A student working on the Al Ittifaq farm, Ciwidey, West Java, Indonesia, June 2022. Credit: Kafil Yamin/IPS

By Kafil Yamin
CIWIDEY, West Java, Indonesia, Jun 24 2022 (IPS)

It appears to be business as usual at the Al-Ittifaq pesantren, the local term for an Islamic boarding school. Yadi and Rezki, both 18, join the subuh, pre-dawn prayer, in the local mosque. After a session of religious meditation, along with other santris, or students, the two study science in a pre-dawn class for about 30 minutes.

Once the session ends, the students know where to go and what to do. They pick up a hoe, shovel and machete and walk together to the school’s farm. The ustadz, or teacher, divides them into groups and issues instructions.

Soon the students no longer look like learners but like young farmers working the land. “This is part of our class lessons. We do this every day,” said Yadi, who is busy planting seeds. “I am planting green onion. But my friends are harvesting it in other side of this farm.”

Soon more business, job and career opportunities will be available in villages than in cities. With digitalization the future for the young generation is in villages

Ridwan Kamil, West Java Governor

The pesantren environment seems ideal for farming. Located in a hilly, mountainous area of Ciwidey, West Java, 170 kilometres or about a 4-hour drive from Jakarta, Al-Ittifaq compound is surrounded by green, in a temperature that hovers between 18C and 22C – cold by tropical standards.

Orange grove — with a surprise

Senior teacher Anwar Mustiawan shows a reporter an area where leafy orange trees with white trunks are growing — and what makes the pesantren unique is revealed. Arranged in neat rows, some trees are over two metres tall, others less than one metre. The soil under each one is covered with a tarpaulin, and under it is a sensor that measures the temperature and humidity of the soil. A water hose is attached to each tarpaulin and connected to an auto-watering machine, which joins a huge water tank.

“The machine decides, based on the soil temperature, when to water the soil,” Anwar said. “This is what digital farming technology is all about,” he added.

He also pointed out that the auto-watering machine isn’t used for all crops. “Our students should know the soil temperature and when it is time to water them,” Anwar said.

Also on hand is Aziz Elbehri, the senior economist who leads the 1,000 Digital Villages Initiative (DVI) at the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) in the Asia-Pacific region.

“We are promoting sustainable, resilient and digitalized agricultural and farming practices by assisting policy makers, national and local government to meet the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030,” Elbehri told IPS as he visited the pesantren on 27 June.

“This use of technology needs to be spread and replicated to other rural communities,” he added.

While Al-Ittifaq is at the heart of a thriving farming community, digitalization is giving its inhabitants a further boost.

Everything produced on the farm goes to the Ittifaq cooperative, where students sort, grade, pack, wrap and label items. The enterprise supplies local supermarkets, malls and wholesalers with vegetables and fruits. It also purchases produce grown by local farmers, who have been its business partners since it was established in 1977.

The organization sends at least five tonnes of various vegetables daily to major cities in Indonesia, said the cooperative’s head, Agus Setia Irawan. “The demand is increasing because our product is highly competitive, which suggest that local farmers are capable of producing quality vegetables and fruits.”

That Al-Ittifaq practices organic farming is what makes the difference. “It is public knowledge that our products are planted, grown and processed in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way,” Agus added.

Orange trees growing with the help of a digital watering system attached to the water tank on the right side. Al Ittifaq farm, Ciwidey, West Java, Indonesia. Credit: Kompas

Self-financing farm

The proceeds of the business are used to finance the Ittifaq educational operations. “Our syeikh taught us that a good person is financially self-reliant and does not hope for charity. He makes it into reality. This pesantren is financially self-financing,” said Rezki, another student.

Al-Ittifaq also employs local residents to work on its 14-hectare farm, so that students and local residents toil together. “There are hundreds of people, most of them women, working with us in shifts. We are like a big family here,” Refky added.

The cooperative also partners with five farmers’ groups, each one consisting of 300 farmers who work 70 hectares of land.

Not only has the pesantren made big steps in the agro-industrial business, it has also become the centre of agricultural and agribusiness training for residents, in collaboration with 20 other pesantren in West Java.

And as part of the digitization drive, Ittifaq has started online marketing. Agus said the cooperative has adopted the so-called business-to-business-to-consumer model (B2B2C). By partnering with other businesses, its online e-commerce efforts are able to reach new markets and customers.

“Our virtual marketing is made through an online agricultural store called Alifmart, which offers several features, including a catalogue of products, purchasing mechanism and customer service,” he said.

FAO Representative in Indonesia Rajendra Aryal said that with more and more people having access to the internet, digital agriculture is becoming a main vehicle for transforming Indonesia’s food system.

“Indonesia is an archipelagic country that is struggling to give its people wider access to economic resources. Digitalization of agriculture is coming into play now,” he said.

Target — 104 digital villages

West Java’s administration has set the target of digitalizing 104 villages in the province in 2022.

“The villages are selected because they don’t have access to the internet yet. But we have been building internet infrastructure during the last two years. Soon, they are not in the blank spot anymore,” said the head of the West Java Communication and Information Office, Ika Mardiah. “And soon the villages’ potential and products, will be in e-commerce, online transactions and promotion,” she added during a meeting with FAO officials on 26 June.

To date, Mardiah’s office has incorporated 4,225 village enterprises in West Java into the digital business network under her management. “This involves more than 400 products, 12.8 million customers and a huge amount of money,” she said.

According to West Java Governor Ridwan Kamil, soon more business, job and career opportunities will be available in villages than in cities. “With digitalization the future for the young generation is in villages,” he added at the meeting.

Kamil’s administration has succeeded in building three thematic digital villages: one focused on health, which use technology to address the lack of health facilities and specialized doctors. Patients in five pilot areas are able to consult a family doctor online.

The multimedia digital village provides capacity building in digital content-making skills for villagers in the province, while education digital villages are equipped with a so-called Smart Router as a source of education materials that can be accessed by all village residents. The materials are regularly updated.

