Forest protection: Local and global
Frederick Sagisolo, BBC News 26 Nov 07;
After logging: New values appear, like wanting to have more than your neighbour and putting a price on everything, instead of valuing what we already have.
Local communities living in the world's dwindling tropical forests bear the brunt of the insatiable demand for cheap timber, argues Frederick Sagisolo. In the Green Room, he recounts his experience of illegal logging, and explains why community forest management is the way forward.
For the Knasaimos people, we do not see nature as something to be destroyed.
The forests here provide for our needs. For building houses we take rattan, bamboo and other woods, for lighting fires we take damar, and for food we process sago taken from the forest in the traditional method.
The forests give us wood for fishing boats, gaharu trees for trade, and many fruits which we can sell.
The relationship between our people and their nature is important, and it's become our pride and part of our traditional wisdom. That's why we manage the land in a simple way.
The way we manage our land, however, has been disturbed by outsiders coming here to log trees.
It started in 1999 with meranti wood being taken, and once that was finished in 2002 they started to cut merbau trees.
This created problems for our community. Before, there was a sense of working together, a feeling of togetherness.
Then, when some people are attracted to the wood company they refuse to work on the sago any more. They think that because the company promises money, they don't want to do the traditional work in the forest any more.
New values appear, like wanting to have more than your neighbour and putting a price on everything, instead of valuing what we already have.
Rich wood
The merbau logging was carried out by one company, supported by foreign investors.
We never invited this company here and it did not have proper permission to log.
I am the head of the tribal council, but the company never talked to me. Instead it did an illegal deal with one individual from our community, and this created many problems for us.
But the company was backed by a local military officer, so what could we do?
Soon after it first arrived the company was cutting our trees in four areas, destroying the land with heavy equipment. Yet when people here see the military person involved, then cannot sit down together and discuss things. Impossible.
I was really worried by this company. Our land is not that large, and with the logging after a few years we would have had no trees left, only grass.
This would mean disaster for us. It is our mission to treat the land as something entrusted to us for our grandchildren and so we must not destroy it.
Self-determination
If we are left alone we manage the forest well as it is part of our life.
But companies from outside only think about money and leave us with tears. While the company was here there was no improvement for local people - just problems.
We know our rights, but got no help from the local government. They just came here with a map we had never seen before - some kind of imaginary map.
Under this some of our sacred places would be destroyed. We asked "why did you do this?" and the company said it was allowed because of the map.
We know that this map was illegal and it is clear that money talked. We asked the government to stop this company, but nothing happened.
Then finally, in 2005, Papua was the target for a big action by the government against illegal logging. The military officer left, and the company operations stopped.
We felt we were once more in control of our lands and set about healing the wounds created by the company.
Community awareness
In early 2007 I was contacted by people from two environment groups, Telapak and the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).
These groups had come to Seremuk in 2003 and filmed our way of life and the problems we were having with the logging company.
These people explained to me that they were organising a meeting in Belgium to tell European Union officials about the bad impacts of illegal logging and wanted me to speak. I agreed, believing this could benefit our community.
I came across so many interesting stories on the trip.
I found out how timber stolen from Seremuk and other "remote" areas eventually goes to places like Europe and is worth a lot of money. It seemed strange to me that the people who live in the forests are still poor, while the timber taken from them is worth so much when it is sold in Europe.
On the trip, I saw how in Europe NGOs work together with their governments, while in Indonesia they are seen as the enemy of the government.
This made us realise how the Knasaimos people have to develop strong institutions to press the government to have a more open mind, and allow us to manage our land free of interference.
Now, in Seremuk, I'm working to use the lessons of the trip to help improve the situation for the Knasaimos.
At a recent big gathering of our people it was agreed that no member of our community would sell trees to outsiders.
Instead we plan to develop a system where we, the Knasaimos, as the guardians of this land, manage it ourselves and gain benefits to help the lives of our people through better education and health.
We have suffered from illegal logging and now we want to build a co-operative to carry out small-scale community logging.
This is our vision as to how we can live together with nature and improve the lives of our people.
Frederick Sagisolo is traditional chief of the Knasaimos people living in the western region of Papua, Indonesia
The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website
