The Tree of Death
By Mandy Haggith

Sumatra, Indonesia, has become familiar as the place worst affected by the devastating tsunami of December 2004. But the devastation caused to this land by Acacia fibre plantations is like a slow tsunami, trashing forest landscapes and displacing and impoverishing the communities who live there.

I spent most of the first four months of this year travelling around the world to witness the impacts of the pulp and paper industry, in order to write a book called Paper Trail. I met many fabulous people and heard inspiring stories but frankly most of what I saw was depressing beyond even my worst expectations. My outrage reached a peak in Riau province on Sumatra, Indonesia when I reached the village of Kuntu.

I have never seen such ecologically ravaged land. The tropical air, normally buzzing with insect sounds and bird calls, was empty, leaving just a nagging, eery quiet as if sound had been bleached out. For miles around in every direction an invading army of trees had been marshalled into a grotesque plantation.

Seven years ago, APRIL, a multi-national pulp and paper company, hired contractors to clear the mixed hardwood community forest that used to supply many of the peoples’ basic livelihood needs: housing, medicine, food and income. This was done without consulting the local community or winning their consent. Then, amid the moonscape wreckage of what was once forest, APRIL’s contractors planted a monoculture of alien trees, Acacia crassicarpa, a native of Australia and one with devastating consequences.

There are five things wrong with these Acacia plantations.

1. The species is extraordinarily fast growing, reaching up to 30 metres tall in 7 years, with trees of 3 metres shading out all other plants less than a year after planting.

2. In order to supply this speed of growth it is one of the most efficient water pumps on the planet, lowering the water table and sucking water courses dry, and causing serious drought problems to local communities.

3. Its falling leaves are herbicidal and its roots exude aleopathic toxins that kill helpful fungi and other plants, resulting in the extermination of other life-forms. No one seems to have done research about the long-term impacts of these soil toxins and whether soils can ever be restored to support normal forest life.

4. It is strongly invasive, with seeds that spread easily. APRIL’s environmental manager admitted to me that in forests of up to 70% canopy cover it will out-compete native vegetation. It is a virulent and dangerous weed of farm fields and a major threat to the remaining fragments of natural forest.

5. Most importantly, APRIL and other companies such as Asia Pulp and Paper (APP) are smothering the landscape in acacia because the Indonesian government is allowing them to do so, without any regard for local communities. Often, the arrival of the bulldozers is the first a community knows that their traditional forest land has been assigned to one of these corporations. They must then begin legal land claim proceedings with the company, fighting for their rights and livelihoods, while the government looks on, apparently indifferent. In some cases the companies have offered communities attractive-looking deals to share in profits of plantations but after their first harvest, communities feel they have not received a fair share of profits.

Pulp tsunami

What will be the long-term legacy of these human and land rights abuses to Riau’s forest communities? How will they recover from the devastation of their forests? I fear the pulp tsunami will be as difficult for Sumatra’s southern provinces to recover from as the natural disaster that wrecked its northern coasts last year.

Both APP and APRIL use the mixed hardwood and acacia pulp to make globally-marketed copy paper. Activists in local communities and cities in Sumatra have developed a strong network, called CAPPA, to try to fight the pulp and paper companies . A vigorous campaign is trying to save the forest of the Kampar peninsula, a vast unique peatland ecosystem. Its destruction will have disastrous impacts not only for local people but also for the global climate, as the huge quantities of carbon stored in the peat will be released if it dries out. Local communities trying to stop the conversion of the Kampar forests are meeting with violence from industry security forces, and recent clashes between APP’s security squads and the Gading Permai community have resulted in injuries, the death of a community member and arrests of activists.

We in the North must recognise that both the markets of APRIL and APP and the impacts of their activities in Sumatra are global issues. We must, as a matter of urgency, join with the campaigners in Riau, Jambi and elsewhere in Indonesia, offer them our financial, organisational and moral support and help them to fight back the advance of Acacia plantations.

Mandy Haggith is a researcher and writer with worldforests in the northwest highlands of Scotland and former editor of Taiga News. She has recently spent 4 months travelling through 15 countries worldwide doing research for a book on paper.

Source: Taiga Rescue - July 2006