Jakarta Globe, August 27, 2013
A shaman from the Salakhirat group of the indigenous Mentawai tribe searches for leaves for a traditional herbal remedy in Siberut, Mentawai Islands, West Sumatra, on April 4, 2013. (EPA Photo) |
An
organization representing Indonesia’s indigenous people is determined to map
out the country’s customary forests in order to save them from the encroachment
of palm oil companies and other development projects.
A recent
ruling by the Constitutional Court which acknowledged that indigenous
communities — and not the state — have rights over some 40 million hectares of
customary forests influenced the decision to chart such lands, the Indigenous
Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN) said in a statement on Friday.
“We have
already mapped seven million hectares of land, but that took us 15 years. We
need to take advantage of new mapping tools like GPS and 3D mapping to
accelerate the process of charting the more than 30 million hectares we have
left to document,” Abdon Nababan, the secretary general of the alliance that
represents some 17 million indigenous peoples, said.
Abdon told
the Global Conference on Participatory Mapping of Indigenous Territories, which
was held in Samosir, North Sumatra, over the weekend, that AMAN is aiming to
map out all contested forests by 2020.
Nababan added
that the need to map these lands has become more urgent since the
Constitutional Court’s decision in May, which determined that a line in the
country’s 1999 Forestry Law — which stated that customary forests are state
forests — was not constitutional.
To take
advantage of the landmark decision, Nababan said it’s crucial for indigenous
peoples to put these forests on paper.
“Based on
mapping technologies we have used so far and the lack of government support for
our mapping efforts, it would take us 30 years to map all indigenous
territories,” he said.
“But we
don’t have that luxury. We need to learn [about mapping technology] from other
indigenous peoples in Asia, Latin America and Africa about how to map more
quickly and effectively,” Abdon added.
Kasmita
Widodo, the national coordinator of the Participatory Mapping Network (JPKK),
an organization that supports indigenous peoples’ mapping efforts, said the
government has never mapped customary forests, which often overlap with
concessions the government has handed out to palm oil and pulp and paper
companies.
“Some 70
percent of forest areas in Indonesia are located in areas with overlapping
permits,” he said.
Under its
one-map policy, the government hopes to create a single map of all forests in
order to clarify overlaps.
“It will be
a challenge for the entire country… [but it is necessary] to facilitate a fair
decision making process for indigenous peoples and to reduce conflicts,” Widodo
said.
At the
Global Conference, representatives of indigenous communities from across the
globe who have mapped their lands using advanced technology gathered to discuss
how to ramp up efforts to protect their forests and lands against development,
climate change and other threats.
Indigenous
peoples from Nepal, the Philippines, Brazil, Peru, Nicaragua and Kenya attended
the event to share their maps and experiences.
The
conference was organized by AMAN and the Phillipines-based the Indigenous
Peoples’ International Center for Policy Research and Education (Tebtebba)
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