A National Oligarchy

Political scientists like Benedict Anderson and Dan Slater have observed how a key legacy of late Indonesian president Suharto's New Order regime has been the emergence of a national oligarchy. This is related to the politics of deforestation in Indonesia, and such pronouncements by academics like Anderson and Slater do not give one confidence that things will be changing anytime soon. Yikes.

Some revealing observations from Anderson's 2008 essay, "Exit Suharto: Obituary for a Mediocre Tyrant" (New Left Review, 50, pp.27-59), as follows:

"In the late 1960s, the goverment began the systematic destruction of the country's primary forests by favoured cronies and military men, as well as foreign companies." (p.36)

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"Deliberately or not, he [Suharto] created over time the Indonesian national oligarchy of today: quarrelsome, but intermarried; competitive, but avoiding any serious internal conflict; without ideas, but determined to hang on to what they have, at all costs." (p.45)

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"The crucial thing is that this national oligarchy and its hangers-on are largely incapable of thinking outside the old regime's box. Cynics joke that there used to be one big Suharto, now there are hundreds of little ones." (pp.45-6)

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While SBY tried to go outside the box by forming his own party etc., his hands are very much tied by the vested interests of this oligarchy. Dan Slater has written a piece titled "Indonesia's Accountability Trap: Party Cartels and Presidential Power after Democratic Transition" (Indonesia 78, 2005). While it was written 7 years ago, the cartels / oligarchy remain. One could see this as occuring in spite of SBY's efforts, or alternatively, see SBY as part of the system, one which is Suharto's most damning legacy.

Interview with an Eco-Warrior

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to talk to Chai Chin, one of the Eco-Warriors involved in DeforestAction, before she left for the second leg of the project. The interview, which provides further insights into the situation in West Kalimantan, is as follows:

Q1. To begin, I was hoping you could share some personal reflections about your participation in the DeforestAction project in Sintang last year.

A: The 20 days was an eye-opener, venturing to places in the heart of West Kalimantan, meeting local communities and seeing first-hand the impact of palm oil and encroachment of companies was having on them.

The 20 days were an orientation of sorts for the rest of the 80 days, and was hence insufficient to understand how the local government and communities function, and more importantly, interact. I was hoping to also get the perspective of lawmakers like the Bupati, and to understand his relationship with the Dayaks. It would also have been useful to have been able to meet representatives from palm oil companies to get their side of the story. However, this was not possible due to a lack of access or limited opportunities for interaction. Maybe there will be such opportunities during the 80 days.

One thing in particular that struck me was that people are very much part of the equation. Conservation is not just about species like the orang-utans and their natural habitats, we must also consider how local communities have a right to progress and make a living. Part of our efforts, therefore, was to promote a sustainable livelihood for local communities, in this case, through sugar palm.

Q2. There is a danger of romanticising traditional ways of life. In your article, you wrote about sacred burial grounds and shifting cultivation – but is this what the Dayaks are really like, or are we imposing our own preconceptions about culture and tradition upon them?

A:
The Dayaks retain traditional practices and seemed proud of them – for example, dances and other ceremonies to welcome honoured guests. Some of the Dayak villages we went to were only accessible by river but many locals have mobile phones.

Any change to their traditions should come from them. The problem when palm oil companies come knocking – as documented in some research papers and witnessed by us to some extent – is that the villagers aren’t always told the truth. We encountered some villagers who said they had not been properly compensated for their land by a palm oil company, and heard accounts of palm oil companies creating divisions in village life by playing off certain individuals against others.

Villagers who sign away their land to engage in palm oil typically have to borrow money to buy saplings and fertilisers. But palm oil trees only start being productive a few years down the road, and that’s how a debt spiral occurs – to the detriment of any community.

The palm oil companies also bring some Javanese migrants in to work at the plantations.

So I think that’s how the cultural core is eroded when palm oil companies take over their land - debt, tensions and the increased presence of outsiders all bring about changes in their way of life which affect tradition and culture.

