Moluccas International Campaign for Human Rights

The armed forces, or TNI (Tentara Nasional Indonesia), still largely fund themselves from a mix of legal and illegal business activities that raise an estimated $6.4 billion a year.

 

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Rainforest in Halmaheira - North Moluccas

 

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Illegal logging damages 1.6 mln hectares of forests a year in Indonesia
Xinhua via COMTEX News Network 
2008-07-30 22:12:44
Illegal logging damages between 1. 6 million and 2.4 million hectares of forests in Indonesia annually. 'The factors that encourage illegal logging activity include weak law enforcement, weak forest control, political Continue.

There is Still Military in the Forest
27 Jun 2007
By Rully Syumanda
Security forces have become one of the parties profiting from various national forestry policies. The military/police have played an important role in consolidating and attempting to maintain New Order power, as well as their business interests, resulting in a conflict of interest in the enforcement of laws passed to regulate industry.

There has been no significant decline in the involvement of the military/police in the forestry/plantation sector since the New Order ended. The notion of the importance of developing oil palm plantations in border regions has been persistently maintained by military circles, involving military units that have long been established in those regions. The security forces in the extensive oil palm regions act as if they are trying to defend the country against enemy attack1.

Previously, most military involvement in the forestry sector was quite secretive. Relationships were restricted to meetings between logging concession owners or timber factories and the local military commanders. These connections cannot be proven because company documents don’t refer to the relationships. They can only be proven by witnesses either in the logging concession itself or from the community residing around the logging concession region. However, military and police involvement is operationally very important for the local timber factories or logging concessions.

Since the beginning of the Soeharto Government, the army was heavily involved in commercial forestry as concession holders, business partners, forest company executives, and as financial supporters and protectors of illegal logging. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a number of logging permits were given to generals. For Soeharto, this was a very effective means of garnering political support for the New Order as well as a way of silencing resistance that could emerge within the military and police ranks.

On top of this, military and police involvement in business was also a way to make up for insufficient budget and wages. The involvement of senior officials, both institutionally and privately, was not only permitted, but indeed recommended2. Brown estimates that more than 62 million hectares of forests were surrendered without any tendering process to the logging concessions of 51 conglomerates and national forest companies that had ties with the military and Soeharto family3.

Because they did not have the capital or expertise to develop a logging enterprise, military officials worked in collaboration with investors by forming a "charitable foundation", limited company, cooperative or company dominated by military interests. In 1995, more than one million hectares of logging concessions were held by companies which were wholely owned by military foundations4. This does not include several companies that had minority military ownership or that operated without official permits or concessions.

An analyst calculated that in 1999, the military forces of Indonesia and several of their companies were collectively the seventh largest timber concession holder in Indonesia, and the eleventh biggest plank and plywood producer.5

The capital contribution of the military in these various enterprises was generally very small. Despite this, the "charitable foundations" received a large portion. Military contributions were not only financial, but also included the political capital necessary to obtain access to forest lands and pressure Government officials into issuing national investment policies that benefited them.

At the local level, the army and police routinely acted as law enforcers who benefited companies. They suppressed protests and were available for hire by the companies to "empty" the land of any local communities. For example, in October 1997, police attacked demonstrators from Delik Village, who were protesting the seizure of their land for the construction of the second largest pulp and paper factory in Riau, by the Riau Andalan Pulp & Paper and APRIL group. Police shot at demonstrators who blocked the road construction, injuring two people and arresting one of the community organizers, Marganti Manaloe, a journalist6 attending the protest, was sentenced to three years imprisonment for provocation and sabotage.

Similar military involvement is found in the oil palm plantation industry. In 1996, an oil palm plantation company, PT Tor Ganda in Rokanhulu Regency, cleared more than 10,000 hectares of forests and local rubber orchards without community permission7. In 1999, when the local community from Mahato and Dalu-Dalu villages protested the loss of their land, they were attacked by police and gangsters who burnt 100 homes in three villages and shot at demonstrators, killing one person and injuring thirty others.

The military and police have strong economic reasons to protect the forestry industry, even during the post-Soeharto era. Little has been done to improve the accountability of national security or their formal and informal involvement in forestry business.

The approach of Indonesian President, Megawati to the military became an obstacle to efforts to improve accountability for human rights abuses. Megawati gave supreme military authority to individuals who were previously part of Soeharto’s circle, and had many charges concerning human rights violations in the East Timor before the courts. Human rights legal advisors stated that the failure to address transparency in the various military businesses and operational budget was a major obstacle to attempts to improve accountability and reduce armed conflict in several resource-rich areas, such as Aceh, Papua, Maluku and Poso8. This is despite it being a commonly-known ‘secret’ that military involvement in several illegal sectors is an old strategy applied to increase the military budget as well as private profit, particularly through the mining and forestry sectors.

Common forms of illegal practices include logging in protected forest areas and national parks, and logging either without permits or outside the permitted area. All of this is done to meet demand for legal and illegal exports to Singapore and Malaysia, as well as to meet rocketing domestic demand. Meanwhile, the military agents, police and local Government officials act as financial supporters and protectors at the respective stages of the illegal logging operations, including timber extraction, transportation and processing. This deep involvement has been well-documented in protected forests in Aceh and Central Kalimantan9. In 1998, DFID documented 23 illegal sawmills around the Bukit Tiga Puluh National Park in Riau, 12 of which had military support, 1 that had police support, and 5 that had Department of Forestry support.

The deep involvement of the Government in illegal logging has been openly acknowledged by the former Director General of Forestry, Suripto10. Suripto then submitted hard evidence of corruption by the main business leaders and 18 illegal logging syndicates to the Supreme Court Office and Police. Those involved included the timber boss and Soeharto’s crony, Prajogo Pangestu, and Soeharto’s daughter, Siti Hardijanti "Tutut" Rukmana. Suripto strongly suspected that they were involved in deception and misuse of reforestation funds (because the estimation of land for reforestation was too high, with the objective of getting greater reforestation funds), tax evasion, and deliberate burning of land for plantations, which violates laws prohibiting burning. Until now, there has been no formal charge or accusation against them.

The military has long benefited from national forestry policies that allowed the State to seize lands claimed by local communities on a massive scale. The military held the main role in consolidation and maintenance of New Order power, at the same time as having business interests in the national economy.

Footnotes:
[1] Developing Disasters on Borneo Ground, Syumanda, 2006.
[2] According to sources, these included the former Minister for Defense; military income additional to the official budget was 65-75% of their total budget. From this total, about 65% was siphoned off by several individuals.
[3] David Brown, "Addicted to Rent: Corporate and Spatial Distribution of Forest Resources in Indonesia," Indonesia U.K. Tropical Forestry Management Programme: Jakarta, September 1999, http://www.geocities.com/davidbrown_id/Atr_main.html (accessed 3 October 2002).
[4] Brown, "Addicted to Rent."
[5] Ibid., 4.
[6] Marganti Manaloe, Penjaraku: Ironi Penegakan Hak Asasi (Pekanbaru, Riau: Posi, 2001).
[7] Not one piece of licensing documentation can be found in the Rokan Hulu Regency Forestry and Plantations Regional Office that relates to permission for PT Tor Ganda to clear land, WALHI Riau, 2003.
[8] "The Stagnation of Reforms in Indonesia’s Armed Forces," Munir, INFID position paper.
[9] EIA Telapak Indonesia, "Timber Trafficking: Illegal Logging in Indonesia, South East Asia and International Consumption of Illegally Sourced Timber," Jakarta, September 2001; and Environmental Investigation Agency and Telapak Indonesia, "Illegal Logging in Tanjung Putting National Park: An Update," Jakarta, July 2000.
[10] Suripto received death threats because of his efforts to reduce the involvement of military and officials in the illegal logging. Suripto was dismissed from his position.

For more information, please contact:
Rully Syumanda
Campaigner for Forest and Plantation Issues
Telepon kantor: +62-(0)21-791 93 363
Fax: +62-(0)21-794 1673
Created: 27 Jun 2007 | Updated: 27 Jun 2007

Mining in Indonesia - Firms Wary Despite Hoax
Laksamana.Net June 13, 2004

Newcrest Mine: Toguraci gold mine in North Maluku Occupied

Multinational mining companies remain wary of developing new projects in Indonesia because of security fears, even though a recent series of terror threats against Canadian nickel mining firm Inco's subsidiary in South Sulawesi province turned out to be a hoax.

"There are large parts of the world [where] we as an industry can no longer go, such as Indonesia," Robert Friedland, chairman of Canada's Ivanhoe Mines, was quoted as saying Thursday (10/6/04) by Reuters.

"It is very difficult for anyone in our industry to go explore in Indonesia and a number of other countries because it is so politically risky," he said, adding that any part of the Islamic world is "well-nigh impossible to develop".

Jay Taylor, chief executive of gold mining giant Placer Dome, also said he was unwilling to launch projects in areas deemed unsafe. "Terrorism is one thing and there are other countries where kidnapping is an industry and I won't put people in those kind of countries either," he was quoted as saying.

Most of the troubles facing mining companies in Indonesia revolve around illegal mining, excessive bureaucratic red tape, security concerns and legal uncertainties.

The risk of possible terror attacks against mining firms was highlighted last month when expatriate staff of PT International Nickel Indonesia (PT Inco) received threats they would be killed by Islamic radicals.

But last week it transpired the threats were apparently a hoax, perpetrated by a Catholic dentist who worked for the company and was worried he would lose his job to a Westerner.

The threats had been taken very seriously, resulting in the evacuation of most of the mine's expatriate staff and their families. The threats also prompted new security warnings from the Australian and Canadian governments, while Indonesian authorities deployed a joint taskforce of 230 soldiers and paramilitary police to guard the Inco mine near Soroako town.

Police said Friday (11/6/04) the dentist had sent hundreds of cellular phone text messages and anonymous letters to scare expatriates away from the mine because he feared he would be replaced by a foreigner.

South Sulawesi Police spokesman Colonel Andi Nurman Tahir said the man had threatened to bomb the mine and kill Western workers.

"He's not linked to any Muslim militants. He was just scared that his job would be taken over by an expatriate as part of a program to upgrade hospital services [at the mine] to international standards," Tahir was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

The dentist was arrested Thursday and taken to South Sulawesi Police headquarters in Makassar city for questioning.

PT International Nickel Indonesia has said the firm's more than 50 expatriate employees who had been evacuated would soon return.

