Stretched along the mountainous interior of East Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo, the Kayan Mentarang National Park lies at the border with Sarawak to the west and Sabah to the north. With its gazetted 1.4 million hectares, it is the largest protected area of rainforest in Borneo and one of the largest in Southeast Asia. A strict nature reserve since 1980, the area was declared a National Park by the Minister of Forestry in October 1996.
The history of the natural landscape of the park is inexorably intertwined with the history of its people. Extensive archaeological remains in the form of stone burials are found in the reserve. They date from about 300 years ago and were used for secondary burial rites.
About 16 000 Dayak people live inside or in close proximity to the Kayan Mentarang National Park. Roughly half of these people — mostly Kenyah but with a small number of Kayan, Saben and Punan — are primarily shifting cultivators. The rest — mostly Lun Dayeh and Lengilu in the north — are mainly wet-rice farmers. The inhabitants of the park and surrounding areas depend on hunting, fishing, and collecting wild plants for their subsistence needs. Trade in forest products such as gallstones (from langurs and porcupines) and aloes wood or gaharu (Aquilaria spp.), as well as revenues from temporary employment in Malaysia, are the principal ways to earn cash to purchase commercial goods, pay for school fees, and cover travel expenses to the lowlands. These activities have allowed them to meet their basic needs and be self-sufficient under stable circumstances. Average income levels of the people in many areas of the National Park are above the average level for the province of East Kalimantan. However, transportation costs are very high. Only the existence of price subsidies has managed to keep prices of essential goods under control. Nevertheless, local prices are still on average three to six times higher than in the lowlands. People in parts of Krayan, Lumbis and Apo Kayan often travel across the border to Malaysia to get sugar, salt and gasoline at lower prices.
Individual claims to land are established by cutting trees or clearing forest. The right to use the land is then passed on to the succeeding generation. Useful trees like fruit trees, illipe nut trees, cinnamon and honey trees are owned by individuals or kin groups. When people decide to move to another community, they transfer rights over fallow land and trees to family members or, in more recent times, sell the rights to other villagers.
Traditional forest areas with protection status or strict management regimes exist and are known among the different ethnic groups as tana ulen, tana ang and tana imud. Tana ulen, for example, is tana (land) which is m/ulen (restricted/prohibited). It is an expanse of primary forest rich in natural resources such as rattan (Calamus spp.), sang leaves (Licuala spp.), hardwood for construction (for example, Dipterocarpus spp., Shorea spp., Quercus spp.), fish and game — all of which have high use value for the local community. In the past, tana ulen functioned as forest reserves managed by the aristocratic families of the community. Nowadays, responsibilities for the management of the forest reserves have been transferred to the customary councils that oversee tana ulen forests on behalf of the entire community and according to customary law (Eghenter 2000a).
All other forest in the village territory may be regarded as community land with open access regulated by social norms. Although the boundaries of the territory are known to the communities, these are not enforced in an exclusive way. The model is akin to what Casimir defines as a ‘social defense boundary’ strategy (1992: 11–13) where there is no strong sense of territoriality and perimeter defence, and neighbouring people can access the area provided that they ask for permission.
The communities living in and around the park are still adat communities, largely regulated by customary law or adat in the conduct of their daily affairs and the management of natural resources in the customary territory or wilayah adat (Eghenter and Sellato 1999, 2003). The customary chief (kepala adat) administers the customary law with the help of the customary council (lembaga adat). All elected officials at village level and prominent leaders of the community sit on a customary council.
In the past, the customary chief acted as coordinator and decision maker on civil and religious matters concerning the groups in the territory under the chief’s jurisdiction (wilayah pemerintahan adat). During the colonial period, the authority and jurisdiction of the chief were recognised, although the Dutch administration occasionally intervened to force changes to the boundaries of the territory or lend legitimacy to a particular group in case of dispute. It was only after independence, and the introduction of a new administrative system based on sub-districts (kecamatan), that the status of wilayah pemerintahan adat changed to become simply wilayah adat (customary territory). The kepala adat became a sub-district headman, working with the sub-district officer and receiving an honorarium from the government.
Notwithstanding the assimilation into government bureaucracy, the role of traditional institutions like lembaga adat is still key to understanding the communities’ views and the way they deliberate on issues of forest and natural resource management. The results of a recent participatory inventory of local institutions, conducted by the Community Empowerment Team in the National Park area of the Kayan Mentarang Project (Lawai 2001), show that the lembaga adat was used more for dealing with local affairs than the government administration. Lembaga adat were believed by local people to be the primary decision makers in issues such as conflicts with logging companies (over 50 per cent of respondents), monitoring and management of natural resources (over 60 per cent of respondents), and development and protection of the National Park (over 50 per cent of respondents).
