Our trip up the Kampar River began ominously enough.
“When we stop, don’t get out of the car,” said Indra, our translator. “Remain inside.”
We left our Pekanbaru hotel at 5:30 am, driving an hour and a half to this riverside spot, where we were now parked. The early morning sun began to emerge in the east over the tops of far off trees. We waited, behind tinted SUV windows, for the speedboats to arrive. Within minutes two slim, wooden vessels – little more than rowboats with steering wheels and outboard motors – coasted-up quietly to the river’s edge. We quickly jumped out from the vehicles, descended down an embankment, and got in the delicate boats. Our destination: the forest concessions four hours up river, where international paper conglomerates have been clearing the carbon-rich peat lands of the Kampar Peninsula. As quickly as we had gotten into the boats, we were off – heavy blue tarps draped overhead and dropped down over the sides in order to conceal our identities.
I wondered, though, if these precautions – the peering-in-the-rearview-mirror feeling of our drive and, now, the heavy tarps – were unwarranted paranoia on the part of my NGO handlers or were necessary security measures as we headed into an area of intense land dispute.
I had forgotten about this, when, nearly eight hours later, four of us disembarked from our boat and prepared to enter a forest concession, where logging activities were currently underway. ’Nando, our guide and a local forest defender, was nervous. So nervous, in fact, that it took several hours, the promise of legal assistance should he be arrested, and the explicit approval from the village elder to convince him that the risks were worth taking. And I could tell he still wasn’t fully convinced. Move quickly and quietly were his instructions during our approach.
The third person in our group – a young researcher with an international NGO – was also nervous. Several foreign journalists had been detained and deported within the past several months when they were found by company security snooping around this area trying to see what we were now venturing to find. A late 2009 Greenpeace action here had further escalated tensions. The area is “too hot”; the area is “very tense” were the oft-repeated descriptions as we negotiated whether or not to go.
Our morning security measures may not have been warranted, but ’Nando’s anxiety and the recent history of arrests made this trek into the woods a high stakes affair – maybe not for me, the British journalist that was also with us, or the NGOer, but most definitely for ’Nando.
The Brit was recovering from ankle surgery that repaired a ruptured tendon – tennis is a high stakes affair as well. Thus, even before leaving the boat, we had already broken one of ’Nando’s codes. At least we could remain quiet.
We strode – three of strode, actually, the Brit limped – through a plot of rubber trees, small coconut shell bowls at their base captured the milky white puss that oozed from cuts in the trunks. Further along the foliage became thick and bright green. More jungle-like, I thought. I was last in line, behind the Brit, thinking foolishly that somehow I could push the pace of the gimp. ’Nando and the NGOer raced ahead; the Brit and I fell behind. We tumbled over felled trees – the remnants from an earlier clear-cut – and pushed through dense brush, mostly heavy ferns and bushes. The sun, now descending in the west, was large and burning. Sweat poured down my face and bled through my shirt. I hate the feeling of cotton sticking to my skin.
After twenty minutes of stumbling, climbing, and occasionally walking, we emerged from the thick brush and saw before us a line of stacked logs – hundreds of them, large and cut into uniform lengths – that stretched the length of several football fields to the right. The ground below us: an undulating surface that was like a stormy sea of muddy earth, broken tree limbs, stumps, and scattered bark. Moving beyond the log stacks, a landscape – unlike anything I have seen other than in pictures – lay before us. I struggled silently to myself to find words that could describe what I was seeing. The western front during World War One. Hiroshima. A Midwestern town after a tornado. None seemed to fit as I tripped and stumbled through the wasteland.
So this is a clear-cut, I thought; how will I describe it?
The sound of chainsaws buzzed from the opposite side of the clear-cut – the opposite side, meaning, a kilometer, maybe more, across the open expanse, where once stood tall rainforest trees. I saw a single, yellow excavator working in the distance. Suddenly, ‘Nando raced toward the edge of the still standing forest and gestured for me to follow. The NGOer was recording a stand-up interview with the Brit. ’Nando heard voices. So did I. On our way in we also heard the sound of a motorboat that wasn’t ours. Were we being followed? Were we moments away from being found?