A global initiative inspired by FAO’s Director-General, Mr QU Dongyu, the DVI is being piloted throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Ciwidey is among many communities being showcased and sharing its advancements with other villages and areas in Asia-Pacific as well as other regions of the world.

Men working for Edy Prasetyo harvesting catfish in Indramayu, West Java, take a break on a recent day. Credit: Kafil Yamin/IPS

By Kafil Yamin
INDRAMAYU, Indonesia, Jun 24 2022 (IPS)

For years Indramayu has been known as one of Indonesia’s rice centres. The district in West Java is the country’s number one rice producer, generating 1.3 million tonnes of husked rice in 2021, according to Indonesia’s Centre of Statistics (BPS). The country’s total rice production was 54 million tonnes.

What we witness as we drive to the district confirms the rice-dominant economy. Paddy fields stretch on the right and left as far as the eye can see. This is early June, traditionally the start of the harvest, but the plants are still green, indicating that the harvest is still months away.

It is also a clear sign that the paddy growing cycle has changed, due to a shift in climate.

Ironically, Indramayu was one of the five poorest districts in West Java in 2021, according to the BPS report, which also revealed that the Covid-19 pandemic increased the number of poor in Indramayu by 13 percent.

Even before the pandemic, Indramayu was a pocket of poverty in Indonesia. The majority of people in the paddy-dominant district are not land-owning farmers but farm labourers or landless growers.

Paddy fields are labour-intensive only during planting season and harvest, which take place three times a year on average. That leaves three to four months as free time for landless farmers. Both men and women migrate to the capital Jakarta, 240 km away, to find temporary jobs, before returning to Indramayu for the harvest.

Labour migration decreasing

Global climate change has been disrupting these patterns — of planting, harvesting, and migration. But one silver lining of this disruption is that landless growers have begun to find alternative livelihoods without migrating to Jakarta. Fish farming is a popular choice in the coastal district.

Indramayu farmers started making ponds along the seashore to raise tiger prawns, a popular commodity. But this farming is vulnerable to incursions from the ocean, including tidal waves.

That’s why Edy Prasetyo, 46, chose to enter the catfish farming business in 2001. Twenty-one years later, Prasetyo has 69 ponds in Soge village, Kandanghaur sub-district.

In recent years catfish has become a favourite street food for middle and low-income people in almost all major cities in Indonesia. Demand is so high that in the Jakarta area, where most Indramayu catfish is sold, shortages are common. Seeing the opportunity, some young local growers have become rich quick.

It’s demanding work, Prasetyo tells an IPS reporter on a recent visit. “We have to stick to a fixed feeding schedule, including during the night and when it rains. Imagine walking around the ponds in heavy rain and throwing catfish food into them. I have 69 ponds. I need at least 10 people to do it.”

But now, new technology is making the farmers’ lives easier. In October 2020, FAO Indonesia and Bogor Agriculture University (IPB) introduced technology known as eFishery to Prasetyo’s village. After a short training he and other catfish farmers began to adopt the system, particularly a digital automatic fish feeder.

Invented by a graduate of Indonesia’s Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), Gibran Huzaifah, the auto-feeder connects through the internet to farmers’ smartphones. There they can set the breed of fish, feeding schedules and the amount of food pellets to drop into the ponds.

Gunawan, 47, a catfish farmer in Ciseeng, West Java, has been using the auto-feeder since 2019. Credit: Kafil Yamin/IPS

Detects level of hunger

The auto-feeder is equipped with an in-water, vibration-based sensor that is able to read the movements of hungry versus full fish. Guided by the farmer’s feeding schedule, when the artificial intelligence detects hunger, it releases the amount of feed required. This avoids over or underfeeding the fish.

The auto-feeder connects through the internet to farmers’ smartphones. There they can set the breed of fish, feeding schedules and the amount of food pellets to drop into the ponds

The eFishery’s sensors collect and store real time data, such as feed volumes and consumption levels. Farmers can access this through eFishery’s web and mobile apps on their smartphone, tablet or computer and make any needed changes to the feeding.

“This is the kind of technology we need,” says Prasetyo. “It cuts time spent for feeding the catfish and saves a lot of energy.”

With eFishery, production has increased 25-30 percent, says the farmer, adding that he has more time to spend on other things. Additional benefits of the technology include that the size and weight of the catfish can be controlled and the water quality is monitored.

While Prasetyo spoke, several men placed buckets of catfish on weighing scales and then transferred them to a small truck, which soon drove out of the village, bound for Jakarta.

Losarang sub-district has now become Indramayu’s catfish centre, with the majority of residents farming the species. Catfish ponds dominate the landscape. “Sixty percent of Indramayu’s 200 hectares of catfish ponds are in Losarang sub-district,” said Thalib, the village head.

The technology and knowledge has spread throughout the area, and Prasetyo’s success story has drawn fishermen from other villages to learn about eFishery.

“This is what Member Nations want. This is what this project is designed for,” said Aziz Elbehri, senior economist at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s Regional Office in Bangkok, who leads the 1,000 Digital Villages Initiative (DVI) for Asia and Pacific.

A global initiative inspired by FAO’s Director-General Mr QU Dongyu, the DVI is being piloted in the Asia-Pacific region. Soge village is among many being showcased and sharing its advancements with other villages and areas in Asia and the Pacific, as well as other regions of the world.

“A successful undertaking in one village should be copied, or in popular terms, replicated to other villages. And this is what is happening here now,” Elbehri told IPS as he and his FAO team visited Soge village on 26 May.

“Indonesia is one of the success stories,” Elbehri said, pointing out several female catfish farmers who joined his visit. As eFishery is a national innovation, the project is also driving national excellence, he added.

Challenges remain

Catfish farming is not without challenges. Mardiah, 52, has been farming the species for 26 years. “Sometimes we go through lack of water during prolonged drought, which has caused many of our catfish to die. At other times, we get flooded during heavy rainfall and our ponds are destroyed,” he told IPS, adding that farmers can do little about such natural occurrences. Disease is another serious threat.

