Seen from afar, the excavators look like ships landed on a hostile planet. The land is full of coal, and the Caterpillar 320D knows it. There is a burning smell where there once was a lush forest. Children play in the Kahayan River, ignoring that there is more sulfuric acid than fish. They also use that water for drinking.
You will never read about it, but the Dayaks, the natives of Indonesian Borneo, are robbed of their lands and deprived of livelihood. The growing demand for biofuels has led companies to acquire large-scale land in Indonesia, and it’s easy for the government to expropriate Dayaks, who boast only a mere customary right on the areas they cultivate. In the past few years, 14 million hectares were sold to palm oil, logging, and extraction companies.
The natives ecosystem is destroyed to make way for intensive cultivation, and the company’s waste fluids, thrown directly into the natural waterways, are polluting the sources of supply. Whole villages do not have access to drinking water and are deprived of their only source of food and work. Their lands play a central role and are also the fulcrum of their social and spiritual life. This explains why the deprivation and devastation of their ancestral territories are causing an inevitable and worrying cultural uprooting.
Their tragedy sounds so distant. Yet protecting their survival will be crucial for the survival of all humanity. Paradoxical, but more current than ever.
The destruction and weakening of the natural ecosystems (particularly the Indonesian Peatlands forests) due to the penetration of man into the last uncontaminated areas is the cause of humanity’s two biggest problems:
1) The increase in global greenhouse gas emissions. Precisely what is happening here, where peatlands that can store up to 20 times as much carbon as tropical rainforest are converted to oil palm plantations or coal mining sites and release an impressive amount of Co2.
2) As humans encroach upon forests, it increases the risk of contracting viruses circulating among wild animals. It sounds sadly familiar. Furthermore, due to the loss of work in the fields, the workers who are forced to work in the oil palms plantations, often hunt wild species to supplement the meager wages. The pangolin, one of the hunted and resold animals, may have been one of the carrier of the passage of SARS-CoV-2 to man.
Protect the communities that preserve nature and restore damaged habitats is an essential tool for safeguard our health. First Nation People, like the Dayaks, could be our unexpected saviors.