Q3. Do the Dayaks wish to maintain their current way of life? Some sold their land away to palm oil companies for jobs and income.

I may not be the best person to tackle this question, but I believe any additional income that they might earn is probably always welcome; everyone wants a better life. However, the palm oil companies frequently do not keep their promises of jobs and income.

We should also realise that the Dayaks are not a monolithic group – some communities are open to working with palm oil companies, others are not. What’s important is to protect their rights. At the end of the day, all of them seek the promise of a better life, to be fairly treated, to provide for their families and send their children to school.

Q4. Indonesian academic Ariel Heryanto wrote an essay titled “Can there be Southeast Asians in Southeast Asian Studies?” Given how most International NGOs are run by Westerners, in a similar vein, can there be more Southeast Asians in conservation efforts across the region? Southeast Asians were the minority during the recent (2011) effort by DeforestAction in West Kalimantan.

A:
I agree that ideally, conservation efforts should be driven by locals. If this is not possible in the beginning, there should at least be buy-in from the locals. For this project, the call for video submissions went out in several countries as part of efforts to make a documentary to be screened to a global audience. I first heard about this project from a Singaporean investor in the project.

Our team of 15 Eco Warriors in September (2011) comprised Australians, Canadians, Americans, French, a Kenyan, a Dutch, myself and an Indonesian. We were led by Dr Willie Smits, who is Indonesian. We were helped and accompanied by a team of Dayaks from local villages we visited. One of the cameramen was Indonesian.

I think one of the key reasons for our fairly “international” efforts is to lend a louder voice and raise the visibility of the locals in West Kalimantan who have been left helpless against the might of palm oil companies, and to raise awareness of deforestation and wildlife conservation in this part of the world. The camera is a powerful tool and so are our social networks.

Given that some locals may not have extensive connections with the outside world, or the ability to communicate with a wider audience in English, it could difficult for awareness of local efforts beyond their country, and outsiders with the resources to help may not be able to, if they are not aware of these problems.

For the long-term success of any conservation effort, however, partnership with locals is essential and I think much will also rest on the locals to continue these efforts in a sustainable manner.

Q5. Based on your experience in the project, who do you think should best take the lead in conservation efforts?

A:
If locals take the lead and local authorities are responsive on the ground and set an example, there actually may not be a need for global efforts. For instance, in terms of land rights, the government could ensure proper processes are in place and law enforcement.

That said, our project so far would not have been possible without the support of the Bupati and other authorities.

Where the rest of the world may come in: Lending some international pressure to hold governments accountable for deforestation (especially that done illegally). As for wealthier countries paying developing ones to protect their forests, the world benefits from green lungs such as that in Kalimantan, so why not help pay for it?

Q6: Earlier this year, Princess Gusti Pembayun of the royal Jogyakarta household made a commitment to enrol 1 million Indonesian students in DeforestAction. How effective do you think this will be?

A:
Rallying students to conservation efforts can only be a good thing. It is good to get more Indonesians aware of the situation in West Kalimantan. It also shows what modern technology can do to solve a decades-old problem, by reaching out to as many schools and students as possible to spread the message against deforestation and animal trafficking.

I really hope that the Earth Watchers programme, which is part of the overall DeforestAction project, takes off. Through satellite technology, Earth Watchers has the potential to show how students in various parts of the world, including Indonesia, can help monitor satellite images of forest cover and alert a local team when they detect changes. In this way, a student from thousands of miles away can help do his part for Kalimantan. Hopefully, this can then be replicated further.

Q7. Is there anything Singaporeans can do to contribute to conservation efforts in Kalimantan?

A:
Singaporeans can be more aware of the provenance of palm oil products and the issues related to biofuels (it has yet to be the solution to our energy needs that everyone was hoping for). Palm oil plantations that emerged for biofuels are not that ‘green’ after all. We could push for better labelling of products sold in Singapore so that Singaporean consumers can choose not to use palm oil. We can choose to use resources judiciously. We can also support indigenous Dayak culture by buying products that they make.