But what gives farmers their largest headache is the soaring price of catfish food. “More and more people make fish ponds, while catfish food production remain the same. This make its price soar,” Mardiah said.

Head of the Indramayu Fishery and Marine Office, Edi Umaedi, told IPS that fish ponds cover 560 hectares in his area, more than half of it is used for catfish farming. Last year, Indramayu’s catfish production reached 85,000 tonnes.

Setting up the business is not difficult, added Umaedi, and farmers prefer it because unlike rice, catfish can endure a water shortage and do not require irrigation. “Fish ponds, particularly catfish ponds, do not need a vast amount of land. One pond of 100 or 200 square metres is enough to farm catfish.”

To date, FAO and IPB have established eFishery in 30 villages in West Java and there are plans to expand to other Indonesian provinces.

A woman works in her vegetable patch at the foot of Mount Sinabung, North Sumatra, Indonesia. Credit: Kafil Yamin/IPS

By Kafil Yamin
MEDAN, Indonesia , Oct 17 2017 (IPS)

Repeated volcanic eruptions of Mount Sinabung since 2010 have displaced thousands of people, leaving villages around the mountain deserted, with volcanic ash, lava and mud covering the soil, trees and empty houses.

No one knows when the eruptions will cease. Some displaced people have formed new settlements; others live in temporary houses or refugee camps.Mount Sinabung is one of 130 active volcanoes in Indonesia, an archipelago vulnerable to seismic upheavals because of its location on the ‘Ring of Fire’, a horseshoe-shaped belt of tectonic plate boundaries that fringes the Pacific basin.

With support from BNPB, the Indonesian acronym for the National Agency for Disaster Management, the local government has resettled 347 families in three housing complexes in Siosar area, Karo regency, with each family getting a 500 square meter plot for farming. They grow vegetables, breed animals, and operate shops and services. Social, cultural and economic life have blossomed.

Since 2015, following a major eruption, Siosar farmers have sent their harvest to Kabanjahe, the capital of Karo Regency. Potatoes, carrots, cabbages, oranges and coffee beans are on the market, helping stimulate economic growth of 4.5 percent of the North Sumatra province.

But the 2016 eruption devastated the staggering economy. At least 53,000 hectares of farmland was destroyed by volcanic ash and mud. The harvest failed throughout the entire district. Of 17 sub-districts, 14 were severely affected. The head of the local Agriculture Office, Munarta Ginting, urged the farmers to shift to tubers, which were more resilient to volcanic ash.

The farmers refused to give up. They started all over again late last year. BNPB sent seeds, fertilizers and consultants to help.

“After emergency management measures come social and economic recovery measures, which look farther ahead but are no less challenging,” said Agus Wibowo, director of the Social-Economic Division of BNPB.

“We aid victims to overcome the calamity, start a better life, restore social and economic enterprises, and more importantly, restore confidence for the future,” Agus added.

Mount Sinabung is one of 130 active volcanoes in Indonesia, an archipelago vulnerable to seismic upheavals because of its location on the ‘Ring of Fire’, a horseshoe-shaped belt of tectonic plate boundaries that fringes the Pacific basin.

In the first week of October, life in Siosar has returned to normal, with farmers harvesting potatoes, cabbages, carrots and chilies, despite lower production due to lack of rainfall.

Several farmers have enjoyed large harvests. Berdi Sembiring grew nine tons of potatoes on his 500 meter square farm, which is good for the dry season.

“I sold my potatoes for 48 million rupiah (4,000 dollars) – not bad,” said Sembiring with a big smile.

BNPB also encourages the refugees not to rely solely on farming and raw products. “We encourage people to develop new business opportunities, such as food industry, mechanics and manufacturing,” said Agus Wibowo, who sent a team of business consultants to train the wives of farmers.

Now, with potato chip processing machines from BNPB, Siosar has started producing chips branded Top Potato. But challenges remain in turning a profit.

“One of the shortcomings is the unstable rate of production. Four groups of farmer wives take turns using one processing machine. Each group has its own production capacity,” said Nurjanahah, a business consultant for the potato chip manufacturing.

“Uncompetitive quality and big diminution from raw potatoes to final potato chip is another challenge to deal with. Four kilograms of potatoes produce only 600 grams of chips,” she added.

“The potato chip has yet to be a professional product until we solve all these shortcomings,” Nurjanah told IPS.

BNPB provided four processing machines for groups of farmer wives in Siosar, beyond the Rp590 billion fund it created for the Mount Sinabung disaster, according to Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, head of BNPB’s Center of Data and Information.

Basic mechanics is another alternative to diversify from agriculture. For one thing, the sector has yet to have competitors in the new settlements. For another, the area is in urgent need of such services, considering the absence of public transportation. Personal minivans and motorcycles are the backbone of village transportation.

Basmadi Kapri Peranginangin returned to his village after living for a year in a refugee camp. He grew potatoes and other vegetables, but just as he finished planting, Mount Sinabung erupted again and his newly-replanted farm – part of the area’s most vulnerable ‘red zone’ – was ruined.

Peranginangin decided to go to Siosar and shift to the motorcycle repair business, but lacked the funds to buy tools and build a workshop. Then he heard about a training program for displaced people jointly sponsored by the International Labor Organisation (ILO), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the UN Development Program and BNPB.

After one month of training, he received a set of equipment to repair motorcycles. And with his new knowledge, including administration and financial management, he started a motorcycle repair business in July 2016. Now he earns Rp3,5 million a month on average.

When social and economic life blooms, so does art and culture. On October 1, the new community celebrated its one-year anniversary with an art and music show.

Biri Pelawi, a local religious leader, said in his opening remarks, “Siosar land is God’s promised land for us. Sigarang-garang, our former village, is the departing spot. One year in refugee camps is our training period. God’s plan for us is here. He kept His plan secretly.”

