The Fight for Indonesia’s Forests

Image c/o Ford Foundation

When the indigenous community in Sungai Utik turned down an offer to buy its forests in 1973, it didn’t expect to be fighting for its land rights nearly 50 years later.

Like many Dayak Iban elders on the island of Borneo, Apai Janggut can’t determine his precise age. He knows he has to be over 80, because he was born when the Dutch still colonized Indonesia. But you’d never guess he’s that old if you saw the lithe, barefoot ease with which he navigates the dense rainforest his community protects as a sacred gift from its ancestors.

In February, just before Indonesia locked down for COVID-19, I tried (and sometimes failed) to keep up with Apai on a hike through what he calls “the supermarket”—the pristine hardwood forest that has provided almost all of his community’s nutritional and medical needs for the past 130 years. He shared why his community, based in the tiny Indonesian hamlet of Sungai Utik, has fought so hard to protect its forests from encroachment and extraction.

Click here to keep reading. Steve Rhee, Senior Program Officer, Ford Foundation Indonesia, writes for the Ford Foundation’s Equals Change Blog.