>From: S.O.S. Siberut 16 September 1991
Update on Siberut Threatened Rainforest Island
Workshop planned for October
The island of Siberut, off Sumatra's western coast in Indonesia, is famed
among zoologists, botanists and anthropologists for its unique rainforests,
wildlife and its indigenous people. But it has also caught attention of
government planners from the agriculture, forestry and transmigration
departments whose 'development' plans threaten to change the island beyond
recognition.
Against the backdrop of a growing lobby calling for a alternative
development for the island, Indonesia's Population and Environment Ministry
will be co-hosting a workshop on Siberut, planned for October 1991 in
Bukittinggi, West Sumatra. Representatives from the island, from concerned
government departments and NGOs are expected to attend.
A new independent report prepared in advance of the workshop details the
multiple threats that face the island. It calls for a halt to current
development plans, while an alternative plan is worked out that is under the
control of local people.
Logging, transmigration, plantations, timber estates, roads: these are the
major threats facing the rainforest island and its 18,000 indigenous people
who have lived on the island since time immemorial. The new report, which
has been submitted to Indonesia's Population and Environment Ministry, takes
a critical look at these threats, and concludes that current development
plans must be suspended now, before the damage is irreversible.
Logging
The logging operations of four companies, PT Carl Pearson Pharmin Timber
Corporation, PT Djaja Sumbar Indah, PT Cirebon Agung and a subsidiary of the
Djajanti Group have already destroyed areas of accessible coastal forest
since the late sixties. Now pushing deeper into the interior, the loggers
are creating degraded land, causing extensive soil erosion, and destroying
the forest resources of indigenous Mentawaians, while failing to carry out
the obligatory reforestation activities. One example of the logging
companies' attitude toward local people provided by the report, took place
in Saliguma in the Southern part of the island:
"Logging deprived one family in Saliguma of a sacred tree. On the death of a
family member,impressions of the hands and feet are carved into the trunk of
a durian tree and a flower planted. It is strictly taboo to cut the tree or
the flower. Such a tree was felled by the logging company who refused to pay
compensation of the cow demanded. The family appealed to the Kecamatan and
to the Kabupaten [sub-district and district authorities]. PT CPPS eventually
paid them Rp 30,000: 10% of the value of a cow."
There is evidence that the companies have ignored the boundaries of nature
reserves established after 1981 when the island was designated as a Man and
Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO. The loggers have also infringed numerous
forestry regulations and should not, argues the report, have their licences
renewed. "The companies act in breach of their duties and have little regard
for the environment and the needs of the local people."
In the wake of the loggers
The government attempts to justify plans to establish commercial plantations
and timber estates on the island by saying the critical land must be
utilised. In addition areas designated as "conversion forests" will be
cleared for these projects. The labour-force is to be provided by
transmigrants.
So far several oil-palm companies have shown interest in investing in
projects on the island, with some surveying work carried out by PT Sawit
Asahan Indah. The current status and extent of the proposed plantations are
unclear - reports vary from an initial 10,000 hectares to 250,000 hectares,
(over half the area of the island). One map mentioned in the report showed
the whole of Siberut designated as oil-palm plantations, except for a 12
kilometre strip around the perimeter. Whatever the eventual area covered,
a commercial plantation, with the additional pressures of infrastructure
development and imported labour, would almost certainly render the nature
reserve areas no longer viable.
Until recently, it was reported that the plantations had been delayed.
This may not be for much longer, as plans to import the transmigrant labour
shape up. Officials of the Padang Pariaman district (which includes the
island of Siberut) have signed an agreement to transmigrate families to the
Mentawai islands, according to the report. The number of families destined
for Siberut appears to be 10,000, or 2,000 a year for the next five years.
If carried out, the resettlement would mean a 200% increase in population,
greatly increasing pressure on the island's resources. Preparations are
already underway: in May 1991, letters were sent to the village heads of
Siberut, informing them that transmigrants would be sent to the Taileleu
area, on the southern tip of the island. The 17,000-hectare area requested
for the site contains village dwellings, gardens belonging to local people
as well as copra and rattan. It is not, as claimed, empty land.
"Bachelor transmigration"?
An even more disturbing side to transmigration for the island is
an apparent plan to send single men to the island, with the
intention that they marry local women.
In 1990, a local newspaper, Harian Haluan, quoted a statement from the
former district chief who was in turn quoting Alex Suseno, then Inspector
General of Transmigration. Suseno said that bachelor transmigrants would
come to Mentawai "in the hope that they would assimilate with the local
women." Although dismissed by some sources as an "off-the-cuff" comment, the
Siberut report confirms that the bachelor scheme was more than this, indeed
that it was proposed by the Ministry of Social Affairs, as "a solution to
the problems of the Mentawai".
Attempts to 'modernise' the indigenous people of the island have already
resulted in the resettling of forest-dwelling communities to coastal sites,
where serious health problems have developed. If the reports of bachelor
transmigration are true, the Social Affairs department is apparently
advocating a totally abhorrent form of social engineering for the indigenous
Mentawaians, which aims, through eugenics, to undermine their very existence
as a people.
Tourism
There has been rapid expansion in the number of tourists coming to Siberut,
from 50 or 60 a month in 1988 to between 50 and 80 people a week in 1990. A
regular ferry service to the island operating since 1987 has increased
accessibility and tour guides based in the popular tourist centre of Bukit
Tinggi in West Sumatra, now arrange tours to see "primitive tribal people
with tattoos wearing loincloths". Tourism is not controlled or planned,
guides do not speak local languages on the island and groups of camera
clicking tourists quickly give offence to the villagers. Tourists also
bring environmental problems in the form of non-biodegradable litter, and
they want to take something home with them as a souvenir - currently popular
are the skulls of Bilou monkeys. This kind of exploitative tourism
brings precious little benefit to the Mentawaians. Like the oil-palm,
logging and timber estates proposed for the island, tourism profits
companies based outside Siberut, which have no concern for the well-being of
the indigenous people. Unless the local people gain legally recognised and
enforceable rights to their lands and resources, the future of Siberut looks
bleak.
(This article has been adapted from an article appearing in Down to Earth
No 14, August 1991.)
For further information please contact: S.O.S. Siberut, a network of people
who are concerned about the threats to Siberut, based in England.
For a copy of the 50-page Siberut report, please send GB Sterling 6.00 to:
S.O.S. Siberut
c/o 36 Matlock Court, Kensington Park Road, London W11 3BS,
England.