“Now we live safe with no fear of Mount Sinabung eruption. God has sent us to safer place to carry on,” he said.

On that very day, Mount Siabung erupted again, spewing volcanic ash as high as four kilometers, but this time, no one was affected and the celebration continued as planned.

“We don’t have to worry anymore. We live in a safe place,” said Mesti Ginting, one of the celebration organizers.

Villages in Papua New Guinea are being transformed with permanent houses and front-yard food gardens. Credit: Kafil Yamin/IPS

By Kafil Yamin
SENGGI, Indonesia, Oct 24 2016 (IPS)

Only two decades ago, Usku, Molof and Namla, three villages in Senggi District, Papua, were the battlefield of feuding tribes fighting for their ulayat (communal land). Afra, the triumphant tribe, then settled in the villages and led a life of hunting and gathering.

Their semi-nomadic lifestyle carried on despite the so-called transmigration in the adjacent village of Waris, where villagers from Java started a new life under central government sanction.

The three villages border Papua New Guinea, covering around 4,000 square kms, and are the least developed spots in the island of Papua. 

Now the villages are being transformed, with permanent houses and front-yard farming. Where there used to be scarcity, food abounds.

It all began less than three months ago when the ministry of villages, underdeveloped regions and transmigration sent a team of agricultural and social experts to the villages and worked together with the locals to improve the living conditions of the Indonesia’s eastern-most border communities.

Dasarus Daraserme, 50, said that farming makes his life much easier. “These days, I don’t have to go deep into the forest to find food. It’s all right here in my front yard, you see?” he told IPS, pointing at his newly-sown crops.

“It was getting harder and harder to find food, animals and herbs there [in the forest],” he added.

Expansion by three big palm oil plantations has reduced forest resources in the Keerom District.

Daraserme said his plot yields more than he and his family need, even after he sold the surplus. “We need only one and half kilogrammes of vegetables and fruits a day in average, or some five kilogrammes a week. Now we have hundreds of kilogrammes of cucumber, soybean, chilly, tomatoes, green beans. We don’t know what to do about it,” he said.

Anton Sirmei, 53, who grows pumpkin, kale, cabbage, chilly and tomatoes, also has a surplus. “In the past, there was a lack of food. That’s a problem. Now we have more. This is also a problem,” he said.

The closest town with a market is Senggi, which is 12 hours away on foot. Car transportation is available only once a week.

Professor Ali Zum Mashar, who trains the locals in farming techniques, is now helping them organise a cooperative to sell their agricultural products.

“The government invested some money in the village corporation, just the set the wheel of business in motion,” Mashar said.

Mashar said he actually expected a large surplus. “My microbe-based fertilizer can change bare lands into fertile spots. It is able to convert an ex-mining site to a green farm, let alone this fertile soil of Usku,” he said.

He found 18 species of microbes in the forests of Kalimantan while doing his doctoral studies in 2000. He eventually developed a technology that converts the microbes into liquid form, which he calls Bio P 2000 Z. Successful experiments have proved their capability to increase crop yields by as much as threefold.

“The crop yields should double in quantity, quality and speed. We started working in August, now after only three months, you can see for yourself,” he added, pointing at the gardens in the houses’ front yards.

He said the first goal is that the people have enough food, which has been achieved. Expanding the markets is the next step.

The villagers harvest their crops every two weeks. In terms of both quantity and quality, the Usku villagers produce better vegetables and fruit than their counterparts in the transmigration enclave, who are mostly skilled farmers from Java.

Usku, Molof and Namla village definitely have much more to offer than vegetables, fruits and crops to the outside. Non-timber forest products such as herbs and spices, honey, cinnamon, resin, sandalwood and various fruits also have high economic values for the local community.

Mashar and his team are now constructing a ranch for deer breeding in effort to reduce deer hunting in the forest. “But deer breeding is more than just foodstock. It will become tourist attraction too. So soon we will have a sort of village tourism here,” he said.

The biggest challenge now is training villagers in business management, in a community where 80 percent of the population is illiterate. The village has only one primary school with poor facilities. Four teachers manage around 150 students.

Health care is another major issue. The clinic has only one doctor and often has no medicines. Common diseases here are elephantiasis, skin fungus and mumps.

But hopes are high that the increasing harvest will improve incomes, and bring better medical services, education and infrastructure.

“There is still a long way to go. But we are paving the way to a better tomorrow,” Mashar said.

Orangutan survival is seriously threatened by palm oil plantations. Credit: Kafil Yamin/IPS

By Kafil Yamin
JAKARTA, Aug 10 2012 (IPS)

When four men were sentenced to eight months in jail in March for the ‘murder’ of orangutans, it was the first time that people associated with Indonesia’s booming palm oil industry were convicted for killing man’s close relations in the primate family.

Conservationists were not happy with the ‘light’ sentences handed down by the court in Kutai Kertanegara district, East Kalimantan, on Mar. 18, to Imam Muktarom, Mujianto, Widiantoro and Malaysian national Phuah Cuan Pun.

“As expected, the sentences were light, much lighter than what the prosecutors demanded. Such punishments will not bring any change to the situation of orangutans,” Fian Khairunnissa, an activist of the Centre for Orangutan Protection, told IPS.

Indonesia’s courts have generally looked the other way as the palm oil industry relentlessly decimated orangutans by destroying vast swathes of Southeast Asia’s rainforests to convert them into oil palm plantations.

In April, a court in Banda Aceh, Sumatra, dismissed a case filed by the Indonesia Environmental Forum (WALHI) against PT Kallista Alam, one of five palm oil firms operating in Tripa, and Irwandi Yusuf, former governor of Aceh province, for the conversion of 1,600 hectares (3,950 acres) of carbon-rich peat forests into palm oil plantations.

The court admonished WALHI saying it should have sought an out-of-court settlement with PT Kallista Alam –  which never paused clearing its  1,600-hectare concession, granted in August 2011.  

Mysteriously, just before the WALHI case was to be heard in court, numerous fires broke out in the Tripa peat swamps, including in the concession granted to PT Kallista Alam.