Although the terror threats against Inco have been deemed unrelated to Islamic extremists, mining companies are being urged to remain vigilant against possible terror attacks.

The Wall Street Journal and Far Eastern Economic Review, citing evidence gathered by Western security agencies, last week reported that operatives of regional terrorism network Jemaah Islamiyah had infiltrated Indonesia to assassinate Western diplomats and business executives, including officials of multinational mining and energy firms.

Newcrest Mine Occupied

Australia's Newcrest Mining has reportedly been hit by another protest at its Toguraci gold mine in North Maluku province.

The Republika daily reported Tuesday (8/6/04) that locals had occupied the mine to demand that Newcrest's subsidiary PT Nusa Halmahera Minerals (NHM) pay them compensation fordamage to the environment and then leave the area.

The protesters also called for a meeting with the mine's owners because they felt NHM's management could not be trusted to pass on their demands.

Erwin Usman of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) was quoted by the BBC as saying about 300 people had been camping at the site since May 21.

"They come from various religions, both Muslims and Christians. Apart from that they also come from different ethnic groups, from amongst the Kao and Malifut," he said.

Last October NHM had to suspend operations because of the presence of about 200 illegal miners at the site.

The Forestry Ministry in February said the company would not be given permission to operate the mine because it is located in a protected forest. But since then NHM has received the green light from the government to continue mining.

In January, Mobile Brigade (Brimob) police on the company's payroll shot dead a land rights protester at the mine. Many other protesters were beaten and arrested. Since the shooting, locals critical of Newcrest have been subjected to police harassment and detention without trial, according to environmentalists.

Only one Brimob officer has been brought to justice over the January violence. Inspector Badaruddin was on May 19 sentenced by a local court to seven months in prison with a year on probation. But locals claim he is now free.

Newmont Unfazed by Protest

PT Newmont Nusa Tenggara (NNT) says operations are continuing normally at its Batu Hijau gold and copper mine on Sumbawa island despite an "illegal" demonstration by some its staff.

"The illegal demo concerning the issue of overtime calculation and involving about 200 employees of a total of 4,200 employees is continuing. This action is peaceful and has not affected operations," NTT general manager Phil Brumit said in a press statement Friday (11/6/04).

The protest was prompted by employees' confusion over payment for overtime under new work rules that came into effect on January 1. Workers had apparently thought they were being shortchanged under a system of working four days of 12 hour shifts followed by four paid days of rest.

Brumit said employees were being paid in accordance with a directive from local manpower authorities. "Additionally, in accordance with a management commitment a significant discretionary payment was made to non-staff employees whose re- calculations resulted in an adjustment of less than Rp6 million," he said.

"We have contacted the employees and requested that they return to work and pursue resolution in accordance with law and regulation, to this time they have not complied with that request. We hope that we will be able to resolve this issue quickly," he added.

Indonesia legalizes mining in protected forests
Kyodo News Friday July 8, 2005 12:58 PM

(Kyodo) _ Indonesia's Constitutional Court has issued a ruling allowing 13 mining companies to mine in protected forests as part of efforts to improve the country's investment climate, the Jakarta Post reported Friday.

According to the Post, a nine-member judicial panel voted unanimously for enactment of a law in 2004 to revise the 1999 law on forestry that banned open-pit mining in protected forests.

"We can understand the government's argument that the regulation should be issued, otherwise it would face difficulties in developing a favorable investment climate," Constitutional Court President Jimly Asshidiqie was quoted as saying.

The judges, the Post said, rejected the demand by a group of nongovernmental organizations and environmentalists to revoke the 2004 law, saying it only benefits the mining companies.

The government said the companies have been allowed to operate in the protected areas because the areas have proven reserves and are economically viable.

Environmentalists said the ruling will lead to deforestation and other environmental destruction that may affect ordinary people.

"The government has failed to prevent corporations from controlling the environment at the expense of the people," Siti Maemunah, coordinator for the nongovernmental organization Network for Mining Advocacy, said.
2005 Kyodo News © Established 1945. All Rights Reserved

The Human Rights Cost of the Indonesian Military's Economic Activities
Inter Press Service News Agency
Friday, June 30, 2006 22:43 GMT
Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun 21 (IPS) - Until the Indonesian military is barred from pursuing its own business interests, civilian control over its activities will be limited, and human rights will suffer as a result, according to a major new report released Wednesday by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The report, "Too High a Price: The Human Rights Cost of the Indonesian Military's Economic Activities", finds that the military's long-time practice of independent financing has led to a host of abuses, including extortion, property seizures and profiteering, and has sustained violence in conflict areas, such as Aceh and Papua, rich in natural resources.

"The military's money-making creates an obvious conflict of interest with its proper role," according to the 136-page report's author, Lisa Misol, a researcher with HRW's Business and Human Rights Programme.

"Instead of protecting Indonesians, troops are using violence and intimidation to further their business interests," she said. "And because the government doesn't control the purse-strings, it can't really control them."

Under a 2004 law, the military, formerly known as the Tentara Nasional Indonesia, or TNI, is supposed to divest itself of all its commercial interests -- variously estimated at between 200 and more than 1,500 businesses -- by 2009.

But government moves to begin addressing the military's economic entanglements to date have been "slow, half-hearted, and incomplete", according to the report, which calls on the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to "radically rethink its approach".

While the reform calls for profitable military enterprises to be made into state-owned companies, for example, it would permit the TNI to retain charitable foundations and cooperatives that long been used as fronts for its commercial interests, the report said.

Daniel Lev, an Indonesia expert at the University of Washington in Seattle, said, "This is the kind of report that needs more currency because the army's military business enterprises have not gotten the attention they deserve. Not enough has been done about it, in part because people aren't paying enough attention."

The report, which is based on two years of research, including more than 200 interviews with government officials, TNI retired and active-duty officers, independent experts, community activists, and businesspeople, comes just weeks after the visit to Jakarta of U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Despite long-standing Congressional curbs on U.S. military aid and sales to Indonesia, including restrictions on certain kinds of aid until the civilian authorities asserted significant control over the TNI and greater transparency regarding its business interests, Rumsfeld's trip marked the official normalisation of military relations between the two countries. The Pentagon has long sought to improve ties with the TNI in order both to secure closer cooperation in the "global war on terror" and to bolster Jakarta as a friendly counterweight to China.

While many TNI critics have assailed it for a history of serious human rights abuses in East Timor, Aceh, Papua and elsewhere, they have also noted that its financing and commercial activities have played an important role in fomenting those abuses and in ensuring its independence from civilian authorities.

"Since the revolution, the army has never had to defend Indonesia from an outside enemy, so the primary enemy of the Indonesian army is the Indonesian people," Lev told IPS. "You can't get rid of the army's corruption unless you're willing to change the army itself. You need really strong leadership to do that. SBY (the president) is a smart man and a nice man, but he doesn't have enough of a will to pull it off."

For much of the military's existence, only about half of its budget was provided from the government's military account. Although some of the rest was obtained through other government accounts, with little or transparency, most of the balance was raised by range of independent operations, including "military-owned enterprises, informal alliances with private entrepreneurs to whom the military often provides services, mafia-like criminal activity, and corruption", according to the report.

"If your budget provides about one-third or one-half of what you need, you're going to steal the rest of it. That's ensured (in Indonesia)," Lev said. "One of the ways you resolve it is to reduce the size of the army. But if you try to do that, they'll put up a terrific fight because they'll immediately lose money."

While the TNI claims that the additional funds are used for the welfare of the troops, much of the revenue goes directly to commanders, specific units, or individual soldiers, and are never monitored or subject to financial controls. The result is a virtual invitation for corruption.

One common method of raising funds is providing security or protection services to private interests, arrangements that lend themselves to rights abuse, as well as corruption.

One of the most notorious examples was the payment by U.S. mining giant Freeport McMoRan to local TNI units in Papua to provide security for its operations. Federal investigations have been opened in the United States to determine whether these payments may have amounted to extortion, and reports that the 2002 ambush and killing of two U.S. teachers near the Grasberg mine may have been intended to extort more money from the company have persisted despite the indictment of alleged rebels for carrying out the attack.

Despite Freeport's admission that payments were made, however, the Indonesian government has yet to carry out its own investigation as to whether military officers violated any laws in accepting the payments.

In another case, a coal-mining company in South Kalimantan retained a military-run cooperative to deal with illegal miners in its concession area. The military organised the miners through violence and intimidation and then brokered sales of the illegally mined coal for its own benefit.

In a similar case, a series of military-owned businesses in East Kalimantan gained preferred access to forest concessions on land claimed by indigenous communities, over-logged the area, and then illegally exported the timber to Malaysia. Not only were the operations were illegal, the report noted, they also fostered unrest among the indigenous groups. While the concessions were eventually withdrawn, the companies and individuals involved were not prosecuted or otherwise sanctioned.

In areas of civil conflict, soldiers have often engaged in predatory behaviour against local residents, including extortion and property seizures, according to the report. In other cases, the TNI's involvement or complicity in illicit commerce, including drug-trafficking, has resulted in violence, as in a bloody 2002 incident in North Sumatra, when several civilians were killed during a military attack of hundreds of troops on a police station. While in that case, 19 soldiers were discharged and received jail terms, scores more went unpunished, according to the report.

The report concluded that it is "nearly impossible" to determine the total value of the TNI's economic activities, and that "no one, including top military leaders, has a full grasp of the sums involved."

Even the proportion of the total military budget believed to be raised by licit and illicit TNI operations is unclear, according to the report. (END/2006)

Illegal fishing 'still a concern' after Aust-Indonesia operation
ABC Online 2008-05-05

Australia and Indonesia have wound up a two-week operation in the Arafura Sea to combat illegal fishing in both countries' waters.

The joint air and sea patrols were coordinated by Australia's Border Protection Command.

Australia's Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus has told Radio Australia's Connect Asia program they included daily Australian surveillance flights with an Indonesian fisheries officer aboard.

"The cooperation partly takes the form of personnel from several countries in each others' vessels and aeroplanes so that we can indeed coordinate the activities of the boats and planes that are involved in the surveillance," he said.

Mr Debus says illegal fishing activity in Australian waters has declined in the past two years, although this latest joint patrol did not find any evidence of illegal fishing.

He says while Australia still has concerns about illegal fishing because of the environmental impact and territorial concerns, the role of organised crime in illegal fishing continues to be a big concern for Indonesian authorities.