Customary law — the part of adat concerned with sanctions — regulates access to and exploitation of land and forest products with regard to all forms of land and forest tenure. Adat, however, is neither fixed nor unchanging. As a social mechanism and judicial process, adat is transformed and adapted to new conditions in a constant evolution.
At annual meetings, which usually coincide with the harvest festival, members of the customary councils meet to discuss and update regulations and deliberate on social matters and natural resource management. Modifications to the regulations are often necessary as a result of changing circumstances, the negative effects of intensified harvesting pressure, or other changes in the natural environment and economic conditions.
Customary regulations specify modes of collection of forest products that tend to stress sustainability. Regulations emphasise not collecting more animals or forest products than needed, or harvesting in ways that would hamper their future reproduction or growth (for example, collection of hardwood resin is allowed throughout the entire village territory as long as trees are not cut down). In other instances, regulations may set temporal limits by determining how frequently a certain product may be harvested and for how long. With regard to rattan, for example, collection may occur only every two or three years. The period of collection is also limited to a two to three-week period. Modes of exploitation that employ chemicals and sophisticated technology which may have a damaging effect in the long term are outlawed.[1]
In recent deliberations of some customary councils, the hunting and trapping of animal species perceived as locally scarce was temporarily banned. These included the rhinoceros (a species that has supposedly been extinct in this area of Kalimantan for the last 40 years), clouded leopard, wild cattle (Bos javanicus), and the straw-headed bulbul (Pycnonotus zeylanicus). The latter, a common bird in the area of the National Park only a few years ago, has recently become a coveted item in wildlife trade and can fetch very high prices on regional and national markets.
Customary regulations commonly state that trees at the headwaters of rivers may not be cut. They also recommend that salt springs in the forest, which are common hunting grounds, may not be damaged by cutting the trees around the springs. While the first directive indicates a strategy of watershed protection and preservation of clean water supply for the community, the second one highlights the importance of protecting the habitat as a site of interrelated ecological and economic functions.
Based on these and other elements, it appears that communities are concerned with renewable supplies and the need to secure the future availability of natural resources for both consumption and commercial purposes. The regulations thus reflect what Western (1994: 500–1) calls a utilitarian value of conservation. Moreover, the emphasis on sustainability in the management of natural resources is a function of the current economic priorities based on the exploitation of forest products. However, if priorities change and the communities start to value the resources in their environment less, the interest in sustainable harvesting may cease.
Forest products with high use and market value, such as rattan, construction timber, fish, gaharu and other minor forest products, are commonly regulated but not to the same degree. For example, rattan — a diverse group of climbing palms — is a wild resource that is sometimes managed in locations where the resource is particularly abundant. Collection may be done only on a collective basis and upon deliberation of the community council. The harvesting is also limited to the older stems of the clump cut at a certain height from the ground, so that the rattan can grow back. On the other hand, gaharu — the resinous and fragrant heartwood produced by a fungus in trees of the Aquilaria genus — appears to be only slightly regulated. It is mandatory for gaharu collectors to report and pay a fee to the community council before going on a forest expedition, but collection may be done on an individual basis and at any time. Collectors are also expected to cut only infected trees.
It can be argued that differences reflect the products’ natural characteristics and distinct population dynamics (Jessup and Peluso 1986), as well as local histories of control and exploitation. On the one hand, rattan tends to concentrate in certain forest areas and becomes a semi-managed resource under traditional tenure. Rattan is a rather predictable resource in terms of location and yield. More rules are therefore necessary to prevent over-exploitation of the resource and guarantee its sustainable use. On the other hand, gaharu trees are dispersed fairly evenly and at low densities over the territory. Regeneration from seeds takes a very long time, and trees can be found in a variety of habitats. Moreover, only one out of 30 trees may be infected. Consequently, gaharu is highly unpredictable, the output of collection activities is more uncertain, and the risk of depletion is therefore relatively low.
The history of exploitation of the two resources is also very different. Rattan is a forest resource that has been consistently used at the local level and commercially exploited on occasions (between 1910 and the 1960s, and again in the 1980s) depending on favourable market prices. By contrast, the high commercial value of gaharu and its large-scale exploitation are a relatively recent phenomenon (since the early 1990s) in the communities of the interior of Indonesian Borneo, and there is also no local use of gaharu.