Community leaders in Tripa point out that the concessions fly in the face of a presidential  moratorium on new permits to clear primary forests, effective in Indonesia since last year as part of a billion dollar deal with Norway to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

 “The issuance of a license to Kallista is a crime, because it changes the Leuser ecosystem and peat land forests into business concessions,” Kamarudin, a Tripa community spokesman, told IPS.

The Leuser Ecosystem, in the provinces of Aceh and North Sumatra, covers more than 2.6 million hectares of prime tropical rain forest and is the last place on earth where Sumatran sub-species of elephants, rhinoceros, tigers and orangutans coexist.

The survival of orangutans,  a ‘keystone species’,  is critical for the wellbeing of other animals and plants with which they coexist in a habitat.   

A statement released in June by the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme estimated that there are now only 200 of the red-harired great apes left in Tripa compared to  about 2,000 in 1990 and said their situation was now ‘desperate’ as result of the fires and clearing operations carried out by palm oil companies.

During the last five years, the oil palm business has emerged as a major force in the Indonesian economy, with an investment value of close five billion dollars on eight million hectares.

Indonesia plans to increase crude palm oil (CPO) production from the current 23.2 million tons this year to 28.4 million tons by 2014. This calls for an 18.7 percent increase in plantation area, according to Indonesia’s agriculture ministry.

But the price of the planned expansion would be further shrinkage of orangutan habitat by 1.6 million hectares because oil companies find it cheaper to burn forests and chase away or kill the orangutans. 

“If you find orangutans in palm oil plantations, they are not coming there from somewhere else… they are in their own homes that have been changed into plantations,” said Linda Yuliani, a researcher at the Centre for International Forestry Research.

“But plantation company people see the orangutans as the encroachers,” she said. “Confused orangutans can often be seen wandering in plantations, and with their habitat gone, they forage on young palm trees,” she said.

A joint survey by 19 organisations, including The Nature Conservancy, WWF and the Association of Primate Experts, found that some 750 orangutans died during 2008-2009, mostly because of conflict with human beings.

It has not mattered that Indonesia is one of the signatories to the Convention on Illegal Trade and Endangered Species, which classifies orangutans under Appendix I which lists species identified as currently endangered, or in danger of extinction.

“Clearing peat land also releases huge volumes of carbon dioxide, similar to amounts released during  volcanic eruptions,” Willie Smits, a Dutch conservationist who works on orangutan protection, tells IPS.

Reckless clearing of peat swamp forests has already turned Indonesia into the world’s largest emitter  of carbon dioxide, after the United States and China.

“The government may earn some money from oil palm investment, but there are far bigger losses from environmental destruction,” says Elfian Effendi, director of Greenomics Indonesia. “There is a multiplied effect on the local economy and loss of biodiversity.”

But, even to some conservationists, stopping the oil palm business in Indonesia – which feeds a vast range of industries from fast food and cosmetics to biodiesel – is impractical.

“What is needed is enforcement of schemes that allow the palm oil business and orangutans to co-exist,” Resit Rozer, a Dutch conservationist who runs a sanctuary for rescued orangutans, told IPS.

Palm oil companies that are members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), a convention to encourage importers to buy only RSPO-certified CPO, see no advantage in the scheme that requires them to set aside a forest block for orangutans within plantations and provide safe corridors for the apes to move from one spot to another.

“U.S. and several European countries still buy non-certified CPO as the RSPO certificate does not gurantee purchase,” Rozer told IPS. “The West told us to practice environmentally-sound business, but they do not buy RSPO-certified CPO because implementation has been delayed till 2015,” Rozer said.

 “For companies that have invested in RSPO certification, the delay has been a heavy blow. They feel cheated,” said Rozer who helps palm oil companies in creating orangutan refuges and corridors.

Mumpuni inside a micro hydel power house. Credit: IBEKA

By Kafil Yamin
JAKARTA, Jun 28 2012 (IPS)

The nighttime glitter of Indonesia’s cities and urban centres contrasts sharply with darkness of the hinterland where some 90 million people live without the benefit of electricity.

With an electrification rate of 65 percent – about 35 percent of its 250 million people have no access to electricity – Indonesia lags behind its Southeast Asian neighbours. The rate is 84 percent in Thailand, 80 percent in the Philippines and 79 percent in Vietnam.

But, this serious gap in electrification is being seen as both a challenge and an opportunity in a country with commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while pursuing an electrification target of 90 percent by 2020.

Indonesia has a range of renewable energy options – solar, geothermal, wind and micro hydroelectric plants (MHPs). However, policies to meet the demand have relied on coal and other heavily subsidised fossil fuels.

According to various studies, subsidies on fuel and electricity that now average 10 billion dollars annually are a serious impediment to meeting the country’s renewable energy targets.

The demand for energy has been such that in 2004 Indonesia turned from being a major producer of oil to net importer.

Of the renewable energy choices available, tapping the potential of the archipelago’s numerous rivers, using off-grid MHPs, looks most promising.

Indonesia’s rural communities have already demonstrated an ability to build and operate their own MHPs which, according to studies by the Indonesian Institute of Science (LIPI), can be set up at an affordable 3,000 dollars per kilowatt.

MHPs require little more than a pipeline or penstock conveying water to a small powerhouse where it turns a turbine to produce electricity before returning to the river along a tailrace channel.

Because MHPs require good care of upstream areas, communities have a stake in maintaining the ecosystem and the environment.

“MHPs call for serious protection of water resources and the ecosystem,” says Tri Mumpuni, director of the People Centred Economic and Business Institute (IBEKA), a leading non-government organisation.

Indonesia’s MHP revolution started in 1990 when Sucipto (one name) created a turbine in his village of Gunung Sawur, East Java. With support from fellow villagers in finance and labour, his project produces 13,000 watts of electricity from the Besuk Semut river.

