Claiming Rights to the Forest in East Kalimantan: Challenging Power and Presenting Culture (original) (raw)
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Ecology and Society
Despite the great emphasis on sustainable forest management in the 1998 Indonesian reform movement, deforestation has only accelerated since then, with Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) exhibiting the highest rate of forest loss. Some forested areas have, however, been preserved by local communities. We investigate how and why two of these communities in Kapuas Hulu district, West Kalimantan, have managed to maintain their forests against the pressures of illegal logging and conversion to oil palm plantations. One village community had the capacity to act on its own, while the other needed additional capacity through intercommunity collaboration. Motivations behind these villages' decisions were both economic and eudaimonic; their desire for meaningful lives related to the community and environment and to past and future generations. The findings enrich the literature on land use change because description and analysis of successful resistance against logging and oil palm is still rare. As such, the findings offer a different way to understand and interrogate the challenges confronting present-day forest communities in Kalimantan and beyond, standing out against the mainstream impression that communities are still powerless or unwilling to resist the short-term economic lures. We also refer briefly to the environmental justice perspective.
Ecology and Society, 2018
Despite the great emphasis on sustainable forest management in the 1998 Indonesian reform movement, deforestation has only accelerated since then, with Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) exhibiting the highest rate of forest loss. Some forested areas have, however, been preserved by local communities. We investigate how and why two of these communities in Kapuas Hulu district, West Kalimantan, have managed to maintain their forests against the pressures of illegal logging and conversion to oil palm plantations. One village community had the capacity to act on its own, while the other needed additional capacity through intercommunity collaboration. Motivations behind these villages' decisions were both economic and eudaimonic; their desire for meaningful lives related to the community and environment and to past and future generations. The findings enrich the literature on land use change because description and analysis of successful resistance against logging and oil palm is still rare. As such, the findings offer a different way to understand and interrogate the challenges confronting present-day forest communities in Kalimantan and beyond, standing out against the mainstream impression that communities are still powerless or unwilling to resist the short-term economic lures. We also refer briefly to the environmental justice perspective.
Socio-Cultural Values of Traditional Communities: A Case Study of the Dayak in Kalimantan
Asian Culture and History, 2016
This article is intended to reveal the socio-cultural values of traditional remote area communities of the Dayak in Central Kalimantan based on two legends and the existence of these communities. By applying semantics of sign systems, the expressions in texts showed connotative meanings referring to river communities, and the denotative meaning of living in forests for forest communities. While, expressions of migration could be related to cultural of manamuai 'wander' tradition and way of life as shifting cultivation farmers. Recently, the existence of these communities has contradicted government rules due to the laws in opening forests illegally. However, based on the characteristics, these communities can live in harmony with the government and forests investors through the empowerment programs for remote communities and CSR of forests' companies (logging or palm oil).
Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews, 2020
Purpose of the study: This research aimed at highlighting the cultural implications in the context of the Dayak Tomun community in maintaining the management of land rights based on the customary in Lamandau, Indonesia. Methodology: This study used a quantitative doctrinal research method to look at the macro problems in legislation products and a qualitative non-doctrinal research method to look at the problems conceptualized at the level of microanalysis as a symbolic reality. Main Findings: This research revealed that the cultural approach perspective of the local indigenous people had an important role in the management of land rights. This study discovered the procedures for managing the people's customary land rights, which were simple and based on the local wisdom of the local community, which implied a philosophical meaning of belom behadat (living in traditions, obeying customs), human nature in protecting the realm from destruction. Applications of this study: The find...
Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Education, Language, Literature, and Arts (ICELLA 2021), 2021
Environmental issues that we face today encourage efforts to increase ecological awareness. The green literature movement is used as a medium to raise awareness by voicing criticism of the environment. This movement highlights the increasing environmental damage along with the anthropocentric perspective on the exploitation of nature for the sake of fulfilling needs and profits. In this case, local culture plays a role in environmental conservation strategies in South Kalimantan. This study aims to explore the local culture of the Dayak Meratus community, which plays a role in ecological conservation strategies of the novel set in Meratus Mountains, South Kalimantan. This study uses a qualitative descriptive method using an ecocritical approach. The research data are the novel written by Aliman Syahrani, Palas, and the novel written by Eva Liana Mawinei. The steps of work are to classify data, analyze, and conclude. The results showed that two novels set in the Meratus Mountains, namely: Palas and Mawinei (1) describe the local culture of human relations with nature in the form of the recital of natural signs; (2) perform a ritual of gratitude towards nature; (3) use nature wisely for the necessities of life and living equipment, such as housing and means of transportation; and has customary rules in the form of a forest ban and (4) a ban on cutting certain trees. This local culture needs to be preserved to conserve the environment in the Meratus Mountains, South Kalimantan, amid natural exploitation that impacts the environmental crisis.
