Paradise forest - Indonesia

By Andrew (in Amsterdam):

The team out in the jungle has limited internet access, but they've been sending updates by email. I'll post them here, and change the published date of this entry so they come in order they were written. And I've backdated this entry so it starts the blog off (actually wrote it on 24th of October).

Here's a bit of an intro from the International Herald Tribune article:

Greenpeace activists in Indonesia set up camp on the edge one of the world's most threatened woodlands Tuesday, seeking to pressure political leaders before a major climate conference.

Around 40 volunteers have been stationed in Kuala Cenaku village on Sumatra island, near to where a palm oil manufacturer is clearing peatland forest to plant new crops, Greenpeace officials said in the capital, Jakarta.

Indonesia's resort island of Bali will host the U.N. climate change conference from Dec. 3-14, which aims to start negotiations on a replacement of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions that expires in 2012.

"We need international action to end deforestation," Greenpeace International forest campaigner Sue Connor said. Protecting the world's remaining forest will reduce climate change and preserve the livelihood of millions of people, she said.

Riau province on Sumatra was chosen for the campaign because it exemplifies the mismanagement of Indonesian rain forest, she said.

From Hayden:

This morning we got up early and took a walk into the concession area to do a show and tell to the new campaigners that just arrived. They toured the forest destruction caused by conversion of forests to palm oil plantations. We took a walk through the wasteland of the charred remnants of trees and saw the network of canals that have been dug to drain the peatland. Yifang and Frode, from our Chinese and Nordic offices had many questions, and the tour, not surprisingly, was sobering. I've attached a photo which can give you some idea of what it looks like out there.

Our camp borders the concession area. The local village, Kuala Cenaku, has contested the rights of Duta Palma, the company clearing the forest and planting the oil palms, saying that they have historical rights to the land. And if it were up to them, they would've preferred that it stay as native forest. Tragically, the forest next to their village is being logged and burned, and it continues to be logged today. From our fire observation tower we can see the edge of the forest clearing. We're using every means we have to put a stop to this forest conversion and all other peatland forest conversion, until a region-wide environmental sound policy can be implemented.

Meanwhile our camp is nearing completion. Nearly all the walkways are built, John and I spent all day yesterday treating the water so that it is safe enough to wash and cook with, and we only have a few finishing touches to put on it for the camp to be fully completed. Some people have noted that it's beginning to look like a sort of "eco village", especially with the addition of some campaigners who spend some of the day "lazing around" in the shade under the trees typing things on their laptop computers. We've also had a lot of new arrivals lately and we're nearly at capacity. In fact, we've decided to build an annex to the main sleeping quarters to accommodate even more people who will be arriving in the coming weeks. The camp has really taken on a more active vibe. Evenings are filled with meetings, planning sessions, and even English and Bahasa Indonesia classes so we can help bridge the language gap among us.

In addition to the campaigners, we've also had some guitar players join us, who also happen to know how to pilot a para-motoring machine. A few evenings we've had late night guitar playing sessions and stayed up until the very late hour of 10:30.

That's all I have for an update now. We have to do a quick cleanup, as the village chief is paying another visit to our camp this afternoon.

More to come....

Hayden
at the Forest Defender Camp
Sumatra, Indonesia

[ Image: Forest Defenders Camp (FDC) in Kuala Cenaku Village, Riau, Indonesia. © Greenpeace / C. Anderson ]

From Hayden:

Today was finally the day we got in the air. Yesterday we had to call off the launch of our two para-motors due to some shaky weather. This morning we were all up before 6am, waiting on standby for the weather conditions to become right for flying.

After a lot of waiting Cedar took off from our makeshift runway, which is on a small clearing in the oil palm concession. I was acting as the tower for the flight. I was up in our fire spotting tower with a couple radios and a high powered scope to keep track of our pilots.

Cedar flew over the concession and got some excellent aerial photos of the forest destruction, and the native forest that borders the oil palm area. He also got a pretty sweet aerial shot of our camp. Though, after taking a look at the photo, we all realized that we need to do a little cleanup of the construction materials lying around camp.

An hour and a half later Cedar touched down. It was a great first flight. He didn't spot any peatland fires, but he only saw a fraction of the oil palm concession. Tomorrow Cedar, and our other pilot JJ, intend on flying much farther into the forest clearing in order to spot and illegally set peatland fires.

That's all the updates I have for now. It's still hot here, there are still a lot of bugs, and every day a cold beer is sounding better and better.