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Here's wishing Chai Chin and the rest of the Eco-Warriors all the best for the next leg of their project!

The NGO-ization of Resistance

In 2004, Indian author and activist Arundhati Roy gave a public lecture titled "Public Power in the Age of Empire". While this was in the broader context of international politics, some parts of her speech could easily be applied to environmental efforts spearheaded by NGOs. Here's some food for thought:

"...A second hazard facing mass movements is the NGO-ization of resistance. It will be easy to twist what I’m about to say into an indictment of all NGOs. That would be a falsehood. In the murky waters of fake NGOs set up or to siphon off grant money or as tax dodges (in states like Bihar, they are given as dowry), of course there are NGOs doing valuable work. But it’s important to consider the NGO phenomenon in a broader political context.

In India, for instance, the funded NGO boom began in the late 1980s and 1990s. It coincided with the opening of India’s markets to neo-liberalism. At the time, the Indian state, in keeping with the requirements of structural adjustment, was withdrawing funding from rural development, agriculture, energy, transport, and public health. As the state abdicated its traditional role, NGOs moved in to work in these very areas. The difference, of course, is that the funds available to them are a minuscule fraction of the actual cut in public spending. Most large funded NGOs are financed and patronized by aid and development agencies, which are in turn funded by Western governments, the World Bank, the UN, and some multinational corporations. Though they may not be the very same agencies, they are certainly part of the same loose, political formation that oversees the neo-liberal project and demands the slash in government spending in the first place.

Why should these agencies fund NGOs? Could it be just old-fashioned missionary zeal? Guilt? It’s a little more than that. NGOs give the impression that they are filling the vacuum created by a retreating state. And they are, but in a materially inconsequential way. Their real contribution is that they defuse political anger and dole out as aid or benevolence what people ought to have by right.

They alter the public psyche. They turn people into dependent victims and blunt the edges of political resistance. NGOs form a sort of buffer between the sarkar and public. Between Empire and its subjects. They have become the arbitrators, the interpreters, the facilitators.

In the long run, NGOs are accountable to their funders, not to the people they work among. They’re what botanists would call an indicator species. It’s almost as though the greater the devastation caused by neo-liberalism, the greater the outbreak of NGOs. Nothing illustrates this more poignantly than the phenomenon of the U.S. preparing to invade a country and simultaneously readying NGOs to go in and clean up the devastation.

In order make sure their funding is not jeopardized and that the governments of the countries they work in will allow them to function, NGOs have to present their work in a shallow framework more or less shorn of a political or historical context. At any rate, an inconvenient historical or political context.

Apolitical (and therefore, actually, extremely political) distress reports from poor countries and war zones eventually make the (dark) people of those (dark) countries seem like pathological victims. Another malnourished Indian, another starving Ethiopian, another Afghan refugee camp, another maimed Sudanese . . . in need of the white man’s help. They unwittingly reinforce racist stereotypes and re-affirm the achievements, the comforts, and the compassion (the tough love) of Western civilization. They’re the secular missionaries of the modern world.

Eventually–on a smaller scale but more insidiously–the capital available to NGOs plays the same role in alternative politics as the speculative capital that flows in and out of the economies of poor countries. It begins to dictate the agenda. It turns confrontation into negotiation. It depoliticizes resistance. It interferes with local peoples’ movements that have traditionally been self-reliant. NGOs have funds that can employ local people who might otherwise be activists in resistance movements, but now can feel they are doing some immediate, creative good (and earning a living while they’re at it). Real political resistance offers no such short cuts.

The NGO-ization of politics threatens to turn resistance into a well-mannered, reasonable, salaried, 9-to-5 job. With a few perks thrown in. Real resistance has real consequences. And no salary."

Read the full lecture here.