"Illegal fishing is not only a problem for Australia," he said.

"The Indonesians are also concerned about illegal fishing.

"So we have this mutual interest in making sure that we clear as much illegal fishing away as we can - right throughout the area between northern Australia and the Philippines."
© 2008 ABC

IMF, WB also responsible for forest destruction in Indonesia
Antara -- 17 September 2006
Batam (ANTARA News) - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) are two institutions allegedly engaged in destroying the forests in Indonesia and in other developing countries.

"The role of the IMF and WB is in the channeling of funds to companies engaged in investment without first studying the impact of the application of their policies," Greenpeace activist Red Costantino said in a meeting on "International People`s Forum Versus IMF and WB" here on Sunday.

It was also said that because of large scale forest destruction, a change of the world climate happened following the cutting and exploitation of many system-balancing forests without proper study and control.

"Those forest destroying companies are funded by the World Bank. Greenpeace calls for a stop to such logging activity," Constantino said.

On the same occasion, Director of the Indonesian Forum on Environment (Walhi), South Sumatra chapter, Berry Bahdan Forqan said that in that province forest distruction could be found anywhere and a bigger threat would happen if the World Bank as well as other financing institutions failed to stop their financial assistance to the companies in question.

Walhi had a list of companies engaged in forest destruction including the pulp and paper industry PT. Marga Buana Bumi Mulia (MBBM), wooden chips industry PT. Mangium Anugerah Lestari (MAL), pulp supplier PT Hutan Rindang Benua (HRB) and industrial estate forest company HTI.

All of them are sister companies of the United Fibre System (UFS), a foreign consortium of eight countries which has its headquarters in Singapore.

In 2002, PT. Marga Buana Bumi Mulia and PT Mangium Anugerah Lestary in cooperation with PT Hutan Rindang Banua supply pulp, raw material for making paper.

PT. Hutan Rindang Banua said it has around 268,585 hectares of forested land in 2002. While the company claimed it had reforested about 75,758 hectares of land, it turned out that only 41,212 hectares had been reforested.

Accordingly, the World Bank should stop providing a loan to paper producing companies in Indonesia, because the company planned to produce 600 hundreds of pulp per year in Cuka River, Tanah Buntu dsitrict. (*) 

Uprooting People,
Destroying Cultures
Indonesia's Transmigration Program
by Carolyn Marr
Despite objections by human rights and environmental organizations, the Indonesian government and the international lending community defend and continue the controversial transmigration program which moves poor farming families from the crowded islands of Java, Bali and Madura to less densely populated islands of the archipelago. Human rights organizations charge that the program destroys indigenous communities, and environmentalists focus on its ecological devastation, including deforestation. The Indonesian government dismisses these concerns, arguing that transmigration is necessary to reduce overpopulation and develop undeveloped territories, and asserting that everyone benefits from the program.

The government claims that families participating in the transmigration program do so voluntarily. Indeed, as its supporters describe it, the government's offer is very attractive. In theory, participants receive two hectares of land, a house and the basic necessities which enable them to build new, more prosperous lives in settlements with schools, health facilities and access to markets. The conditions in which transmigrants actually live, however, are less appealing. They are sent to Sumatra, Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo), Sulawesi, the Moluccas and most controversially, the disputed territories of West Papua referred to as "Irian Jaya" by the Indonesian government) and East Timor where the land is infertile and there are few or no facilities. Most find their living conditions worse than on their native islands.

There is little public criticism of transmigration within Indonesia, where the government ruthlessly suppresses democratic organizations and press freedoms and imposes harsh prison sentences on those who dare question Indonesia's presence in those disputed territories. President Suharto's 25-year-old military regime tolerates no dissent.

Millions of people have already been resettled under transmigration, the world's largest resettlement program. And the program is growing rapidly. According to official data, between 1950 and 1986, 698,200 families (about 3.5 million people) were moved, most of them to Sumatra. In 1985, Indonesia intensified the program and announced a five-year transmigration target of 750,000 families (3.75 million people). When critics voiced objections, the transmigration department backtracked, saying, "We are realizing that it may now be impossible to achieve this ambitious target, because of unpredictable budgetary constraints and related problems." Nevertheless, the lack of funds was overcome by encouraging the participation of self-financing transmigrants. The target for the current five- year plan (1989-1994) is 550,000 families (2.5 million people), requiring an estimated 4.5 million hectares of land.

Population transfer or territorial management?

In 1987, Indonesia's Ministry of Transmigration claimed, "Transmigration is the name of the Republic's bold program to help spur the development of the sprawling island nation and give its poorest families the chance to own their land and significantly improve their living standards." It went on to list the aims of the resettlement program: to encourage development; raise living standards; generate new jobs; increase food and tree crop production; relieve population pressure; control environmental degradation; and foster greater national interdependence.

In fact, internal documents of the government's transmigration department acknowledge that transmigration does not achieve its publicly stated goals: it makes virtually no dent in the population pressure on Java and it exacerbates the country's environmental degradation instead of reducing it, as forests are destroyed to make way for the new sites.

The Transmigration Ministry does not mention, however, one of transmigration's most important goals: national defense and security. The World Bank makes the same omission in its justifications for continued funding. But at home, Indonesian officials have been very clear about it. In 1989, for example, Defense Minister General Murdani said that transmigration is not only concerned with population redistribution but is "related to the importance of territorial development," which means "spreading out human resources as a defense and security potential." Transmigration Minister Lieutenant General Soegiarto also included strengthening defense and security when he described the program's purpose. In practice, this means resettling ethnic Javanese in sensitive border areas. The government also plans to populate border sites with retired army personnel. One such settlement was established in 1986 on the island of Natuna, located in the China Sea between Borneo and Vietnam. And according to the head of the provincial transmigration office, 500 retired army families will soon be sent to the Malaysian border in West Kalimantan.

Voluntary?

Transmigration promoters say the program is voluntary. But an official in the province of Aceh described transmigrants as "poor people who were thrown out of Java like rubbish." Indeed, some of those who end up at transmigrant sites, including beggars and vagrants, have been rounded up in some of the larger cities and bundled off to transmigration sites. One site established especially for this category is on the island of Buru, where thousands of political prisoners were sent in the wake of President Suharto's 1965 anti-communist reign of terror.

As part of a campaign to "modernize" Jakarta, government officials confiscated the vehicles of the becak (trishaw) drivers who throng the streets of many Javanese cities, and sent the drivers to start new lives as farmers on other islands. Some families join the ranks of transmigrants after natural disasters such as floods and volcanic eruptions destroy their land, while others--such as the families displaced by the World Bank-funded Kedung Ombo Dam in Central Java--are coerced into joining to make way for large-scale development projects. In Gresik, a major industrial zone of Java, people living on land earmarked to accommodate the expansion of a chemical plant have been offered transmigration as an escape from the increased pollution.

But the bulk of transmigrants are drawn from landless and poor farmers. On Java, where 60 percent of Indonesia's population lives on only 7 percent of the total land area, the population density is one of the highest in the world. Still, industrial and tourist projects gobble up more and more land, exacerbating the land squeeze and accelerating the marginalization of poor farmers. Transmigrants are lectured about the scarcity of land in Java and Bali as a justification for transmigration, while big business interests with ties to the Suharto family announce plans for luxury tourist resorts, golf courses, industrial estates and chemical complexes. Transmigration is primarily a "safety valve," designed to defuse pressure for the redistribution of land and for political change.

A catalogue of failures

A recent survey by a French consultant found that 80 percent of sites fail to improve the living standards of transmigrants. Even Indonesia's Transmigration Minister, Lieutenant General Soegiarto, admits that conditions in 903 sites throughout Indonesia concern the government. Similarly, the World Bank acknowledged this year that the expectation that transmigrants would raise their household incomes through the introduction of cash crops has not been met. The Bank reports that agricultural support services and supply of inputs are "inadequate;" access roads are "of poor quality and inadequately managed;" and the general management and coordination of the program is "weak."

The Indonesian daily, Kompas, recently outlined the problems faced by transmigrants on one of the earliest sites. Settlement began in Kurik, in the southern part of West Papua, even before the territory had been officially incorporated into Indonesia. Here, where the soil is rock-hard in the dry season and waterlogged in the wet season, the meager crops that can be grown are likely to be devoured by pests.

Women usually fare worse than men when families transmigrate; they have no part in the decision to transmigrate, and they receive no training or preparation for the move. Typically, the men are forced to leave the site, often for months at a time, to find work after the government support has run out. The women must stay behind to tend the plot and look after the children. Kurik, however, was an exception. There the women left the site--with the blessings of their husbands--to become prostitutes in the town.

Many transmigration sites have been abandoned altogether. One woman, living in makeshift accommodations in the provincial capital after leaving a settlement, says "the land was too acidic to grow crops and there were so many mice." She and other "failed " transmigrants eke out a living as rubbish recyclers. Others live on the rubbish dump itself. These people are not calculated in the rate of return to Java, which signifies the failure of the program and which is officially at least 15 percent.

Government spending on transmigration was cut during the mid-eighties slump in the price of oil, Indonesia's major foreign exchange earner. Falling revenues from the oil sector and the spiralling foreign debt left fewer funds for the program. A plan to save money by encouraging transmigrants to pay their way to the site (370,000 of the current 550,000 families target is for these so-called "spontaneous" transmigrants) was introduced and the program was directed away from the original food crop model to state-run or private plantations and processing projects for export.

Transmigrants working on these projects, which were first introduced in the mid-eighties, are given a house and 0.25 hectares for growing subsistence foods and are required to work on a plantation as wage laborers. After a number of years, the transmigrants are supposed to gain ownership of plantation plots and from then on sell their produce to a processing plant. In reality, projects rarely reach this stage; instead transmigrants are exploited as cheap labor.

The government responds to the failure of many sites by blaming the transmigrants themselves. Last year, Vice President Sudharmono told transmigrants in South Kalimantan who appealed to him for funds to improve their site that they should use their own skills and resources. "Don't rely only on the government and don't wait for divine intervention to overcome your problems," he said. Sudharmono surely would not approve, however, of the increasingly popular survival tactic which the transmigrants have developed on their own: families register as transmigrants, receive free government supplies for the six-month period, and then sell their land, return to Java and re-register as transmigrants to begin the whole cycle again.