Sucipto’s success story soon spread to other areas. From 1992 to 2009, his power plant model was replicated all over East Java and in Lampung and Bengkulu on Sumatra island.

In Simpang village, West Java, with technical help from the Indigenous Nature Conservation Foundation (YPAL) and financial support from the Global Environment Facility of the United Nations, an MHP has been serving 200 households since 2003.  

In 2005, LIPI built another successful MHP in Lebani village, South Sulawesi, generating 30 kilowatts to serve 100 families. This initiative then spread to other areas in the province, such as Bungin, Potolukin, Baraka and Palakka Maiwa.

LIPI has also built two MHPs in East Nusa Tenggara province, each producing 20 kilowatts and managed and maintained by local communities.

But the best-known organisation driving the MHP revolution is IBEKA, a winner of the 2012 Ashden awards instituted by a British green energy charity.

“Off-grid hydro schemes are bringing the benefits of electricity – like good quality light, TV and power tools – for the first time to remote communities in Indonesia,” the Ashden citation said. 

With 61 IBEKA hydro schemes installed so far, 54,000 people currently benefit from electricity supplies, while 7,400 tonnes of carbon dioxide are being saved annually. IBEKA’s Mumpuni is regarded as one of Indonesia’s most dynamic women.

Last year in Sukamulya village, Sukabumi district, IBEKA persuaded the Astra Honda Motor automotive company to construct a 6,400 watt MHP and in May another one came up in Semarang with financial support from Hivos.

Mumpuni admits that several of her MHPs are not working. “For example, in Padasuka, Cianjur, a private company acquired the upstream area and turned it into a golf course, reducing water flow and causing the turbine to stop working,” she tells IPS.

Mumpuni emphasises that an MHP must have a community institution to take care of it. “It means building community awareness and responsibility…that’s an important part.”

When Mumpuni started an MHP in her own hometown of Subang she took care to involve the Cinta Mekar’s village cooperative and, with IBEKA’s backing, it got a loan from the United Nations Economic and Socail Commission for Asia and the Pacific to cover investment.

 “A number of MHPs have turned into corroded junk,” says Ridwan Soleh, a YPAL executive. “This happened mainly to those funded by the government.”

“Once the MHP is ready they just leave it to the community which may not be in a position to handle it. Government agents seem only to care about getting the project executed and don’t care what happens afterwards,” Ridwan told IPS.

Indonesia’s current power generation capacity is 24 gigawatts, two-thirds of which is concentrated in Java, Madura and Bali. With demand growing at nine percent annually, the cities are forced to put up with frequent blackouts.

With cities starved of power, the chances of rural areas getting power from the national grid are dim and MHPs hold out the best option for electrifying Indonesia’s far-flung areas.     

College students go green

By Kafil Yamin
JAKARTA, Jun 17 2012 (IPS)

JAKARTA, Jun 17 (IPS) 2012 – Studies on carbon emissions conducted in the Bogor Agricultural University (BAU) in West Java confirm that the worst culprits are students with their trendy lifestyles.

“On average, each student dumps two plastic bags a day and there are more than 3,000 of them on our campus,” Popi Puspita Forestian, a student at BAU, tells IPS.

Besides plastic bags, there are also electronic devices such as CD-DVD players, play stations, TV sets, mobile phones, computers and other devices that college students consider essential to lead a contemporary lifestyle.

“Most students are aware of the costs of their lifestyles to the environment, but they won’t be seen dead out of fashion,” Popi added. “So we decided to work on how to make green activities trendy.”

Another study by the Jakarta-based Institute for Essential Service Reform (IESR) confirms Popi’s assessment that trendy lifestyles are the driving factor behind Indonesia’s incessantly rising carbon emissions – and  students are not always to blame.

IESR arrived its conclusions by setting up an online carbon calculator, www.iesr.or.id/carboncalculator/ that enables every individual to figure out his or her own carbon footprint with the data updated continuously.

“The middle class in the cities of Indonesia are major contributors to greenhouse gas (GhG) emissions – about 50 percent of it, mostly from their use of electronic devices,” said Henriette Imelda, an IESR researcher.

“The excessive use of electronic devices gives a boost to electricity consumption, which in turn increases carbon dioxide (CO2) emission,” the study said.  

West Java, Indonesia’s most developed province, is now also the highest carbon emitter in Indonesia, releasing an estimated 12,500 grams of CO2 per capita per day. Banten, Central Java, Sumatra and Kalimantan are not far behind.

Surprisingly, overpopulated and poorly managed Jakarta, with its daily traffic jams, is not among the five major carbon emitting cities.

West Java is a centre for universities and schools where the use of paper for various purposes is massive and the carbon emissions aggravated by the use of electronic devices, lamp bulbs, television sets and electrical appliances such as hairdryers, the IESR study said.

The province is home to no less that 68 universities, 18 of them state-owned; 130 government high schools, thousands of private institutions and non-government organisations (NGOs).

Nearly 50 percent of West Java’s carbon emissions come from electronic devices, followed by incandescent electric bulbs. “This shows the West Java people’s excessive lamp use,” the study said while noting the need  for people to switch to more efficient lighting.

A rapid expansion of housing complexes in the province has raised demands on electricity with the National Power Corporation hard put to meet rising consumption.

“The Sundanese, West Java’s main population, are highly conscious of  looks and fashionable lifestyles. They follow global trends in fashion and buy up the latest consumer products,” Imelda told IPS.

Recently, IESR launched a campaign called ‘Low Carbon Women’, a feature of which is the deployment of a cadre of volunteers called ‘sobat esensial’ (essential friends), who spread information on climate change and ask for commitments to reduce individual carbon emissions.

“Women can do a lot in the global fight against climate change – and they  can start by calculating how much carbon they are producing,” Imelda said. 

At BAU, Popi and about 50 of her fellow students routinely pick up plastic bags and litter lying around the campus to send across the message that plastic can harm the environment.

The team encourages the use of reusable cloth bags on campus green by distributing them free. “This year, we were able to give each student a trendy cloth bag,” Popi said.