The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2017
Swidden has historically been one of the most widespread land uses in upland Southeast Asia. In recent decades, swidden systems across the region have undergone rapid transformation. While most analyses focus on swidden as a livelihood practice, we direct attention to the political nature of swidden. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork and household surveys from two villages in East Kalimantan Province, Indonesia, we examine the politics of swidden along two key dimensions. First, at the household level, we describe swidden as a land control strategy. We identify territorialization and speculation as drivers of ‘contentious land change’ in swidden systems under pressure from expanding plantations and mines. Second, at the village and district levels, we examine the politics of swidden within new forest governance arrangements. Control of swidden has provided a focus for multi-stakeholder forest governance, but with ambivalent effects, developing village land management and livelihoods at a cost of temporary increases in swidden clearing and with minimal impact on deforestation for industrial land uses. Our analysis suggests forest governance efforts will be ineffective in eliminating contentious land change or reducing district-level deforestation until they address plantation and mining expansion as the dominant direct and indirect drivers of forest conversion.
Customary forest and state forest are still a dichotomy contested by indigenous peoples and the state. The forests around Singkarak Lake, West Sumatra are managed in different ways which are related to the capacity of indigenous communities around the forest. The indigenous Minangkabau people of Nagari Malalo Tigo Jurai have local wisdom for the management of customary forests, but the recognition of their customary forest is beginning to be disturbed by the new recognition of this forest as state forest. This study examines the communal efforts carried out by the indigenous peoples in recognizing the customary forest management rights in Nagari Malalo Tigo Jurai customary forest. This study using a qualitative approach with in-depth interview techniques, observation and literature study. This research shows that there have some local wisdom practiced for forest management in the customary forest area for many years. Lately, there is a strong communal movement of the indigenous peoples for recognition of their customary forest areas.
Conservation and Society, 2021
This article explores the multiple processes of maintaining access and asserting user rights to forest space among the Van Gujjar pastoralists in North India. In particular, the Forest Rights Act of 2006 (FRA) has created an opportunity for forest dwellers across India to seek legal means to forest rights. Conducting ethnographic fieldwork, organising workshops on forest rights, and mapping traditional territories among the Van Gujjars, we observed that complex cultural performances are necessary for the Van Gujjars to claim access to forest areas and resources—legal or otherwise. These performances include, but are not limited to, litigation, supporting emergent leaders, and caring for cattle and kin under constant threats of evictions. Drawing on recent scholarship on the everyday formation of territorial governments, we examine how communities maintain, contest, or reinvent cultural practices and governance in the context of their struggles for access inscribed as forest rights. In contrasting cases among two groups of Van Gujjars seeking rights to forest spaces in the two neighbouring states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, we shed light on the repercussions that formally or informally engaging the FRA can have for communities of forest dwellers. Based on ethnographic research completed between 2012 and 2019, we find that 1) the Van Gujjar territorial governments carrying on these claims are more diverse than the law recognises, and that 2) not all communities see it worthy to organise a territorial government claiming formal rights under the FRA. Fundamentally, we discern that more immediate threats to Van Gujjar livelihoods result in a greater shift in their cultural practices towards organising a territorial government seeking forest rights through the FRA.
The purpose of this research is to describe how local wisdom influencing the indigenous people behavior to sustain the forest resources, what makes local wisdom able to influencing indigenous people to sustain the forest resources and what does the indigenous people in East Kalimantan province needs in order make them continue to conserve forest resources as an effort to maximize their strategic role in sustainable forest management. Based on the research result of the data shown that local wisdom can influence the behavior of indigenous people because for them, forests are the storehouses of life, the nature damage could resulting negative consequences for the people themselves. The local wisdom form is customary law and, has forcing characteristic, which is sanctions received in case of violation, so its able to makes them behaving to conserve the forest resources. Then, the indigenous people needs fully support from various parties, especially from the local governments such as infrastructure, in order to make them keep continue to conserve the forest resources.
After the Rain Falls: the Impact of the East Kalimantan Forestry Industry on Tribal Society
1999
The exploitation and destruction of forests have reached such a critical level that the consequences have attracted the attention of the wider community. The resounding response, however, has been to highlight the problems of the environment rather than the humanitarian aspect of the elimination of the tribal and indigenous people who live in and around the forest. For generations, tribal and indigenous people have depended for their livelihood on the generosity of the forest but now, with the arrival of large capital which exploits the forest, their sovereignty over and access to forest resources have been stolen from them. This phenomenon is intrinsically connected to forest management policies which emphasize efforts to obtain foreign exchange by exploiting economically valuable forest products and in particular timber. The large profits which can be reaped from the forestry sector, the increase in foreign exchange and the ability to absorb labor are the aspects put forward to le...