The Jungle’s Bounty

(from Friday)

The Kalimantan jungle seems to be one of Indonesia’s last frontiers. In the eyes of many, it’s underpopulated, bursting at the seams with resources, and a ripe place to help address some of the country’s other shortcomings. And to a certain extent, they might be right. I’ve been struck by the common Dayak practice of not picking fruit from the tree but instead cutting off huge branches, letting ripe and unripe jack fruit, rambutan, and other lychee-like treats fall to the ground. It’s quick, it’s easy, and even if some goes to waste, there’s plenty more where that came from. The government has taken a similar stance, resettling people from other islands in Kalimantan, and opening up huge tracts of land for energy exploration, logging, and the planting of non-rainforest plants. The impact seems striking and will only continue to transform the Borneo landscape and one of the last remaining jungles of its kind. Logging has not only stripped the land of its hardwood trees, but of habitats for many endangered species, including orangutans. I’ll share more stories about the orangutans in my slide show, but trust me that the consequences of logging for our primate cousins—as well as other animals—have been dismal. Logging has also scarred the Kalimantan landscape with roads leading deep into the forest, and thus opening up more access for migrants to the area. Oil and coal exploration has also followed, with vast tracts of forest being peeled away to access the resources lying just below them. But while the pictures of these are horrific, at least they offer the potential for future forest development, and there seems to be an 80% success rate in returning these areas to some sort of sustainable rainforest. Not the case with oil palm. This most insidious import is the sexy choice du jour for settlers and others looking to make a quick buck. Pull out your hardwood trees (lumber companies like this) and clear your land. Plant free or low-cost oil palm trees, which require almost no maintenance, and wait for three years for them to come to maturity. Then pick the bounty and see it turn into a salary of $5000-10,000 a year if all goes well. The problem is threefold: 1) the oil palms are quite inhospitable to other flora and not the proper home to local fauna, 2) the oil palm seeds must be in a processing plant no more than 8 hours after they are picked, meaning that it can’t be done by anyone but large corporations, and growers are thus entirely dependent upon said corporations for their new livelihood, and 3) if growers decide down the road to no longer grow oil palm, they must dig out a 4 meter by 4 meter by 4 meter hole for each palm in order to fully remove the root structure. And local environmental workers feel that prices will only fall as the government opens up four times the amount of forest for oil palm trees, and growers are forced to sell their goods to the multinational corporations at the prices that they set.