Transmigrants as colonists

The families which are thrown out of Java and Bali are not the only ones to suffer. The indigenous communities and the environment at the transmigration sites are also victims of the program.

The government claims that the islands are appropriate sites for the new settlements because they are "virtually empty" or "underpopulated." But it is no accident that the population density is lower than in Java; the rainforests there cover thin soils which cannot sustain intensive agriculture without the massive and unsustainable use of fertilizers. The indigenous peoples of these islands have evolved strategies to live in and from the forests without destroying them, but they are being displaced by transmigration settlements. They are losing their land because the Indonesian government refuses to recognize their traditional land rights. And their indigenous cultural heritage is threatened with extinction by the large influx of outsiders.

Some indigenous groups have responded militantly to the invasion of their territory. A government official in Aceh expressed particular pity for transmigrants who he said had been "thrown out of Java," and were now being chased out of Aceh too--in fear for their lives. A recent upsurge of separatist violence in the province, where, alongside the military and police, transmigrants have come to symbolize Javanese domination of this fiercely Islamic region, has prompted thousands of settlers to abandon their sites. The violence is partly inspired by Acehnese opposition to the large mining, gas, oil and pulp and paper projects which are exploiting Aceh's resources but which are controlled by Jakarta. Many Javanese transmigrants in Aceh have returned to Java with all their portable possessions to escape attacks by
the Free Aceh Movement.

Read more

Transmigrants in North Seram
Wednesday, 21 November 2007
M. Azis Tunny 
Large expanses of dry rice fields stretch out over Pasahari plateau in North Seram district, Central Maluku regency, where farmers are not able to use their fields optimally due to problems with irrigation.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20071121.D04

Five coral reef zones in S. Maluku badly damaged
ANTARA News 09/17/07
Ambon, Maluku (ANTARA News) - At least five of South Maluku district`s 17 coral reef zones are badly damaged due to the use of fish bombs and toxic substances like potassium cyanide by local fishermen, an environmental official said.

"Six other coral reef zones are slightly damaged and inter-sectoral handling is needed to repair the damage," the head of the environmental affairs section of Maluku`s forestry and plantations office, John Nahusona, said on Monday.

This showed local fishermen`s awareness about the impact of the use of potassium cyanide and fish bombs on the environment and marine biota had remained low, he said.
Therefore, his office was making intensive efforts to prevent local fishermen from using fish bombs and potassium cyanide in their work. (*)
Copyright © 2007 ANTARA

Indonesia Plays Down Threat To Forests From Mining
PlanetArk 19/3/2008

JAKARTA - An Indonesian decree allowing mining companies to operate in tropical forests is unlikely to lead to massive deforestation, a forestry expert and government officials said on Tuesday arguing that mining had a limited impact.

Under a presidential decree issued on Feb. 4, mining firms, including open-pit miners, will be able to pay between 1.8 million and 2.4 million rupiah ($200-$265) per hectare (2.5 acres) for forest land used for activities such as housing, roads, mine sites and waste dumps.

The decree has alarmed environmental groups concerned about Indonesia's rapid deforestation.

The country had the fastest pace of deforestation in the world between 2000-2005, according to Greenpeace, with an area of forest equivalent to 300 soccer pitches destroyed every hour.

Krystof Obidzinski, a researcher with the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), said historically mining had never been a significant contributor to deforestation.

"Definitely there's a danger and it's regrettable but on the overall schemes of things, as far as deforestation per se, we think it's not a major concern," he told a panel discussion on deforestation with foreign correspondents.

The decree applies to 13 mining firms that four years ago were allowed to resume operations in forest areas -- including Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold, which operates the massive Grasberg mine in Indonesia's remote Papua province.

Obidzinski said the new regulation was driven by a need to reinvigorate mining sector investment, a key tax contributor, as well as the need of the forestry ministry to recoup income lost due to a decline in other forest activities.

Bowo Satmoko, a senior official of the forestry ministry, said so far only three mining companies had been given the go ahead to exploit forest areas.

"The others are still proposing exploration," he said.

He said that mining permits were confined only to the 13 firms, although an official at the energy and mines ministry told Reuters last week that companies which had mining permits before a forestry law was issued in 1999 could also be eligible.

Another forestry ministry official, Syaiful Anwar, said the bar would be set high for companies operating in forests.

"For companies to be able to operate there's a procedure and it is a tough procedure," he told reporters.

A leading domestic environmental group, Walhi, has collected donations from hundreds of people to buy up more than 3 million square metres (32 million sq ft) of protected forest to prevent mining companies being allowed to operate there.

Indonesia's forestry law issued in 1999 prohibited open-pit mining in protected forest areas. But in 2004, the country's fourth president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, issued a decree to allow the companies to resume operations in protected areas.

(Reporting by Ahmad Pathoni, Editing by Ed Davies and Sanjeev Miglani)
Story Date: 19/3/2008

Indonesian waters open to poaching, looting
The Jakarta Post 19/07/2007

Indonesia‘s no-vote for the ILO Convention on Fisheries during the International Labor Conference early in June has sparked confusion among the public, particularly fishing communities and seafarers. The abstention gives the impression the government is turning a blind eye to theft in Indonesian waters and the abuse of thousands of underpaid seafarers.

Labor unions, especially the Indonesian Seafarers‘ Association (KPI) and fishermen‘s associations, have protested the government‘s political stance, questioning its commitment to poverty eradication.

The ILO convention focuses on international core labor standards for seafarers and paid fishermen, including international minimum wages, extra-time payments and social security protections. The ILO set the monthly minimum wage in 2007 at US$515, almost four times the minimum payment for seafarers and fishermen according to a survey conducted last year. By contrast, a ship owner earns an average of Rp 14 million ($1,546) per month while the captain around Rp 8 million ($883).

The KPI and Indonesian Fishermen‘s Association (HNSI) have questioned the poor labor conditions in the fishery sector, despite the fact that the quality of fish in Indonesian waters is better than that in other countries.

Indonesia failed to vote for the ILO convention on the grounds that it contradicts a government regulation and the culture of fishing communities in Indonesia, which the government says is different from other countries. But the reasons are baseless since no government regulation has been issued to enforce the 2004 Fishery Law and the newly-approved bill on the management of coastal areas and islets.

Ministerial Decree No. 17/2006 issued by the maritime and fishery minister to regulate the issuance permit for fish catches should not be seen as contrary to the ILO convention since the decree requires foreign fishing companies to form partnerships with local companies exploiting Indonesian maritime resources.

Consequently, foreign fishing vessels that partner with locals should comply with the ILO convention to provide decent payment and social security programs to Indonesian seafarers and fishermen.

Access to Indonesian waters is, to some extent, open to public supervision, but, in fact and simultaneously, is limited and accessible to certain sides, including the Navy, the tax and excise office and the Maritime and Fishery Ministry, which all have patrol vessels.

According to Maritime and Fishery Ministry data, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing activities in Indonesian waters have caused $2 billion annually in state losses but so far only a few foreign vessels have been captured while many cases have been settled on the spot by corrupt state apparatus.

The fishery ministry has so far collected Rp 100 million in levies from local and foreign fishing companies but have failed to provide an accountability report on the use of the money. Even worse, part of the money has gone to political parties and politicians prior to and after the 2004 general election.

The public awareness of Indonesia‘s rich resources has come too late as the huge marine resources have been over-exploited while most people who make their living from coastal areas and fishing can not empower themselves and improve their welfare.

Indonesia‘s maritime sector has been left undeveloped not only because of the late establishment of the Maritime and Fishery Ministry eight years ago, but mainly because of the government‘s ignorance of the sector. The land-oriented development program has diverted the public eye from the huge economic potentials on seas, let alone the theft of maritime resources and abuses against workers in the fishery industry.

It‘s better late than never. The newly endorsed bill on management of coastal areas and islets promotes sustainable maritime and fishery development, which is expected to help the country make amends for past mistakes. Over-exploitation of maritime resources has not only impoverished many people, but also is a source of disasters.

The bill defines coastal areas and waters as having strategic purposes, in terms of economy, environment and geopolitics, for all stakeholders, particularly fishing communities and the defense forces. It promotes the economic development of islets to attract people to migrate to uninhibited islets.

The bill threatens to punish individuals and parties found guilty of damaging the maritime ecosystem with a maximum 10-year jail sentence and/or a maximum Rp 10 billion fine. It also mandates the government and regional heads to determine certain strategic zones for particular purposes and grant businesspeople concessions for exploration of coastal waters.

Fatalities and asset damage in the tsunamis which devastated Aceh and Nias in December 2004, the southern part of West Java in 2006 and the western part of south and central Sulawesi in 1997 and 2004 could have been minimized had mangroves along the country‘s 95,180-kilometer coastal areas been preserved and developed for the 64 percent of the population that lives along the coast.

Undersea national parks, especially in Bunaken, North Sulawesi, and Arafura waters in Maluku, will not be damaged if the government imposes harsh sanctions against the rampant illegal fishing and illegal mining. The Nipah islet in Riau Islands disappeared following excessive illegal sand quarrying, which has reportedly been exported to Singapore.

Sipadan and Ligitan, off East Kalimantan, would have not gone to Malaysia had hundreds people been resettled there long before the dispute broke out.

The huge number of fish in waters in the country‘s easternmost region would not have been looted by foreign fishing vessels under the nose of the Navy had the government introduced customs which now is being implemented by fishing communities in Tual, southeast Maluku.

Australia has long adopted such customs, which declares its waters closed for fishing for a certain period to allow the fish to grow and breed. Offenses are considered crimes.

************

National Student League for Democracy (LMND) To Build Up Nation-Wide Nationalisation Campaign
LMND Saturday March 1, 2008

"Nationalise foreign mining for free education"

Indonesian students organised in the National Students’ League for Democracy (LMND) held an action at the office of Exxon-Mobil in Jakarta on February 25 to demand the nationalization of the Indonesian mining sector. LMND is affiliated to the National Liberation Party of Unity (PAPERNAS).

The students in Jakarta returned to protest at the Ministry of Energy on February 26.

On February 25 about 100 students from LMND North Moluccas, together with several other organisations (GAMHAS Ternate, LISMI Ternate, and SLAVERY University Hairun), carried out a street demonstration in the heart of the Ternate City. The action lasted four hours and its route went pass the offices of the Governor the North Moluccas, Gedung DPRD North Moluccas, and the offices Radio Republic Of Indonesia.

