined a little bit of reading skills with a lot of hands on demonstration.  Mahyaruddin, JMD’s trainer for this first of 8 trainings was a guy we came to know very well in 2009 when he did an integrated farming training in Simpang Jernih.  The participants really liked his openness, his informal style, and the fact that he devoted a lot of time to answering even the tiniest question that farmers had. 

 

 

 

Farmers took much of the pre-test in the demo field, reading and answeromg questions related to cocoa production.  The questions were multiple choice and farmers put a cocoa bean in the corresponding "answer cup."

 Frankly, that was one of the things I was worried about: when any agency, even a local one, does a project in a rural and isolated area that’s received no prior outside assistance, there’s the tendency for a kind of subtle “us and them” relationship to develop—not consciously, of course, but based on everyday practice, education levels, etc.  For people who are not trained as teachers but as agriculture extensionists, getting a basically shy, insecure population to come out of its collective shell and show their best, most competent selves can be tricky.  Deference and the need to please gets in the way of meaningful dialogue, and what you end up with is a bunch of yes-men (or women, in this case) telling the trainer what they think he wants to hear.

But our trainer and our Field Officer Robert did a great job of making sure everyone felt included and important. 

The trainer helps a participant understand how to use/fill out one of the course documents

Everyone had questions--even the kids!

 

The 3-day long training covered a wide variety of topics including pruning, pest control, proper bagging of the cocoa, etc., and because of unforeseen travel difficulties (that blasted river) everyone worked to cram 5 days’ worth of information into three longer days—and no one dropped out, with many walking 3-5k to the training every day.  JMD adjusted its budget a bit to be able to hold the next 5-day training twice, in 2 locations over a 2-week period.  That way, farmers don’t have to travel as far . . . and if they want to, they certainly can attend both trainings!

Pruning practice--cocoa farming is traditionall a man's job due to the labor involved--having the right tools are essential to good production.

Between this training and the next one (September) all our new beneficiaries will be given a set of tools that will allow them to harvest, prune, collect, dry and ferment their beans.  Cocoa harvest is behind schedule this year, but we’re told it will be coming up shortly, and our Field Officer is taking some baseline data so we can measure what these Pante Kera farmers are starting out with (which is not much!) and what they are producing in 36 months.

 

A course participant evaluates the training (and the trainer)

 

Obviously I am thrilled that the initial phase of this project is going so well.  But we are realizing, here in the US and in Banda Aceh, that there is another very important component of the project that we have not yet addressed—and that in fact most aid agencies do not address thoroughly, and that is the question of how to measure sustainability when one does not understand thoroughly the social ad demographic makeup of a particular region.  We can say this or that project is sustainable because of the internal controls and training we have provided, but when you really think about it, sustainability is in the hands of the next generation.  And in Aceh Timur, as in much of Aceh, not a lot is known about those young men and women who were children or babies during the bloody and devastating civil war—what their daily lives are like, what their hopes are, whether they want to escape the cocoa farm and the province and never look back, whether they do escape and have so few skills they can’t survive elsewhere, whether they are coaxed/coerced into criminal or destructive  behavior . . . we know so little.  And this is what’s important to know, if you want to make a project sustainable.  So I’m going to be musing about that in a day or so, because as they say in The Music Man, “you gotta know the territory.”

 

 I hope everyone had a restful and joyous Eid al Feitr.

Everybody Loses

There’s an interesting and depressing article in the July 6^th edition of the Economist; it has to do with Southeast Asia’s continuing (and in some cases increasing) intolerance towards homosexuality and gay rights.  The main topic of “Fifty Shades of Pink” is the burgeoning gay community in Singapore and Thailand and its steady climb out of the closet and into mainstream life.  This newfound tolerance is present in few other southeast Asian nations, however; the article specifically singles out Indonesia as one of the more intolerant countries, even though “homosexuality is legal in every province bar Aceh.” 

It was my understanding that Aceh is still under the Indonesian constitution.  Aceh continually shoots itself in the foot by playing fast and loose with “autonomy.”  Last year we brought back stoning for adulterers.  This year, women couldn’t ride astride a moped, and if they did ride (sidesaddle), they were not allowed to touch the driver.  We don’t know exactly how many women and babies had to fall off the backs of mopeds and get crushed in oncoming traffic for this law to be repealed.  Still, the incredibly arcane and vicious restrictions this province puts on its people in the name of Sharia is downright sickening. To my mind these edicts and thou-shalt-nots have nothing to do with faith or spirituality so much as a misguided desire on the part of those in power to “show” the central government that even though the peace accord has been signed, Aceh will not meekly tow Jakarta’s party line.  But these leaders, this lucky GAM cream that rose to the top while the majority of combatants still wait to be compensated, enact their legislation at the expense of the welfare and quality of life of Aceh’s citizens. 

Everybody loses.