Indonesia, which has committed itself to reducing its carbon emission by 26 percent by 2020, against a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario, is tapping every social group or community that can help achieve that target.

In 2005, the World Bank rated Indonesia as the third largest emitter of carbon, but that was mostly on account of runaway deforestation to extract timber and make way for plantations, particularly palm oil.

According to Greenpeace large volumes GhGs are also released by the destruction of Indonesia’s peatlands, believed to store about 35 billion tonnes of carbon and released by the plantation industry.

While Indonesia does not provide annual data on emissions, burning coal to produce electricity – mainly to meet demands from foreign investors in ‘dirty’ industries like steel, cement and power-  has boosted pollution levels and carbon release.

In September 2011, Indonesia announced an “action plan” to help ministries and local governments implement low carbon development activities, some of it visible in areas like Rajawati, a lush and green South Jakarta neighbourhood.

In Rajawati every household contributes to the planting of flowering plants and trees nurtured on organic, biodegradable waste.  

“All the greenery you see here comes from the efficient conversion of household waste,” Ninik Nuryanto, head of Rajawati’s Women’s Association. “Each household takes care to segregate waste, with plastics going into one bin and biodegradable matter into another.  

“In the beginning, fertiliser made from organic waste was just a way to help cultivate flowers in front yards. But, when production exceeded demand, we started selling it profitably,” Ninik told IPS.  

“While other neighbourhoods are weighed down with mounting waste, we just can’t get enough of it,” Ninik said.  

Apart from the packets of organic fertiliser, Rawajati’s community also sells flowers and teak tree seeds.

Money raised from the association’s sales goes into a fund for public services, such as paving roads, repairing sewage canals and the maintenance of a community park.

The main idea, Ninik said, is to get the community involved in green activities and become aware of the importance of maintaining the carbon balance.

(END)

Another month of plying his ‘becak’ (trishaw) in the capital city and Sarjo will be coming back to this West Java district to harvest the rice ripening on his 1,400 sq m paddy.

Sarjo (one name) reckons the harvest will fetch him a timely 325 dollars to celebrate the holy month of Ramadan (Jul. 20 – Aug. 18) before returning to becak-pulling in Jakarta.

Mona, who works as an entertainer in Jakarta’s ‘Princess Entertainment’ nightclub, is also preparing to return home for Ramadan. “But, my boss has warned me that if I leave for Indramayu without completing my contract I don’t need to come back.”

“Entertainment work is not easy,” says Lisa, another Indramayu girl who works in a Jakarta disco. “I am expected to encourage guests to spend money and for that I need to be attractive, even after staying up night after night keeping drunken clients happy.”

Lisa manages to send one million Indonesian rupiah (106 dollars) every month to her parents. “They are too old to work on the farm, so they depend on my earnings,” she explained.

Many residents of Indramayu, one of Indonesia’s ‘rice bowls’, are seasonal migrants to the city where there are opportunities to earn cash by pedaling becaks, running street food stalls and working as construction labourers.

Indramayu’s women, too, are part of the exodus to the cities, working the nightspots, massage houses and the entertainment businesses. Those who are not so lucky end up as domestic workers. Either way, they are vulnerable to violence and sexual abuse.

The shuttling between Indramayu and Jakarta is dictated by the rice cropping cycles. The last months of the year, September, October, November and December, referred to as the ‘ber’ period for the last syllable of those months, form the rainy season when rice seedlings are planted.

Four months later, the paddy is ready for harvest – at least that used to be the case until the cycle began to go awry with changing climate and erratic rainfall.

“We can no longer tell when it is going to start raining or when the rice is ready for harvesting, and so we just continue working in the city until we are sure,” says Sarjo. “It costs money and time travelling between Indramayu and Jakarta.”

Over the last few years, rice crops have been failing in Indramayu not only because of dry conditions but also because unseasonal downpours have inundated paddies, affecting the quality and quantity of harvests.

In a 2007 report titled ‘Indonesia and Climate Change: Current Status and Policies,’ the World Bank had warned that the country could become vulnerable to both prolonged droughts and unseasonal downpours.

These conditions, according to the report, could lead to changes in water supply and soil moisture, negatively impacting agriculture. Additionally, the Bank warned of a rise in sea levels and saline ingress into coastal farming zones like Indramayu.

Erratic weather in Indramayu affects jobs in Jakarta, which are often on contract. “Until a few years ago, we could be sure of our schedules and sign up for specified months,” says Sudira, a construction labourer.

With incomes from both rice farming and the seasonal work in the cities uncertain, many of Indramayu’s farmers have fallen into debt and been forced to sell off their smallholdings, weakening their links to the land.

Lisa is unsure what will happen to the family’s rice fields after her parent’s time and they may have to be sold off. “Already, I am spending more time in Jakarta than in Indramayu.”

A study conducted by the Fahmina Institute, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) working on community empowerment, shows that 70 percent of Indramayu’s 11,000 hectares of paddy fields are now owned by about 30 percent of its 125,000 people.

The rest have become landless farmers, struggling to make a living in the cities. Many fall prey to human trafficking networks that have links in wealthy Asian countries like Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and the Middle East.

According to the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, a major international NGO, over the last three years, at least 1,500 girls from Indramayu have ended up in Japan as sex workers.

Supali Kasim, chairman of the Indramayu Art Council, explains that female migration from Indramayu goes back to a prolonged drought in the 1960s. That started a trend of women leaving Indramayu in droves to find work in the cities, depriving the rice farms of extra hands.

“Nowadays, women who cannot find work as entertainers in Japan are ‘exported’ as domestic workers to the Middle Eastern countries,” Kasim said.

Currently, there are 93,000 Indramayu women working overseas, going by figures available with insurance companies of which the women are clients.

A student organisation in Indramayu, ‘Sarinah’, has petitioned the government to intervene and create conditions that would encourage the district’s women avoid having to look for risky situations abroad.

