Happy World Rainforest Day
In the battle against deforestation, Indonesia is on the frontline. Every year, every month, every day, perhaps even while you are reading this article right now, vast swathes of its pristine rainforest and the attendant biodiversity is annihilated to feed the seemingly bottomless pit that is humanity’s appetite for palm oil.
As well as wildlife, this ecocide also negatively impacts Indonesia’s poorest and most vulnerable groups of people, including indigenous groups. The loss of the rainforest to them also means the loss of life sustaining resources they need for their basic survival and to help them stay one step ahead of desperate poverty. Without tree roots to bind the soil together, communities living at the base of hills live in fear of village-destroying landslides and floods. The more open landscape of a degraded or razed forest is also much hotter and drier than a pristine one and therefore more vulnerable to fires. And perhaps the saddest thing is that many indigenous people do have rights to their land and the legal right to defend them. But many are not aware of this and as such, are not able to legally defend themselves or recognise it when palm oil companies are trying to deceive them into handing over their land to them.
This is where Masarang, and particularly its founder, Dr. Willie Smits come in. Since the 1980s, Dr. Smits has been living and working in Indonesia researching how to protect and restore the rainforest and in 2001, founded the Masarang foundation to support, research and implement ways that also benefit the local people, a crucial but often overlooked key to the success of conservation.
Indeed, Masarang’s reforestation work in Sulawesi and Kalimantan in Borneo has the local people heavily involved at just about every level. The plant nurseries Masarang grows young trees for reforestation in are managed with the involvement and help of local schools, religious groups and NGOs. In Kalimantan, Masarang has worked closely with the indigenous Dayak people, using their traditional knowledge to implement the most efficient, productive and ecologically suitable reforestation methods. In return, they also educate them about their land rights so that palm oil companies won’t be able to so easily steal their land from them anymore. And of course, much of Masarang’s reforestation work has centred on agroforestry schemes using crops that require diverse, healthy plant communities to grow properly, providing local people with food, income and incentives to protect the rainforest.
This long-term source of income also means that they do not have to sell their land to the palm oil companies for short-term profit or survival.
It’s an approach that has had real, demonstrable consequences for local biodiversity and ecosystem function. Back in 2001, the mountain from which the Masarang foundation takes its name had been mostly burned and denuded for over a century. Local temperatures were soaring, water sources sometimes ran dry and with no trees to bind the soil or improve its hydrological function, floods and landslides were a regular occurrence. But when Masarang bought the land rights to the mountain, they planted over a million trees and since then rainfall has increased, springs that had disappeared long ago started running again (providing more water and higher yields for rice paddies), temperatures have dropped significantly and animals such as owls and Sulawesi toads have reappeared in the new rainforest.
A similar story also played out in the valley of Pulisan in Northern Sulawesi. Here, Masarang planted trees on 80 hectares of barren grassland (including thousands of sugar palm trees) and in the ten years since wildlife has returned to the area, including two large groups of the critically endangered crested black macaque, now numbering almost 150 individuals. Meanwhile in Kalimantan, Dr. Smits has been working on reforesting half a million acres of land with methodologies based upon the results of the Masarang Foundation.
With such ecological and social successes as these, agroforestry represents a viable means to address two of the developing world’s most serious problems (poverty and biodiversity loss) at once.
Thank you to all in HK that have helped with planting trees at the projects, including the small group of Island School students that raised funds by selling home-made (non-palm oil) spreads.
Should anybody like to visit or volunteer, please contact us for details: Masarang.hk@gmail.com
Should you wish to volunteer at Tasikoki, please contact Gavin at: volunteer@tasikoki.org.
Should you wish to plant trees, Ark Eden in HK offers great local opportunities: https://www.arkedenonlantau.org
Thank you for your interest and support.Hope you have a treely (!) wonderful day.
Masarang hk Team
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