From Hayden:

Yesterday evening, a very powerful lightning storm came through camp. As we though it was winding down I was crouched on the porch of the warehouse talking with one of our pilots, Cedar, when a lightning bolt struck a tree about 30 feet from us. A massive shock came up through my feet and into my legs. It was very painful, without a doubt the most powerful electric shock I've ever received. I looked at Cedar, and said some things that shouldn't be put into print, and then asked if we're okay. Both of us were shaken up, to say the least, and kind of stumbled back to the main building. It turns out that a lot of people felt a shock to some degree. Suzette, who was in the communications room (and my bedroom) writing an email got a major shock. It turns out that the electric charge likely came up through a ground wire into the room and burned into some of the floorboards. Also, our inverter, which converts the battery power (charged by our solar panels) from 12 volts into 220, was completely fried. So we're without power for some of our most essential electronics. But we're working fast to get a new one (and I'm typing fast, since this computer is running on battery power.)

So yesterday was a very exciting day and I think we're all lucky that no one was seriously hurt. And now I have yet another story to tell when I get home.

From Hayden:

We all got up this morning at 4:30. The group of climbers wanted to make it to the edge of the palm oil concession without being noticed by the workers, or the security patrol. The edge of the concession, or what we call "the forest wall" is where the burned clearcut ends and where the native forest begins. However this native forest is in the process of being cleared for more palm oil. The "forest wall" is just how far they've gotten in clearing the forest.

To edge of the concession is about 4km away, but is clearly visible from our fire lookout tower. Rob and I were up in the tower at 5am as the team left. My responsibility was to run communications for the climb team, and also for the para motors, which were scheduled for a flyover at 8am. My new title, as Rob told me yesterday, is "Communications Hardware Coordinator", so now I'm no longer just the U.S. campaigner/volunteer. GPI is even putting up a photo of me with that title, apparently.

So, back to the action. The team, of all Indonesians, hung a huge banner (36'x30') from two trees across the road that runs into the forest from the concession. Shortly afterward Cedar flew over in the para-motor, this time with the wing that has the Greenpeace logo on it. We got some great images, and the entire event went remarkably smooth. No conflict with the workers at all. And as of this writing the banner is still hanging. We decided to leave it there as a parting gift.

[ read more about the action ]

In other happenings, we dug up some maps of the area, and I found out that the river that runs by our camp has it's headwaters in the hills, not near town, so now I've started to go for swims in the afternoon (I can't go in the evening, as the local residents believe that if people swim in the evenings, and have fun, that bad things may come.) Today I went for a swim with JJ, Frode, and Hengke, and we had a great time, diving off the dock. As we were getting out a boat arrived that was unloading about 80 huge bags of sand. We did the Indonesian thing to do, which was to pitch in and help carry the bags of sand up the dock to land. So we worked for about 20 minutes, and these guys were really surprised and entertained by 3 "bule" (white foreigners) helping them carry heavy loads up the dock.

And that's all I have for now for an update. Stay tuned. The most exciting stuff is yet to come. Also, I'm happy to report that there aren't any lingering effects from the lightning strike. I'm fine.

[ Image: Climber M. Ediandre climbing tree to hang a 10m x 12m banner saying, "Save our forest; save our climate", on the remaining forest adjacent to an encroaching oil palm plantation in Indragiri Hulu, Riau Province, Indonesia. © Greenpeace/Oka Budhi ]

From LI Yifang Forest campaigner Greenpeace China:

I started to write my blog on a major Chinese website since my arrival at the Forest Defenders Camp. Now it has already got 260,000 hits. A guy left a message like this, “Indonesia people used to treat our people badly. Why we help them to save their forest? ”

I consider this as a common query in Chinese people’s mind. All I want to answer is, “We are not just helping them; we are helping ourselves.” Even something unhappy happened in the past between us, we won’t be better off if the whole Indonesia becomes a desert. Deforestation makes Indonesia the third largest GHG emitter in the world. And the climate change impacts are not restricted in some certain countries. If we keep doing what we are doing now, 80% of Himalaya’s glacier will be melted; there will be more floods, more tsunamis, and more droughts. And no one is gonna escape from that.

Surely, we used to think in the logic of “my back yard”, “my community”, and “my country”…I am no exception. When I was in the Europe, western people criticized about China being the largest emitter of GHG, I replied as “then what did your country do in the past century?” But when talking about the solution of the world’s environmental crisis, there is no national border any more. We have to consider the planet as a whole.