The Onus is on Big Business

It appears that there can be environmentally friendly palm oil after all. Howevever, the following reports suggest that the onus is ultimately on the corporations that purchase high volumes of palm oil.

"At the moment, demand for certified palm oil is only 1% of the [produced] volume, so this has been disappointing for the growers and we feel the food companies should keep their end of the promise," said Lee Yeow Chor, executive director of Malaysia's second-largest palm oil producer, IOI Corp. Bhd.
From "Backers Don't Buy 'Friendly' Palm Oil", The Wall Street Journal


The WWF praised companies including Nestle, Unilever, IKEA, Carrefour, Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsbury's and Cadbury for being responsible in how they purchase significant volumes of palm oil.

But overall, nearly half of retailers and more than 20 percent of manufacturers surveyed scored very poorly, the WWF said. The survey focuses on the main palm oil markets in Europe, Japan and Australia.
From "WWF: More firms should buy eco-friendly palm oil", The Boston Globe

Easier Said than Done

Came across a letter to the Straits Times today, with the writer advocating consumer action to "stop the haze and save the orang utan". It argues that:

"Businesses have a broader community role these days than merely exacting the highest profit at the lowest cost. Sooner or later, the market always prevails.

As consumers, therefore, we can wield the biggest influence simply by using our immense purchasing power to select only products using palm oil from sustainable sources.

The regulatory authorities and supermarket chains are beginning to play a critical role in this by 'green labelling' products, enabling consumers to choose more environmentally sustainable palm oil products.

The chain reaction along the supply line then encourages manufacturers and supermarkets to procure sustainably sourced palm oil and its derived products.

Non-compliant palm oil suppliers are then forced to commit to sustainable practices, or risk going out of business."

Here are some examples of food products made with palm oil:

Pressurising companies could possibly work. For example, a guerrilla campaign by Greenpeace in 2010 made global food giant Nestle audit its supply chain and commit itself of environmentally friendly palm oil. However, given the wide variety of products made from palm oil (including cosmetics) changing patterns of consumption on any signficant scale will easier said than done. How many of us will think about the provenance of the palm oil used to produce that Kit Kat bar or instant noodles we're about to scoff down? Shifting consumer patterns toward non palm oil products will be even more challenging.

In any case, can there even be 'environmentally friendly' palm oil? Sounds too good to be true.

Out with the Old, in with the New?

To draw global attention to the battle over Borneo's "soul", a documentary titled Project Borneo 3D: The Rise of the Eco-Warriors is being filmed to show what DeforestAction can do to bring about meaningful change in Borneo.



I do not doubt the good intentions of Dr Willie Smits and the Eco-Warriors, nor disparage the efforts of DeforestAction. However, the documentary teaser makes me uncomfortable for several reasons: slick editing to show scenes of environmental destruction, how Dayaks are portrayed (bordering on romanticised notions), emotional manipulation of the audience and the lack of a clear Dayak voice vis-a-vis other voices in the documentary.

Hopefully, when it is completed, the documentary is much more than all this. Otherwise, it risks oversimplifying the issue and adopting a saviour attitude that is becoming pervasively inherent in advocacy - most recently exemplified by the (now controversial) KONY 2012 video. Please don't go down that path.

What all this tells us, in the words of Don Tapscott, is how "Old approaches are stalled and multi-stakeholder networks are emerging as a powerful force to fix a broken world". Nonetheles, media hype and "liking" something on Facebook are very different from intelligent advocacy, which is becoming something of a rarity these days.

The Salve for Borneo's Soul?

One of my acquaintances, Chai Chin (2011 Mediacorp News Awards Young Journalist of the Year) is one of the Eco-Warriors involved in the DeforestAction project. Last year, she had the opportunity to spend 20 days with the Dayaks , and is back in Borneo for another 80 days. Here's the full text of an article she wrote for Today Newspaper. Given the realities on the ground, hopefully DeforestAction can help change the situation.

