SP/Sahat Oloan Saragih Jakarta Globe 20 Dec 12;
Pontianak, West Kalimantan. Supporters of the Uud Dhanum Dayak tribe in West Kalimantan’s Sintang district have called on local authorities to declare their land a cultural conservation area, in a bid to protect it from a planned oil palm plantation.
Syamsuni Arman, an anthropologist at Tanjungpura University in Pontianak, the provincial capital, said at a seminar that the land in question was considered sacred to the Dayak and there must be guarantees in place to ensure that it would not be taken over or the tribe evicted.
“Economic development policies around the area where the Dayaks intend to establish their cultural conservation area must take into consideration the traditions and cultural sensitivities of the locals, as well as the need to conserve the existing biodiversity,” he said.
The call was made in response to revelations that the district administration had granted a 1,000-hectare concession in the area to a palm oil company.
Rafael Samsudin, the head of the Uud Dhanum Dayak tribal association, said that the Sintang authorities were perfectly aware that the area in the Sakai River basin was considered by the tribe as ancestral land and therefore sacred.
The concession was issued to Sinar Sawit Andalan, which is currently applying for a land use permit with the National Land Agency (BPN).
Rafael said his association had sent a letter to the BPN head office in Jakarta as well as to its provincial and district offices, calling on the agency not to issue the land use permit.
He said the tribe was worried that once the permit was awarded and the company started clearing the land for the plantation, the water table in the area would drop, affecting not just the tribe but also the local plant and animal life.
He pointed out that the forested area was home to many protected species, including several varieties of toucans, and if the forest was logged and replaced by oil palms the wildlife would disappear.
The tribe also fears that a drop in the water table would diminish the water level in the Sakai River, where they hoped to build a small hydroelectric plant to provide power for the community.
Rafael stressed that the tribe had safeguarded the forest for generations and would not allow it to be destroyed now for mere commercial gain.
Syamsuni said that in addition to conserving the area, the district and provincial authorities should also start recognizing and incorporating the Dayaks’ age-old forest stewardship practices into their own conservation policies.
He argued that their sustainable brand of forest management had allowed them to live and farm in the forest for generations with no adverse affect on the local wildlife or the integrity of the forest.
A national conference of indigenous peoples earlier this year highlighted another branch of the Dayak, the Iban Dayak in Kapuas Hulu district, West Kalimantan, as gaining official recognition for their forest stewardship practices.
The tribe has since 1819 practiced a quota system for logging trees and mapped their own forest zones.
“We sustain our forest by designating zones for housing and for preservation,” Samay, an Iban member, said at the conference in North Maluku in April.
“For instance, we don’t touch water catchment areas because that’s our source of clean water. We also allow each family to cut down just five trees a year, and the wood may only be used to build a house.”
The Iban’s forest stewardship methods were certified in 2008 by the Indonesian Ecolabel Foundation as sustainable forest management, making it the first community forest to get the certification.
But the community’s efforts at forest zoning have still not been acknowledged by authorities in their home district.
“We’ve tried to get acknowledgment for our mapping since 1998 from the local government, but still nothing,” Samay said.
“We need that acknowledgment because we’re worried that our lands could be changed for other uses. It’s not for us, it’s for our children and grandchildren.
