Palang Karaya, Kalimantan
flowing green fields under a brilliant sky. The cool wind stirs my hair, under me a motor sings. Just open your eyes struggle to focus on that green. Seem to see bundles of soft grass piled in clumps in the dry stone walls of the alpine pastures. A palm tree isolated projects I hit the tropics, and remember to be sitting on a motorcycle journey through Palangka Raya and Sebangau in Central Kalimantan.
Ciscius front of me driving at a constant pace, swaying gently on the bumpy road. At the edge of the street is a sea of \u200b\u200bferns china in regular waves to the passage of the medium. University Ciscius works' but does not teach formulas, does not take exams. His work 'in the fields and forests, the laboratory in the world.
I rub my eyes lost, but I'm not too surprised at the discrepancy. and 'was a real journey through time, one in which Ciscius guided me. A visit to the near future in Sumatra and Papua: the large agricultural projects development that have brought only misery, fire and environmental devastation. One million hectares, was the slogan. A megalithic project: cleaning up the swamp forests and transform them into the bowl of rice in Indonesia, making the country's largest exporter of corn.
An army of peasants and 'deported from overpopulated areas of Java into the heart of Central Kalimantan's peat swamps. They've given a piece of land razed, and they went away. Only it was not earth, was peat. And beneath the peat and sand. A soil unproductive and subject to terrible fires, like all peatlands drained and dried. Also because 'fire and' the only economical way to make just a little 'fertile soil that is not ', at least for one season. But year after year, fire after fire ends in ashes and peat is drained away. What remains and 'sterile sand.
After a few years of living in poverty, thousands of these farmers have fled away. Some, having no where to go, stand like ghosts in an abandoned land, where even the little 'that can produce cassava lies unsold in the dusty courtyard.
Who won with this project and 'already' left long ago, and now invests in other regions, hoping to repeat the killing. These are the logging companies from Indonesia, Malaysia and China, created by powerful friends of the former dictator Suharto. Have won the rights to remove timber in the areas of "reclamation". No need 'management plans, no rules, but to take away the highest in the more' soon as possible. So tons of meranti and ramin did en route to the Italian and European markets.
"I explained to the government officials that the Mega Rice Prject would not work. He could not work - says Professor Suwido Limin, della'Universita 'of Palangka Raya - could not,' cause the soil and 'poor, and the bottom sand drains what little 'of the nutrients generated by burning peat. But I was not listening. Now repair the damage and' a long and costly process. "
With a small group of people linked to university 'works with the few remaining farmers hostage peat, and attempts to restore the devastated forests. Together they have built dams to block drainage channels, to return to those camps unfortunate water and life. Together they have organized teams of volunteer firefighters to fight fires. And they planted trees that protect the soil from the sun, making it a carrier of the flames. But it 's a slow, expensive, exhausting. and 'a race against time and against the deadly fire that region.
The huge fortunes made from timber barons of today will not be enough to cover a dime of the costs of rehabilitation. and 'was a genuine war of plunder, and as' a war of looting the expansion of plantations of acacia and oil palm on land so full of life as poor in nutrients. But in the folds of the devastation these university peasants have preserved priceless treasures. Ciscius takes me to a forest protected by a joint project with the Hokkaido Institute. A protected forest with the excuse of meteorological studies. An excuse not too bold, since the main research on emissions from tropical peatlands are held in a small hut in the heart of this forest. And it 'here, climbing up a tower, I have my first face to face with an orangutan. Two, in fact, a mother with child. An omen? I do not know, it seems to me that.
This journey in time, this passive consumers, this future devastation and 'now a promise of hope. A team of experts from the University 'of Palangka Raya will' to Sumatra to help in building dams in drainage ditches, and to prevent the repetition of the past. Because there 's always time for choices.