Apart from demanding the nationalisation of foreign mining (such as P.T. Nusa Halmahera Minerals) to pay for free education, the students demanded the rejection of the BHP Bill, now before parliament; the revision of Sisdiknas UU 2003; higher prices for local products such as cloves, nutmeg, chocolate, and copra; higher workers’ pay; lower fuel and oil prices; along with subsidies for poor fisherfolk.

LMND also organised a protest of 300 students and poor farmers around the "Nationalise the foreign mining companies" in Maubere, Flores, on February 25.

On February 29, Papernas Sulteng carried out an action around the demand of the "Nationalisation of foreign mining is a road out of the energy crisis and the domestic industry".

The action that was held in the centre of the Palu City (the Hasanuddin Roundabout) with drew about 40 people and also focussed on the phenomenon of blackouts and the scarcity of fuel oil in the Palu City.

DPD-Papernas Sulteng considered that the two crises were a result of the government’s lack of seriousness in constructing the national industry.

Apart from being filled up by political speeches from various supporting mass organizations of Papernas, the action was livened up by the appearance happening art from students from the Palu City LMND.

Around 25 students from the  Labuhan Batu, again took to the streets on March 3 and marched to the offices of the DPRD Ii Labuhan Batu.

They took to the streets to express the demand for the nationalisation of the foreign mining industry to pay for free education and the resolution of problems of the campus in Labuhan Batu.

PAPERNAS and its affiliates will continue mobilising around this demand right through March 2008.
LMND
Online 8 March 2008

Australia, Indonesia coordinate patrols against illegal fishing
People's Daily Online May 07, 2008

Indonesia and Australia have completed a two-week operation of coordinated patrols targeting illegal fishing in the Arafura Sea north-east of Darwin, local press said Wednesday.

Australian Ambassador to Indonesia Bill Farmer described the latest coordinated patrols as 'concrete evidence' of the seriousness with which both countries were dealing with the threaten illegal fishing in the region, reported the national Antara news agency.

During the joint operation, the Australian Customs vessel Triton and Indonesian Fisheries vessels Hiu Macan 003 and Hiu Macan 004 patrolled their respective Exclusive Economic Zones in this area, with the Indonesian vessels also visiting an Australian port for the first time.
Indonesian Minister for Fisheries and Maritime Affairs Freddy Numberi said: "our respective maritime zones should be seen as a common resource and both sides are equally responsible for their wise and sustainable use."

" This solid cooperation between Australia and Indonesia is very important in establishing coordinated patrols targeting illegal fishing vessels entering Indonesian waters or at the border area between the two countries," Numberi said.
Source: Xinhua
Copyright by People's Daily Online, All Rights Reserved
  

Unloading Moluccan plywood at a Japanese harbour

 

---

Illegal Fishing Still Rampant In Indonesia Amid Intensive Operations At Sea
2008-07-08 11:19:49
The huge number of fish in waters in the country`s easternmost region would not have been looted by foreign fishing vessels under the nose of the Navy had the government introduced customs which now is being implemented by fishing communities in Tual, southeast Maluku. Continue.

Plundering the Sea
Inside Indonesia Jan-Mar 2003
Regulating trawling companies is difficult when the navy is in business with them
Brian Fegan
It is widely known that illegal fishing by foreign-owned trawlers is a major problem for Indonesia. The Minister for Marine Affairs and Fisheries, Rokhmin Dahuri, estimated at an October 2002 press conference that the nation loses some two billion dollars (US) worth of fish every year because of illegal fishing. What is less well known is that the nation is also incurring substantial losses from the existing arrangements for legal fishing. In the Arafura Sea surrounding West Papua, hundreds of trawlers, most from Thailand, are legally looting massive quantities of fish.

The navy, which should be patrolling Indonesia's waters and helping Dahuri's department enforce regulations on the fishing industry, is doing the opposite: it is profiting from the plunder. The navy s cooperative, Inkopal, is the business partner of the leading foreign fishing companies whose trawlers ply the Arafura Sea.

The EEZ

Southeast Asian maritime governments have long known that trawling represents a serious danger to the sustainability of fish stocks. The trawlers are so numerous that whole populations of fish can quickly disappear from the sea. Dragging fish-mesh nets along the sea floor, the trawlers indiscriminately scoop up all manner of marine life, not just fish. Trawlers, after spreading throughout the region in the 1970s, provoked many international and intra-national conflicts over fishing grounds. To handle the conflicts, Southeast Asian maritime nations declared 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) around their shores in 1980. Each nation then struggled to either exclude foreign vessels or tax them so the host nation shared their revenue.

Indonesia was no exception to this pattern. President Suharto declared a ban on trawling in Indonesia s EEZ in 1980. Coastal fishing communities had been protesting the invasion of their fishing grounds by the trawlers. But trawler operators and their influential allies lobbied Suharto s government, which then opted for a compromise formula: trawlers (kapal pukat harimau) would simply be called fish net boats (kapal pukat ikan) and would be allowed east of longitude 130 E. That decision has concentrated legal trawling on the wide shallow shelf of the Arafura Sea running west from the southern coast of West Papua. The key ports in Maluku Tenggara and West Papua that now serve the trawling fleets since the closure of Ambon (due to the civil war there) are Tual, Benjina, Merauke, Kaimana, and Sorong, with some boats using Bitung and Makasar.

Licensing

While researching Indonesia s fishing industry over the period 1998-2001, I discovered that the government had issued about 1500 licenses to trawling operators. However, not all of the license holders have trawlers fishing in Indonesian waters. My estimate is that there are about 700-750 trawlers operating in the Arafura Sea.

The trawlers carry sophisticated technical equipment: they have radar, sonar, fish-finders, and Global Positioning System instruments. Some have computerised logs that record the path of their journey and the statistics about the catch. However, these trawlers do not use gear that would lessen the environmental damage of the nets. They neither use large-mesh nets nor use equipment that would prevent the net from dragging along the seabed. The trawlers do not target any particular species or group of species but aim to collect the maximum possible biomass the catch includes everything from crabs to shrimps to sharks and turtles.

Where the fish-finder devices detect schools of fish but coral bottom could damage nets, trawlers work in pairs to smash the coral first. First the pair drag steel rollers between them to break up the coral and then come back over the same area to trawl the fish. The manager of an Indonesian fish processor company told me that Thai trawler skippers jokingly boasted to him: Indonesians think they are advanced because they have built highways over Jakarta. The Thai have done that in Bangkok. We Thai are more advanced: our trawlers have built highways under the Arafura Sea!

At least 90% of the licensed shrimp trawlers and all the fish trawlers appear to be owned by foreign Asian companies (Thailand, Taiwan, Japan, China, South Korea). The identity of the real owners is difficult to determine because almost all are registered under the name of an Indonesian company. In order to obtain a license, a foreign trawler owner has to enter into a joint venture or a charter arrangement with an Indonesian company. The central cooperative of the navy, Inkopal, appears to hold the largest batch of licenses. One source has informed me that Inkopal holds 367 licenses, most of them for boats owned by the huge Thai trawler fleet of the Sirichai company. Smaller batches are held by Inkopad, the army cooperative, and Inkopau, the coastguard cooperative.

In theory, this joint venture arrangement should provide some economic benefits to Indonesia. In practice, it provides very little. The Indonesian company is not a full-fledged partner that shares in the profits and losses but merely a shipping agent that collects a fee for its services. Such services include handling all Indonesian paper requirements, scheduling re-fuelling, arranging food and water supplies, acquiring visas for the crew, intervening with police when crew members are arrested ashore and intervening with the navy and courts if a boat is confiscated.

Given that Indonesian enforcement of the laws is lax and corruptible, one may wonder why the foreign vessels bother to obtain a license. There are several important incentives for them to obtain a license. One is cheaper fuel prices. If a trawler is flagged as an Indonesian vessel it is able to purchase subsidised diesel fuel at Indonesian ports at well below the world market price. It is able to pay lower domestic fees to anchor in a harbour or use a wharf. In effect, this means that Indonesia subsidises foreign vessels from richer countries to fish in its waters. Another incentive is to avoid the higher costs incurred while operating illegally. It is more difficult and costly for unlicensed vessels to clandestinely re-fuel, take on supplies, and transfer the catch.

Reefers

Most of the Thai trawlers transfer their catches to what are called reefers, large freezer ships that collect the catches of several trawlers and then carry them to ports abroad, usually in Thailand. At the time of transfer, no representative of the Indonesian joint venture partner or Indonesian fisheries official is present. All of the information about the catch, such as the weight and the type of fish, is entered into a Thai-language form. That form is faxed back to the Thai companies that own the trawler and the reefer.

In doing my research, I obtained 143 transfer lists from Thai trawlers loading their catches into a Thai reefer in the Maluku Tenggara port of Tual. The lists were very detailed: they provided the weight of the catch for eighty-six different commercial species listed on the form. But neither the Indonesian partner nor the Indonesian government ever see these transfer lists. All that the Indonesian government fisheries office at the port receives or seeks is the Thai reefer company s report of so many tonnes of ikan beku campur frozen mixed fish exported.

The reefer company has an in-built incentive to under-report the weight of the catch since it pays a 2.5% export tax calculated on the reported weight times the reported price per tonne of the fish. The trawler companies likewise have an interest in under-reporting the quantity and value of the catch, as true reports might be used to raise licence fees to a level reflecting the profitability of trawling in Indonesian waters. Thus, the government s statistics on the quantity of fish being extracted should be considered gross underestimates.

Its statistics on the amount of different species being taken are likewise worthless because it does not receive from the trawlers a breakdown of the catch by species. Without a breakdown by species of the trends in catch, scientists can only guess that long-lived slow breeding but valuable species like snapper and groupers are being wiped out. The total catch remains high because they are replaced by short-lived, prolific species like mackerels. This system of collecting statistics from the trawler industry does not serve Indonesia s interests either in developing a policy for scientific stock management or in collecting revenues.

In the port of Merauke, I tried to figure out the real weight of the catch being taken out by the reefers. I obtained from their skippers the hold capacity of each Thai carrier ship, looked into some of the holds to see how full they were, and learned the number of trips each vessel makes per year. My calculations gave an exported catch three times larger than that listed by the government for the same companies. This means that the companies were reporting only one-third of the weight of their catches. In addition, the value per tonne of frozen mixed fish reported to government varied arbitrarily between ports where trawlers fished the same grounds, with the same gear, and was below world market price.