Taking the forest destruction in Indonesia as an example:
Timber is certainly harvested in Indonesia, but then export to China. After that EU and the US import plywood and wood floor from China. So who should we blame in this chain, source of the timber, producers, dealer, retailers or the end consumer?

So let’s face it. We have no other choice but work together. Stop sitting there and blaming each other, we don’t have time for this. Take some real action now! At the end of the day, it is our common future; it is we sharing responsibility.

[ Image: Greenpeace paramotor spotting for forest and peat fires in an oil palm plantation. © Greenpeace / C. Anderson ]

From Harrie:

There were rumours going around that a Sumatran tiger had been spotted near the camp. Little did they know that soon they would have to deal with a greater disturbance. Representatives of the Dutch office were to visit the camp, accompanied by a world famous Dutch actor (OK, world famous in Holland at least). An initiative to create as much media attention as possible back home, which is very necessary as Holland is Europe’s largest importer of palm oil. And yet, the story of what is going on here is completely unknown to the Dutch public.

That is why the Dutch office recently started a campaign to confront the Dutch people with the fact that 60% of the products that we buy in the supermarket may contain palmoil. This means that the forests in Indonesia are burning for our groceries. Over the past 10 years our little country alone has been responsible for the disappearance of 1.5 million hectare of forest worldwide.

So, lots of work to do for Cees and the rest of the team. You know how they always say that holidaying Americans try to do Europe in a day? We tried to film the whole of Sumatra in just three. Starting of course with the camp and the recently burned forest surrounding it. Sad and angry I felt when I stood up to my anckles in fresh ashes. How is it possible that my country is involved in this?

The next day we wanted to film intact rainforest, so we can show the folks back home what the forests of Indonesia are supposed to look like. It took us six hours to get there. That is how much rainforest is already gone. It was only exactly at the spot with a sign saying ‘You are now entering Bukit Tigapuluh National Park’ that the rainforest began. That is why many of the locals would like to see that all the forest of Sumatra that is left, become a National Park. In their eyes that is the only way that the forests get some sort of legal status and the protection that comes with that.

For now, the land of the locals is illegally taken from them and it is heartbreaking to hear their stories. Cees, and he is a big fellow, was moved by this and the depressing sight of the surroundings of the camp. He probably did not expect to be living in an ashtray for a couple of days, but he is going home with a story that needs to be told. It is good to see that it is being picked up by the Dutch media. Then 78 musquito bites seem a very small price to pay.

Harrie(t)
Forest Campaign Communication Officer
Greenpeace Netherlands

[ Image: Palm plantation and forest in Kuala Cenaku area, Riau Province, Sumatra Indonesia. © C. Anderson ]

From Hayden:

So today is a pretty relaxed day, other than having about 100 people at camp today for day 4 of the fire fighting training (and on a side note I got totally shafted and was on dish duty yesterday and had to help wash what seemed like hundreds of dishes.)

The highlight so far today is that I just sat down for an interview with QQ.com, the fifth largest web site in the world (and the largest in China.) I was a bit circumspect as to why she wanted to interview me, of all people (as opposed to Hapsoro, our Indonesian forest campaigner, or Rob Taylor, the overall logistics coordinator) and Yifang, our Chinese forest campaigner didn't help at all when she supposed that she wanted to interview me because I'm "an attractive and charming American" - the internationals in the room thought that a bit of an oxymoron. Regardless of the reason I wasn't about to turn down an opportunity to tell 120 million people about why this campaign is important, and about how China and the U.S. are partners in leading the world in creating pressures that lead to deforestation - and how all of that links to global warming. I definitely hit all the important points, as to what she chooses to write, that remains to be seen. I wish I could read Chinese (or Mandarin, I suppose.)

I definitely got the feeling that some of my more assertive comments won't make it to print. Being such a large website their content is watched closely by the Chinese government, and any criticism of the government must be balanced with compliments. Needless to say, I didn't have too many good comments about China's role in forest destruction, other than that they are beginning to do a decent job of protecting it's own forests. And of course I linked the U.S. into that equation, as China is many times just the middleman for manufacturing of products that end up in American homes and buildings.

On a completely unrelated note, half the camp was awoken last night by a blood curdling scream. We all got up to look for the source for the scream, but to no avail. I think it was just someone having a vivid and vibrant nightmare, not a too atypical side effect of taking Chloroquine, an anti-malarial. It took me awhile to get back to sleep after that. Especially with the chainsaw snoring resonating from the women's sleeping quarters.

That's all I have for today. We're busy unloading materials for an upcoming activity that we're working towards. I'll write more about that next week.