Model could also cut haze in the region, says conservationist
Neo Chai Chin Today Online 27 Oct 10;
SINGAPORE - He wanted to save orang utans, but developed projects that have achieved so much more.
And if the agri-forestry and social entrepreneurshop model that Dutch-born Indonesian conservationist Willie Smits has achieved in Kalimantan is scaled up in Indonesia, the result could be the region seeing fewer haze episodes.
Dr Smits, 53, had gone to Balikpapan in East Kalimantan as a doctoral student in the 1980s. He set up the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation in 1991 after rescuing a dying baby orang utan dumped at a market.
He soon realised that to truly save the red apes - whose peat swamp forest habitats are being decimated mainly for palm oil plantations - he needed to save the forests and provide the local people with viable economic alternatives.
The Foundation began buying land to rebuild the rainforest for orang utans in an area called Samboja Lestari in East Borneo in 2001. The local community was involved, combining agriculture with forestry. They also grew sugar palm on the edges of land parcels to ward off fires and for biofuel.
About 3,000 villagers have since benefited, and the microclimate of Samboja Lestari has since changed, with greater cloud cover and more rainfall, according to Dr Smits.
Dr Smits is seeking to replicate more biodiverse sugar palm forests and cooperative-run production facilities (to convert its sap into ethanol) elsewhere in the world. He has since set up a company for this, and hopes to roll it out with the support of "ethical investors". If implemented in more parts of Indonesia, he is confident they will improve the regional haze situation. Less carbon will be generated if fewer people cooked with fuel wood, and used ethanol instead, and "buffer zones" provided by the sugar palms will generate income for the people and protect forests against fire, said Dr Smits, who has been knighted in the Netherlands for his conservation work.
Giving a talk here last Thursday - organised by the Singapore International Foundation and youth group Syinc - Dr Smits was asked how Singaporeans could get involved. They could push for sustainable sources of palm oil, and volunteer at the Tasikoki Animal Rescue and Education Center in North Sulawesi, he suggested. At the latter, volunteers pay a fee for lodging and assist in animal care.
The dynamic scientist is also in the midst of setting up a state-of-the-art orang utan centre in Yogyakarta in Java, which aims to be a sanctuary, as well as a transit centre for the hundreds of orang utans illegally kept as pets in the city. It has already gained the patronage of Yogyakarta's Sultan.
Asked how he gains the support of the local community, Sulawesi-based Dr Smits said: "By being honest and by speaking their language. My wife is a tribal queen, so it was easy to do the first (project, in Sulawesi). And now we bring people from other tribes here and they can watch it for themselves. Then, they are convinced by the example."