While extracting large quantities of marine life, the foreign trawlers provide little employment for Indonesians. The trawlers are built abroad and docked abroad every two years. The average crew onboard a trawler is around 30. According to the license agreement, thirty percent of the crew must be Indonesian. Usually only one crew member is an Indonesian national: the radio operator. Since the foreign-owned trawlers transfer their catches to reefers, the processing of the fish is done in other countries. Thus, no onshore employment in processing factories is generated in Indonesia.

Community management

It was fashionable in the 1990s to celebrate community resource management as a solution to depletion of fishing grounds. Traditional, local institutions were thought to be the solution to what is proverbially known as the tragedy of the commons. Many meetings and conferences have been held to foster the concept of participatory coastal community fisheries management. There is, however, one large problem with this proposed solution: community institutions do not, under current law, have the authority to exclude outside fishing vessels from their waters. Indonesian law does not recognise coastal marine tenure by communities.

Local fishermen might be able to decide among themselves to limit boat numbers, mesh size of the nets, and the amount of the catch. They might be able to declare their fishing grounds to be a Marine Protected Area or designate a certain time of the year to be a closed season. They may agree that boats violating the rules are subject to community sanctions such as shaming, confrontation, withdrawal of reciprocity, and the like. A coastal community may also cooperate to build an artificial reef and replant mangroves. All these community regulations and projects, however, are inapplicable to non-locals.

Indonesian national law, as of late 2001, regulates where licensed boats are allowed to fish. Smaller boats are allowed to fish closer to shore while larger boats must stay further out. But any licensed boat, subject to this condition on the distance from the shoreline, can fish anywhere in Indonesia. The law does not give authority to local community institutions to exclude these licensed boats from their fishing grounds.

This sets up a classic freeloader problem: if outsiders can take the fish that locals refrain from catching in order to build up stocks, that can undermine locals adherence to their own rules. Any solution will require national legislation that allows community management of local fishing grounds and backs it up with the right to exclude outsiders. It will also require the government to be willing and able to cooperate with local fishermen to detect, arrest, prosecute, and impose sanctions on outsiders.

Reforms

In the post-Suharto period, there have been a number of important political changes concerning fisheries management. Under President Habibie, the Department of Fisheries was separated out from the Ministry of Agriculture and re-established as the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries. This new ministry has had two reformist ministers in succession. The first minister, Sarwono Kusumaatmadja, brought his environmentalist background to the job. Under President Megawati Soekarnoputri, minister Rokmin Dahuri has been continuing Sarwono s push towards better management of Indonesia s fish stocks.

Both ministers and their staffs have met tough and persistent resistance to their reforms. The resistance has come from a variety of sources: Asian fishing companies, the fisheries associations and foreign ministries of their nations, influential military and civilian Indonesians working in the joint ventures with those Asian companies, and from parties in parliament supporting those lobbies.

The devolution of power under the new regional autonomy laws has had an impact on fisheries management. Local politicians have felt compelled to respond to popular demands to protect the livelihoods of poor coastal fishermen from intrusion in their fishing grounds by large boats. But this devolution has not been entirely positive. Some local politicians accept illegal payments from the foreign fishing boats to use ports in their area.

Remedies

To halt the plundering of the sea and manage its fisheries for sustained yield, Indonesian and Australian fisheries scientists calculate that Indonesia should first cancel all licences that do not have a matching boat, then reduce the number of licenced trawlers from the present 750 to 200. It could do this and maintain net licence revenue to the state by sharply raising the annual cost of a fishing vessel licence to reflect the catch capacity of each trawler according to its measured size and engine power.

The provincial governments presently have authority over a 12-mile zone off their coasts. To regulate boats operating beyond that 12 mile zone, there is no alternative but for the national government to devise, implement and enforce limits on how many boats can enter Indonesia s waters and how much fish they can catch. It is a positive sign that the Minister for Maritime Affairs and Fishing is seriously trying to beef up his department. In early 2002 he made an effort to cancel all existing licences, abolish fake joint ventures and to re-issue licences only after measuring the boats. Withdrawing some licences and raising the price of all will raise the incentive to fish without a licence. He is hoping to acquire 111 patrol boats for his inspection officials. Right now his department has only four.

However, other methods to control illegal fishing can be carried out in ports. They include allowing only licenced vessels to use and to refuel in Indonesian ports, requiring trawler and reefer to pass to a fisheries official the original tally lists of fish transferred, ensuring an official is present at the moment of weighing, reconciling those numbers with the harbourmaster s lading diagram of the reefer s holds, and getting an independent international source to determine the value of the catch transferred. But those measures too must be backed by patrols to detect and prosecute vessels transferring catch and/or refuelling at sea.

Ultimately, Indonesia's civilian officials need help from the navy and coastguard to police the sea. There needs to be inter-agency cooperation to inspect the fishing vessels, their trawling gear, and their catches. The problem now is that the armed forces have no incentive to help enforce fishing regulations because they are in business with the large foreign fishing companies. Any progress in imposing some regulatory discipline on the fishing industry will require removing the armed forces from their present conflict of interest.

Dr. Brian Fegan (brian.fegan@bigpond.com) has visited many Indonesian fishing ports since 1998 as a sociology consultant for a joint research project between Indonesia's Research Institute for Marine Fisheries and Australia's CSIRO Marine Division. The paper above represents his personal opinion.

The human consequences of deforestation in the Moluccas

Roy Ellen

In: 'Les peuples des forêts tropicales. Systèmes traditionnels et développement rural en Afrique équatoriale, grande Amazonie et Asie du sud-est.', eds. D. V. Joiris and D. de Laveleye, Special issue of Civilisations 44 (1-2), pp. 176-193, Bruxelles 1997

Introduction

Compared with other parts of island southeast Asia, little is known of either the forests of the Moluccas (map 1), of indigenous patterns of forest use, or of the threats posed to both forest and people by increasing rates of deforestation. In this paper I attempt to describe the effects of deforestation on the lives of the local population, using the small number of reports which are available. I begin by assessing the historical human impact on the forests of these islands, stressing both the varied patterns of sustainable accommodation reached between people and forest, and the fact that forest as presently constituted is the outcome of co-evolutionary processes of which humans themselves are an integral part. I then examine the main factors repeatedly cited as posing a danger to existing forest and forest peoples: swidden cultivation, plantation cropping, commercial logging and migratory land settlement. Using as an example the Nuaulu of Seram, I illustrate how these factors interact in a particular instance, as well as the various phases which typify a peoples exposure and response to, first, denudation, and then widespread degradation of the forest environment. I indicate that the phasing and character of these responses depends very much on local perceptions of government policy and on the extent to which policy is interpreted by officials and translated into action. The effects of policy vary between different parts of the Moluccas and different population groups, but I suggest that we can expect some convergence as the forested areas diminish in size.

[MAP 1 ABOUT HERE]

Human impact on the forests of the Moluccas before 19001

The ecology of insular southeast Asia has been dominated by rainforest for over 10,000 years, though it has changed much historically and is very varied geographically. One of the most immediately striking aspects of its variability is the significant decrease in Dipterocarp species as we move east and their replacement by dominants more typical of the Australo-Melanesian area. Thus, the forest biogeography of the Moluccas differs from that associated with the classic Dipterocarp forests, of say Borneo or Sumatra, in several features of its structure and composition, resembling much more Melanesia [Edwards et al, 1993; Edwards, 1993; Ellen, 1985: 560-3]. It is this transitional (Wallacean) character that makes it of special interest. On Seram, for example, there are possibly just two species of Dipterocarp (Shorea selanica and one other), compared with 300 species on Borneo; there is just one Eucalypt (Eucalyptus deglupta ) compared with 450 in Australia [Edwards, 1993: 5]. In addition, although most of the primary lowland forest is of the moist evergreen type, displaying little seasonality, in places (most prominently, the west part of Yamdena and south Aru) we find semi-dry monsoon and savanna forest [SKEPHI, 1992: 23; van Steenis, 1958], and patches of semi-evergreen forest on other islands (especially Halmahera and Seram). Along the coasts there are some significant areas of mangrove (e.g. east Seram, Aru). In the low-lying valleys of the larger islands are extensive areas of Metroxylon (sagopalm) swamp forest, while montane forest is found in upland central and west Seram. Indeed, from a scientific point of view, the Moluccas is one of the few places in the Indonesian archipelago where it is possible to find a complete altitudinal sequence of vegetation, and there are few places elsewhere in the tropics which provide a comparable range [Edwards, 1993: 3]. Although there have been a few surveys on Halmahera and Seram, there has been relatively little quantitative study of Moluccan rainforest [Edwards et al, 1993: 63].

There are, however, many ecological similarities between Moluccan forests and those further west in island southeast Asia. Not the least of these has been the role played by human populations. Forests have long been a focus of human subsistence extraction, and human agency has had decisive consequences for their ecology, for example, through the introduction and hunting of deer, the practice of small-scale swidden cultivation, the extraction of palm sago and selective logging and collection for exchange [Ellen, 1985; Ellen, 1987]. The early history of Moluccan forests in human terms is poorly understood, with little empirical research which would shed direct light on the subject. From work elsewhere in insular southeast Asia, the evidence for human impact from 8000 BP onwards has been demonstrated, and although we would not expect this time-depth for the Moluccas, we should anticipate chronologies in terms of thousands rather than hundreds of years. The sub-fossil and palynological evidence in question usually comprises signs of anthropogenic burning and changing species composition reflecting patterns of clearance, cultivation and seed dispersal [Maloney, 1993]. No doubt similar data will eventually be forthcoming for the Moluccas, but despite prehistoric and historic modification, large tracts of Moluccan forest have remained more-or-less intact until relatively recently on the larger islands: that is on Halmahera, Seram, Buru, Yamdena and Sula. This has been due to low indigenous population levels, the concentration of the existing population in more accessible centres and along coasts, general economic peripherality and low in-migration.