The Fight for Borneo's Soul
Neo Chai Chin

On the porch of a wooden house deep in West Kalimantan, a shirtless man sits, staring out at endless rows of palm oil trees surrounding his home like a besieging army. Pak Kabul does not know his exact age, only that he was born in the 1950s. Neither does he know what the future holds – except that life took a turn for the worse when a palm oil company took over the bulk of land nearby.

The company chased nearly everyone off their land; only he refused to budge, he said. These days, he and his wife, together with some chickens and pigs, live a lonely existence in the middle of a sprawling plantation about an hour by road from the nearest town, Sintang, 420 km west of Pontianak city.

They eke out a living tapping rubber, earning about 360,000 rupiah (S$51) each month. Their son teaches at a nearby village and visits sometimes. Javanese immigrants brought in to work on the plantation live nearby, but Pak
Kabul does not interact with them.

He remembers better times when the land was still forested and the villagers could live off its bounty. “When we had the forest, nobody came to hurt us,” he said with quiet resignation. “I have no more hope; I can only hope my son will be good.” According to him, the only benefit reaped from the palm oil company is the road built through the estate.

It was this road on which we were travelling, en route to a village three hours from Sintang, that we spotted Pak Kabul and decided on impulse to stop and talk to him — and heard yet another account of the Dayak indigenous people’s struggle with palm oil companies.

Our group comprised more than 20 people from countries like Australia, the Netherlands, the United States and Indonesia. Led by Dutch-born Indonesian conservationist Willie Smits, 15 young people dubbed the EcoWarriors — of whom I was one — were in West Kalimantan for a project to combat deforestation and illegal wildlife trade in partnership with local communities. Our efforts are to be made into a documentary by Australian director Cathy Henkel.

We were in West Kalimantan for 20 days in September, the first leg of a 100-day
project. Accompanied by some Dayaks who have banded together to raise awareness of
unlawful land grabs, we visited remote villages in the Serawai and Ambalau — the only
two of Sintang’s 14 sub-districts that have resisted the palm oil companies.

But for how much longer? Already, the locals speak of their livelihoods and communities being threatened by the relentless expansion plans of these companies.

The Dayaks love a good celebration, and we were welcomed warmly with traditional
dances, rituals and generous amounts of a rice wine called tuak. Behind the smiles, however, lay deep anxiety for their future. The issue is not simply about the local communities depending on ancestral lands and forests to live, but about deforestation and wildlife habitat destruction — a struggle for Borneo’s soul.

‘TO THE LAST DROP OF BLOOD’

The third-largest island in the world, made up of Malaysia’s Sabah and Sarawak states, Brunei and Indonesia’s Kalimantan region, Borneo is known for its lush rainforests and stunning biodiversity. But since the 1980s and 1990s, large tracts of forests have been cleared for pulp and timber.

In the past 15 years or so, palm oil companies have moved in; according to a 2009
report commissioned by Amsterdam University’s law faculty, the plantations occupied
3.2 million hectares of land in 2006, with another 2.8 million hectares cleared.

A July report by independent monitors Forest Watch Indonesia estimated that between
2000 and 2009, 1.5 million hectares of forest — an area 21 times the size of Singapore — were destroyed each year, a third of it in Kalimantan.

The villages we visited faced the very real danger of losing land that has been passed down for generations. Nearly every adult villager had a tale to tell — of suspicious tactics by palm oil company staff to survey the land, the bribery of select villagers to create rifts within the community, or the abuse of villagers who vocally opposed the companies.

In Duan village in Ambalau, a sacred burial ground is part of the land being eyed by a palm oil company. Duan practises shifting agriculture, moving to a different spot
every eight years to allow land to lie fallow. This allows the companies a chance to
pounce on seemingly unoccupied territory.