Warisyah, a female farmer who has stayed back in Indramayu, said the government could start by ensuring that rice farming is viable. “They can build irrigation networks so that we don’t have to be so dependent on rainfall,” she said.

So far, the government’s response has been to hasten completion of the controversial 900,000 cu m Jatigede mega dam capable of irrigating Indramayu and adjacent districts. But the dam is also expected to submerge five districts and 39 villages along with 3,000 hectares of rice fields.

In 1988, the World Bank cancelled plans to allocate 37 million dollars to the dam – planning for which began in 1963 – following doubts about its consequences to residents and the environment, but the government has pressed on and the dam is due to be operational by 2014.

By that year more of Indramayu’s men and women are likely to have moved to Jakarta and other cities, many never to return.

(END)

A protest rally against the gender equality bill. Credit: Ormas Islam

By Kafil Yamin
JAKARTA, May 9 2012 (IPS)

The fate of a gender equality bill pending in Indonesia’s parliament and aligned with the United Nations convention on the elimination of all forms discrimination against women (CEDAW) has become uncertain after falling afoul of powerful Islamist groups.

No fewer than six major Islamic organisations have formally objected to the equality bill on the ground that some of its articles go against Islamic values in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation where 80 percent of its 238 million people are followers of the faith.

Organisations opposed to the bill include the influential Indonesian Ulema Council, the Indonesian Consultative Council for Muslim Women Organisations, Aisyiah, Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) and the Islamic Community Party.

Iffah Ainur Rochmah, spokeswoman for HTI, said after an important consultation with parliament’s commission on religion and social affairs held on Mar. 16 that gender equality and policies that encourage women to seek employment could only lead to conflicts within marriages.

According to Rochmah, divorce rates among female teachers were high because “wives with better earnings may feel superior to men leading to conflict.”

The bill goes against the grain of the Islamic Shariah law on inheritance which favours males. It also allows a man or a woman to freely choose a marriage partner regardless of religious persuasion and seeks to legalise homosexual or lesbian marriages.

Many ordinary women now accuse non-government organisations (NGOs) such as the international Women Against Shariah (WAS) of creating confusion in Indonesian society that has set notions about the place of men and women in it.

According to WAS, Shariah law imposes second class status on women and is incompatible with the basic principles of human rights that include equality under the law and the protection of individual freedoms.

“Indonesian women have no problems with men, but there is a tiny group of people which is out to create problems,” said Salwa Amira, a young Muslim woman who is an environmental consultant to a South Korean firm in Jakarta.

Amira said feminist groups and NGOs were promoting the bill. “These are small groups of women who talk a lot,” she said. “Their campaigns attract some women who happen to be going through some crisis.”

“Yes, some Indonesian women are excluded from job positions, but so are men,” said Muhammad Abas, a regional head of the country’s religious affairs department. “Sexual abuse, trafficking and labour conditions are not problems of gender, but of the law,” he added.

Some analysts believe that it is only a matter of time before the bill, originally due to have been passed on Apr. 15, becomes law. There is no official word on when it will be taken up again in parliament.

“The Indonesian government has already ratified CEDAW as government regulation in 1984,” Nining Widaningsih, a well-known commentator on women’s affairs, told IPS. “The bill is meant to amend this regulation, which still leaves a lot of disadvantages for women.”

The 2011-2015 United Nations Population Fund’s programme in Indonesia has plans to address gender-based violence “through improved policies and social protection systems, in alignment with the CEDAW, the International Conference on Population and Development’s programme of action and national legislation.”

Indonesia’s women empowerment and children protection ministry reports that the number of domestic violence cases has increased during the last two years – 105,103 cases in 2010 and 119,107 cases in 2011.

But, what irks many ordinary women is allegedly hyped up data on gender violence released by some NGOs. “It’s amazing how these NGOs can collect data so easily in a large and diverse country like Indonesia. We are a society that keeps domestic affairs out of public view,” Amira said.

Yeni Huriani, a lecturer at the State Islamic University of Bandung, says many NGOs have no credibility. “Let’s be honest, there are some NGOs who attempt to draw public attention by creating controversy and may possibly be trying to attract donor funds,” she said.

Recently an obscure NGO, Keadilan Jender dan Hak Asasi Manusia (Gender Justice and Human Rights), published a survey alleging that students of Islamic boarding schools in Central Java have become the victims of sexual abuse by their teachers.

Although the survey did not cite any responsible teacher, student or manager of any Islamic school, it found its way to the popular ‘Solopos’ tabloid, sparking outrage among Muslim leaders, academics, and students.

“How can such unreliable information be spread among the public? Sadly, this is the kind of information that is used by feminist lobbyists to press their agenda,” Huriani said.

“This is the work of radical feminists who are fed by the West,” Kirana Andilycia, a housewife, commented in the Facebook group ‘No to Gender Equality Bill’. “It has been stamped in their minds that Muslim women are oppressed, beaten, and excluded from public positions, although the facts are different.”

Andilycia said it is not difficult to see that the real aspirations of Indonesian women are not reflected in the bill. “I think freeing women from breastfeeding and demanding 30 percent of (parliament) house seats are a bit much. That is not what Indonesian women want.

“We will stick to Islamic teaching in women’s affairs. God created women different from men. Our duties and responsibilities are different. Our tendencies and inclinations are different. But we are equal as human beings, as God’s creatures.”

Figures from World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report 2010 show that 21 percent of parliamentary legislators and 15 percent of government ministers in Indonesia were women. The same report shows 20 percent of Indonesia’s senior officials and managers are women.

Similarly, the World Bank’s ‘World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development’ says Indonesia has made good progress in improving health outcomes among women and girls, and has also managed to increase women’s access to finance and justice.

Said Coen Hikmah, a Muslim businesswoman: “It is sad to see that while more and more European and American women are turning to Islam as an alternative way of life, we are promoting this bill.”

“The problem in Indonesia is not the absence of gender equality but poor law enforcement. Abusing women, children and human beings in general is a crime,” Hikmah said.