At the present time, Moluccan populations exhibit a variety of subsistence strategies focused on differing degrees of forest modification and clearance. Though these patterns of extraction are often associated with separate types of people, linguistically, genetically and in terms of economy, the facts suggest that these distinctions are not hard and fast ones. At one end of the spectrum of techniques are peoples such as the Tugutil of central Halmahera who are engaged in nomadic hunting and gathering, but with some planting and reliance on trade [Martodirdjo, 1988: 15]. On Seram there is a wide variety of combinations of technique, ranging from mainly hunting and gathering with little cultivation (Huaulu, Maneo), through classic forms of swidden agriculture [Ellen, 1978], to more intensive forms of permanent agriculture on the coast. The common characteristic of all these is the pivotal role played by the extraction of and dependence on sago [Ellen, 1979; Ellen, 1988], which has the effect of minimizing the amount of rainforest cut. Crop regimes vary partly in relation to the contribution made by sago. Tuberous starch staples such as yams and taro have probably been important in many areas for thousands of years, and in some parts continue to be so. Grains have been historically significant elsewhere; dry rice in parts of Halmahera since around 1500, and formerly Coix , Cenchrus , millet (Setaria italica ), and Sorghum [Visser, 1989]. Millet is also important in parts of the Kei islands, and Coix and dry rice on a small scale more widely [e.g. Ellen, 1973: 460; Seran, 1922]. Musa (plantains and bananas) are grown almost everywhere. Since the seventeenth century, however, many of these cultigens have been outstripped in importance by introduced maize (particularly in the drier south), manioc (throughout, but especially on Kei), Xanthosoma (in wetter areas) and sweet potato. Rice is now grown more widely (particularly by migrants in both the northern and central Moluccas), and in irrigated fields, but apparently not with a great deal of success.

Apart from the impact of these modes of subsistence, the main changes to Moluccan forest ecology that we can be sure of historically are associated with the growth of regional exchange systems linked to outside trade in forest products. Dammar or copal (Agathis dammara ) resin has been extracted on Seram [Ormeling, 1947], Morotai [Riem, 1913 (1909)], Halmahera [Giel, 1935-5], Bacan [Korn, 1917], Obi [Ham, 1911] and elsewhere for centuries, and involves little destruction of trees. Traditional dammar tapping has recently declined and been replaced by commercial exploitation in some areas [Edwards, 1993: 8-9]. Much the same may be said for the oil of Melaleuca cajuputi (=leucodendra) on Buru, reported as early as 1855 [Schmid, 1914; van der Crab, 1862], production of which, however, continues to rise [Kantor Statistik Provinsi Maluku, 1989]. Of lesser importance are beeswax, kapok floss (Ceiba petandra ), charcoal, and gaharu resin (poss. Aquilaria ) used for incense and known to be collected in central Seram. But of the non-timber plant products, the most commercially important in bulk terms has been rattan [Kantor Statistik Provinsi Maluku, 1989]. Timber itself has been extracted for export from before European arrival, mainly for boatbuilding and fuel [Ellen, 1985; Ellen, 1987: 40-1]. Forest has been additionally modified through introductions, both of domesticates and accidentals, through the deliberate planting of non-endemic non-domesticates, such as Tectona grandis [Ellen, 1987], and through the inadvertent dispersal of seeds from such useful trees as Canarium indicum. However, the most important single factor affecting Moluccan forests during the early period was the spice trade. Early extraction may reasonably be presumed to have been of non-domesticated varieties of clove and nutmeg, and wild nutmeg has continued to be of significance in some parts of the Moluccas and coastal Irian Jaya. The sustained and growing demand for spices, both in Europe and in Asia, led to the appearance of the domesticated varieties of commerce and their systematic planting in particular areas [Ellen, 1979]: clove first on Ternate, Tidore and latterly Seram, Ambon and the Lease islands, and nutmeg always focally on Banda, but less intensively elsewhere. The consequences of this development are taken up below.

The extraction of forest products for subsistence and trade increased during the Dutch period, from the early sixteen-hundreds onwards. In the first place this reflected Dutch pressure to monopolize and maximize spice production. However, with the decrease in demand for spices in the eighteenth century, the Moluccas became a commercial backwater, and this afforded some protection to its forests. The nineteenth century saw an upswing in the extraction of non-timber forest products for the European and Asian markets, and the first significant commercial logging activity on Seram [Ellen, 1985: 584]. It is reported that most of the forests of the Kei islands were clear-felled by a Dutch company in or before 1888 [SKEPHI, 1992: 25].

Commercial logging

Of the standing stock of major timber species in non-plantation forests throughout Indonesia only six percent is in the Moluccas, though this is probably to underestimate the timber potential. Indeed, Moluccan timber production has recently increased in importance [Potter, 1991: 179]. In June 1989 there were 24 official forest concessions throughout the province, representing 2,593,000 hectares, the average size being 108,000 hectares. Only the Kalimantan provinces have more plywood factories and production capacity [ibid., 202, 207].

Logging is a threat to forest and an indigenous way of life in a number of parts of the Moluccas, not least because forests contain good quality Shorea (meranti) [Edwards et al, 1993: 68]. What makes Moluccan forests more vulnerable is the small surface area of most of the islands. Already, islands as small as Taliabu and Mongole in the Sula group, and Morotai, Bacan, Obi, Kasiruta, Mandiuli around Halmahera have been opened-up to systematic felling. Even selective logging has been shown to cause considerable damage. After 15 years forest in parts of north central Seram is still left with an open structure, much dead wood, serious gully erosion, soil compaction, herbaceous vegetation and extensive areas of secondary regrowth trees such as Macaranga. In this same area Shorea has been stripped from ridges, replaced by the invasive grass Imperata, leaving patches of mixed evergreen forest in the valleys [Edwards, 1993: 9]. Logging is a particularly serious threat in the area where the Manusela National Park meets the Samal transmigration area, and failed transmigrants may move further into the forest [ibid., 11]. Removal of forest (though not entirely because of logging) has also resulted in water shortages in some parts of the Wahai area, with knock-on health problems. Further east, south of Bula, in the area of the Masiwang river, local transmigration has followed logging and some replanting, mainly it would seem of cacao and some timber trees. Logging in this area continues.

On Yamdena logging is posing serious problems for biodiversity loss, threatening rare orchids such as Dendrobium phalaenopsis and several species of endemic bird. The most serious impacts, however, will be human, especially the effect on water supply. In 1992 logging roads alone had caused erosion in watershed areas and had contaminated streams with silt. Socially, disruption such as the destruction of sacred sites, has not been compensated for by employment prospects, the company recruiting only a few local people. The Association of Tanimbar Village Leaders has filed complaints to the local government [SKEPHI, 1992: 24]. On Seram, timber extraction has been perceived by some locals as having beneficial effects: discarded sawn timber and log ends are used as fuel and in manufacturing, lumber camp debris and leftover facilities provide a range of materials, while trackways serve to enhance hunting and communication [Ellen, 1985; Ellen, 1993b: 133]. It is likely, though, that the increasing scale of logging will modify the balance of advantages and disadvantages in the perceptions of local inhabitants (see below).

Population movement and transmigration

Population movement has probably been having an effect on patterns of deforestation in the Moluccas for as long as these islands have been inhabited by humans. In the case of the smaller islands this would account for their early depletion. Since 1600, however, we have clear evidence for deforestation through relocations within the same island, inter-island migration within the Moluccas and in-migration from without. The Moluccan-European wars of the seventeenth century resulted (as we have seen) in the extirpation of plantations, the wholesale depopulation of certain areas and the movement of populations elsewhere. For example, Collins [Collins 1980; 1984] has provided linguistic evidence for movements at this time which resulted in the setting-up at Nuelitetu, along the south Seram littoral, of a settlement of refugees from West Seram, speaking a Piru Bay (Wemale) language. During the nineteenth century Dutch administrative requirements to control fractious natives led to the emptying of large areas of the highlands and interiors of the main islands, in particular on Seram. This threatened forest in coastal areas but led to reduced hunting in the highlands. Reduced hunting increased animal density (particularly deer), with consequent severe browsing pressure [Edwards, 1993: 10; Ellen, 1993a: 201]. Ironically, villagers in the central highlands of Seram now register a reduction in the availability of game animals, caused by disturbances to the edge of the Manusela National Park [Edwards, 1993: 11].

For many centuries the Moluccas have additionally been the destination for migrants moving east from south and southeast Sulawesi: Buginese, and more recently, and in large numbers, Butonese. Over the last 15 years in-migration in certain areas has increased dramatically, partly through direct government-sponsored transmigration and partly through increased spontaneous migration made more attractive by new infrastructures such as roads, including those created in the first place for government transmigrants.

The Moluccas was first incorporated into the national transmigration programme ('Transmigrasi umum/nasional') as early as 1954, but was not an effective destination until the seventies. Between 1971 and 1980 there were 4,300 sponsored transmigrants settling in the Moluccas. This increased to 35,100 between 1980 and 1985. Although only 2 percent of the total provincial population, they represented 17 percent of the population increase [Potter, 1991: 191]. The greatest expansion took place between 1982 and 1989, with 25,953 migrants from Java and other parts of the province settling special zones created on Seram (Pasahari and Banggai) and Halmahera (Kao, Wasile and Ekor) [Kantor Statistik Kabupaten Maluku Tengah, 1984: 114; 1989: 155]. Under the Fifth Five Year Plan (1987-91) rates of transmigration have increased further, and there are plans to resettle more. By 1992 there were 13 settlements all told, 3.1 percent of the provincial population: in excess of 23,042 transmigrants on Seram, 18,030 on Buru, 20,857 on Halmahera and 174 on Aru, a total of 62,103 individuals [Goss, 1992: 89-90]. There has been a tendency for family size to increase in recent years, and by 1994 transmigrants are likely to be 25 percent of the population of Aru, 20 percent of Buru, 7 percent of Halmahera and 8 percent of Seram [ibid, p.91]. These figures do not, however, include spontaneous migrants who follow later, which the World Bank estimates are often more than double the number of official migrants [Donner, 1987: 245].

It is generally reckoned that in Indonesia as a whole, transmigration and its knock-on effects has been more responsible than anything else for forest destruction, and certainly more damaging than either swidden cultivation or logging [Donner, 1987: 243; Potter, 1991: 210]. There is no reason to think that the situation in the Moluccas is any different. The damage is not simply that caused by initial clearance for new settlements, but results from few of the schemes being economically self-contained, often involving inappropriate farming models. To compensate, settlers extract from nearby forest, and seek to extend their land by slash-and-burn techniques, sometimes purchasing land from indigenous peoples where government authority permits (as in the case of the Nuaulu, see below), sometimes simply taking it. Where the Departments of Transmigration and Forestry have recognized the impracticality of wet rice cultivation, they have sometimes backed schemes dependent on industrial forest crops (Hutan Tanaman Industri). At present, as far as the Moluccas is concerned, this strategy appears only to have been used on Buru [Goss, 1992: 93]. The difficulty, though, is that tree crops require the clearance of larger areas of forest than for rice. At this point the problems posed by transmigration overlap with those already mentioned in relation to plantation cropping.