When we visited, the traditional village high priest opened the vault where the bones are kept for us — a rare privilege and sign of trust that our group will tell their story of struggle and desperation when we return to our home countries. He
grew increasingly distressed as he told us of seven generations of high priests who have watched over the grounds.

Should the palm oil companies try to take the land, it would be a “fight to the last
drop of blood”, he said. The locals also told of a villager, Joseph Obeng, who was framed by the palm oil company into accepting timber, then reported to the police for unlawful possession of it and thrown into jail.

TAKING BACK THEIR LAND

Over 300km from Duan, the three villages of Lansat Baru, Lansat Lama and Belenyut
Sibau have found 80 hectares of their land bulldozed by a palm oil company. The company had also planted saplings on the land and driven their truck in — all without having obtained the necessary permits or completing negotiations with the community, villagers claimed.

Enraged, they confiscated the keys of the truck in September. Hearing of the Eco Warriors’ presence in a longhouse three hours away, the villagers travelled the bumpy, muddy roads to tell us of their plight.

The next morning, some of us drove to the disputed site. We spoke to the village
leaders, and watched as they performed a traditional Dayak ceremony to stake their
claim on the land, and uprooted several saplings. “Nobody has agreed to this and the palm oil company just steals and rapes our land,” said a leader, Mr Yohanes Aliam.

The palm oil company retaliated — it made a police report and the following morning, another leader in the group, Mr Yunosno, was arrested and taken to the police
station. Several of the Serawai-Ambalau action group bailed him out after nearly a day.

Mr Yunosno maintained that the villages had not been properly compensated for their land. But in a report by the news site Kalimantan-News.com, a company representative
was quoted as saying the company had followed proper procedure.

THE WEIGHTED DICE

The villages’ struggle to hold on to their land comes about because of lax enforcement and corruption, and overlapping laws and claims
for the land. Palm oil companies are supposed to go through a multi-step licensing process — securing location permits, plantation business permits, forest area release and, finally, business use permits — before clearing the land.

But this is seldom the case, going by what we observed as well as findings of the Amsterdam University report.

According to the Dayaks and Dr Smits, even if the palm oil companies present required
legal documents such as environmental impact assessments of the land (known
as Amdal), or papers that show the majority of villagers are pro-palm oil, their authenticity could be questionable.

A 2009 investigative report done by several non-governmental organisations found
that despite “constitutional and human rights provisions which recognise customary rights in land, most local communities and indigenous peoples in Indonesia lack secure land titles”. Community representatives surveyed in the report were also under the impression that they were temporarily relinquishing their land to the companies — suggesting “community leaders had not received adequate information
about the law prior to entering negotiations”.

The report also said that locals who sign away their land do so in hopes of receiving jobs and income. But according to Dr Smits, this is not the case. The locals end up being deeply indebted to the palm oil companies. They are paid about 600,000 rupiah for one hectare of land, and have to borrow the equivalent of thousand of dollars to buy seedlings and fertilisers from the company.

As palm oil trees take seven years to mature, a downward spiral of debt results,
eventually leading the locals to lose even the 20 per cent of land allocated to them in a typical agreement with palm oil companies.

GLIMMER OF HOPE?

Having heard so many accounts of injustice and desperation, we searched for a glimmer
of hope during our 20 days in Borneo — and found one in the village of Tembak, just after our encounter with Pak Kabul.

The village faced off with a major timber company in 1996 and won; its reply to palm
oil is also an emphatic “no”. As a result, roads to Tembak are undeveloped, almost impassable after heavy rains. But the 650 villagers remain united and fiercely protective of their forests, and have developed a system of turbines to generate electricity from a nearby river. They have offered us land for release of any orangutans we rescue and rehabilitate.

If other villages, through dogged struggle and maybe some help from the rest of the world, see an outcome similar to Tembak’s, the future of their children would look brighter. Such victories would also be salve for Borneo’s soul.

To find out more about Chai Chin's involvement in DeforestAction, click here.

Originally published by Today Newspaper, 6 November 2011