The consequences of transmigration for local peoples have been complex, but on the whole negative. Among the benefits cited are improved markets and services [ibid., 95]. This is probably true for the south Seram area, where the influx of transmigrants has been accompanied by upgrading of roads and bus services, and has resulted in the development of local markets with new opportunities for sale of food products. Nuaulu cash incomes have increased, as we shall see, from the sale of land. Maneo villages also benefit from trade with transmigrants, through the provision of schools in transmigration areas and in the opportunities afforded to politically astute individuals. One of the main disadvantages, however, is that clearance interferes with the practice of indigenous patterns of subsistence. For example, between 1982 and 1985 5000 hectares of forest cleared in central Halmahera for transmigration cut across pre-existing Tugutil zones of extraction and sago palms [Martodirdjo, 1988: 4]. Moreover, there is generally little recognition that the viability of indigenous sustainable swiddening requires a constant ratio of current gardens to forest fallow, and that therefore forest not being used by local farmers is not surplus to requirements. The government has in places expropriated disputed territory and not compensated owners [Goss, 1992: 94]. The potential for conflict is considerable, and even where the indigenous population has in practice received certain legal protections (as among the Nuaulu), conflict with transmigrants has escalated to an alarming level.

In parts of Seram local peoples have spontaneously and voluntarily settled in transmigration areas (e.g. Maneo). Others have been assimilated willy-nilly as these areas have expanded to incorporate them (Seti), in some cases turning indigenous villages into 'reservations' within larger environmentally-depleted and immigrant-dominated zones. In a number of places there have been attempts to incorporate local 'tribal' peoples into transmigration schemes: on Buru [Goss, 1992: 95], Seram [Ellen, 1993b, and below] and Halmahera. The Halmahera scheme involved nomadic forest collectors (Tugutil) and was reportedly not a success [Martodirdjo, 1988: 2, 22]. Incorporation of Nuaulu into the Ruatan scheme has been a mixed success: some Nuaulu have moved into the area permanently, some on a temporary basis; the scheme has provided good access to traditional areas of extraction, but led to conflict amongst Nuaulu, between Nuaulu and other indigenous peoples in the area, and between Nuaulu and settlers. We can now turn to this case and examine it in greater detail.

The Nuaulu case

Historical background

The Nuaulu are an ethnic group of south Seram widely known in the central Moluccas for the tenacity and success with which they have clung to a traditional animist way of life. What distinguishes them from other similar groups is their demographic strength and the compromises they have historically made which have enhanced their survival as a discrete group. My own Nuaulu fieldwork has spanned the period 1970-1990, during which time important changes have taken place in terms of Nuaulu relationship with forest. However, there is no particular reason to assume that before 1970 significant changes were not already underway.

By the latter part of the nineteenth century Nuaulu inhabited dispersed patriclan hamlets on the southern side of the watershed of central Seram, focused on the Nua and Ruatan valleys. In this scheme of things, the term wasi referred to all cultivated clan-hamlet land, in contrast to wesie, uncut forest. It was not necessary to assert clan ownership of particular plots, since all territory was clan territory. But also, the idea of collectively identified Nuaulu territory, as opposed to the land of individual clans, remained no more than a vague abstraction until faced with the political realities imposed, first by the conditions of coastal settlement, and then by the Indonesian state in the nineteen-eighties. In the eighteen-eighties Nuaulu began to settle around Sepa, a polity with which they have recorded traditional relations of amity going back to the seventeenth century. This led to changes in land tenure arrangements upon which I have already reported [Ellen, 1977; 1978: 81-107]. Here, I draw on this earlier work, and present only enough information to clarify the main issues being discussed.

Land tenure circa 1970: normative arrangements

The clan Matoke is held to be primus inter pares with respect to many ritual matters, including those relating to the utilization of forest resources. The extent to which this was the case prior to 1880 is unclear, but it was a custom firmly embedded by the time Nuaulu clans were moving into the area of Sepa jurisdiction. The relationship which Matoke have with the land is perhaps best described as guardianship, though by 1970 this was routinely being translated into Ambonese Malay as 'ownership' ('punya', to possess; 'milik', property). The role is personified in the 'lord of the land', the ia onate Matoke, who is ultimately responsible for the ritual supervision of Nuaulu relations with their environment. By 1970 day-to-day responsibility had been delegated to Matoke sub-clans (Matoke-hanaie in Niamonai, Matoke-pina in Rohua) and, in the case of the village of Bunara, to the clan Sonawe-aipura (in the person of the so-called ia onate Matoke Sonawe [Ellen, 1977: 57, n.8]. The clan Matoke has no practical jurisdiction over gardens or plantations which are not regarded as traditional Nuaulu territory. If a domestic group or individual wishes to cut forest from an inland area over which it is generally agreed the Nuaulu have jurisdiction, authority must theoretically be sought from the ia onate Matoke, or his proxy. Although the Matoke headman may rule or advise that certain areas cannot be cultivated or extracted from, in practice the immediate authority is the head of the clan which claims the land as part of its own traditional territory. It is the head of this clan or his proxy who must be present when forest is first cut, in order to seek permission from the ancestors of the relevant clan, and to offer a compensatory sacrifice.

The cutting of mature forest (wesie) yields wasi, a term applied to all land which has been humanly-altered through clear-felling and over which direct (rather than residual) rights are maintained. The term may refer to cleared land in general or to individual jural units; to both a vegetational type and to a legal idea. Individual plots of wasi cultivated in any one year, or their productive ecological successors are known as nisi, which we may translate as 'garden'. Specific rights are thereby conferred, through the exercise of labour, on individuals, domestic groups, 'houses' and clans who obtain access and use for as long as the claim is effectively perpetuated. The rights so conferred are serial, in that they are simultaneously individual, household, clan, or whatever; the level of emphasis depending wholly on context. Such land is inherited through the male line, though can be transferred between clans through marriage.

 Changes in land tenure, 1880-1970
The above highly-compressed summary represents what we might regard as the 'traditional' and normative arrangements as they existed in 1970. Since first concentrating on the coast important structural changes have been taking place. The factors involved can be grouped under five headings: (i) the creation of multi-clan settlements, (ii) cash-cropping, (iii) land scarcity, (iv) sale of land (v), and market individualism. All of them are discussed in detail in Ellen, 1977, and the issue of market individualism is taken further in Ellen, 1993b: 131. Here I mention just a few aspects for each heading:

(i) With the congregation of the first clans on a confined area immediately to the
west of Sepa, in what is now Nuaulu Lama (or, in Nuaulu, Niamonai, 'old village'), Nuaulu settlements forfeited their genealogical exclusiveness; formal kinship groups were no longer coterminus with local groups. Some attempt was made to assert clan autonomy through the establishment of separate settlements, first at Aihisuru, then Hahuwalan, Bunara, and finally at Rohua. But all of these - with the exception of Hahuwalan - eventually became multi-clan villages. This has had radical implications for land relations in general and has given rise to some contradiction in interpreting the rules, aggravated by pressure on land [Ellen, 1977: 59]. There has been, therefore, a greater conscious identity generated between groups and individual plots. In coming to the coast much ancestral land was neglected, except that of those clans with traditional claims to land on which most Nuaulu gardens in the Sepa area are now situated. There was a dislocation in the hitherto enduring connection between clan and land. This situation, together with the movement of land between clans following marriage, has meant that the lineal continuity of association between a clan and a particular area of land was broken.

(ii) Cash-cropping, particularly of cloves and coconut, but also of coffee, quickly
followed daily contact with the market economy which coastal settlement made possible. This has led to rules relating to land increasingly resembling those relating to other kinds of property. Traditionally, swiddens were cleared, cultivated and re-absorbed into the forest, leaving traces only in the form of small groves of valued trees, such as Areca palms. But the relationship between people and land was still regarded as highly personal, being likened to that between a father and children. As a father is responsible to the ancestors for his children, so is the group for the land. With permanent or semi-permanent groves, the human effort going into the transformation of the forest and maintenance of the land became continuous and hence the particular relationship became more enduring and intensive.

(iii) Prior claims by Sepa, and by other long-established coastal villages, to accessible
garden land, and increasing demand for land arising from cash-cropping and population growth had, by the early seventies, for the first time, turned land into a scarce resource. Scarcity provided an incentive to maintain relations with land over long periods of time, which resulted in a greater emphasis on clear-cut, unambiguous, jural relations with land held in perpetuity. This has inevitably become a source of conflict between clans, villages, and particularly between Nuaulu and non-Nuaulu in Sepa and Tamilouw. Disputes increased during the seventies and eighties, as pressure on land and other resources has become more acute, due to yet more cash-cropping, indigenous population growth, in-migration and land sale. The situation has been further exacerbated by the lag in revising rules and practices relating to land tenure, amongst the most important of which has been failure to establish clear boundaries between wasi.

(iv) In the early seventies sale of land was still a relatively novel concept [Ellen,

1977: 63]. No one could remember a Nuaulu ever having acquired land from Sepa since the first gift of land made by Raja Kamari Kaihatu Tihurua around 1870, which established the physical villages of Watane, Aihisuru, Bunara and Hahuwalan; and only one other instance of sale of land in Rohua could be recalled. However, in 1968 Merpati Sonawe of Watane had bought some garden land from Sepa for 9000 Indonesian rupiahs, and during February 1970, Utapina Kamama of Bunara bought some land from Sepa as a means of obtaining some level ground for a coconut grove. But despite the rarity of actual sale, the concept of land as an exchangeable commodity was well-established by 1970 [ibid., 63-4].

(v) Although attitudes to land are being increasingly moulded by a market model,
individual transactions still involve a customary element. Thus, in 1990 during my visit to Simalouw, the main Nuaulu settlement in the Ruatan transmigration zone, Merpati was engaged in setting-out the terms of a sale for some new settlers at Kilo 7 for approval by the local District Officer. The asking 'price' on this occasion was: five piruna hatu (lit. 'stone plates'; that is old porcelain, though not necessarily oriental in origin), five meters of red cloth and 10,000 rupiahs for each household head. This is a g