After several minutes, ’Nando and I returned to the clearing. I thought, if we’re caught, at least I should record what I see. Maybe, somehow, I would be able to keep my footage and my notes. I shot some video, and talked out loud with the others, needing to confirm the dimensions, number of logs, colors, and other characteristics of what lay before us. Nothing we confirmed – at least for me – seemed to capture very well the destruction. We agreed that there were roughly 2000 hectares of cleared forest and that it was a primary forest – that is, consisting of old-grown trees. We agreed that it looked “post-apocalyptic.”
We raced back – ’Nando and the NGOer raced, actually, the Brit limped – more heavily now, and I followed. The Brit and I talked about what we had seen and were told by ‘Nando, via the NGOer, to keep quiet. We had now broken both codes.
We briefly visited the owner of the rubber trees and I fell in the river. Then we got in our boat and returned to the safety of the open waters of the Kampar.
Speeding away, the NGOer and ’Nando looked relieved and the Brit appeared satisfied that he had gotten his story. I stared into the muddy waters of the Kampar River, imagining that, below the rippled brown surface, there was a deep void, a magical reservoir that stored the natural history and local knowledge of these forests, a limitless locker of memory that would remain even if all the trees were gone.
Another day. Another day of travel. An hour flight from Jakarta to Pekanbaru, Riau.
One person in the group I’m traveling with reckons that this plane – a Lion Air Boeing something or other – has twenty additional rows than an identical plane owned by a European or American company. Indeed, the crush of people boarding the plane has the feel of a crowded dance floor, or a run on a fire exit at a heavy metal show in Jersey.
I’m in seat 37E – middle seat! second to last row! Lucky me. I board from the front of the plane and, once I’ve made my way to a row in the low-30s, realize that passengers are also boarding from the rear. A tighter than normal plane now has two streams of traffic: one moving from front to back, another from back to front. Several stewardesses busily cramming baggage into the overhead bins add a further complicating factor to these opposing streams of traffic. I’m in the second to last row. Press. Press. Press pass other passengers and crawl/fall into my seat. My knees touch the seat in front of me. And I’m not the least bit tall.
But you know that.
A gentle ascent out of Jakarta and a cruise through billowing equatorial cloud patterns. So soft even looking at them makes my eyes heavy. A patch of bumps and the seat belt sign illuminates. I think this is called “chop” in pilot parlance. We begin our descent into Pekanbaru before I’ve read a dozen pages in my book.
Just a few hundred feet above the ground and details of the landscape emerge.
“See those fires,” Lafcadio says, “That’s clearing and burning.” I look up from my book.
Sure enough, craning my neck toward the window, leaning over the sleeping passenger in the window seat, I see a small fire on the edge of an area of vegetation – a thin, grey stream of smoke stretching up from the forest floor, dissipating as it floats skyward.
I stretch closer toward the window, looking farther out toward the horizon. More small fires.
Then another fire. And then another.
“These are the green deserts,” Lafcadio says. Hardly deserts but surely not what I would consider a tropical rainforest.
Another fire.
Then a patch of four fires, ahead. Two more small fires burn between the cluster of four in the distance and the wing of the airplane.
As the landscape comes into focus, I see plot upon plot – as far as I can see – of palm oil plantations. Tropical rainforest cleared of trees and replaced by ordered rows of oil palm trees. This is the process that lies behind your bar of soap, your bowl of cereal, or the novelty and good intention of possessing a bio-fueled automobile. From above the trees appear to be green stars, rows and columns crisscrossing the landscape. Plots marked off from adjacent plots by clearly distinct borders. Are they paths, irrigation canals? It’s like flying over the Midwest and seeing those circles of irrigated agriculture land except here they are square concessions, seeming lush at first glance rather than flat. Here it looks vastly more brutal, though. The burning. The absence of trees we’re its obvious there were thousands, tens-of-thousands. Millions? A scared and charred landscape. The mark of human intervention – order rows of monocrop – where there must have been great diversity of vegetation.
More small fires. Some clustered together. Sometimes a single line of grey smoke twisting toward the sky.
“Wait until we get into the Kampar Peninsula,” says Lafcadio, smiling. “This is nothing.”
The ordered rows and columns of green stars end and are replaced by only slightly less ordered rows of red-roofed structures.
We land and I disembark from the airplane, from the back. I learned my lesson the first time. No more crush through thirty rows of passengers. I lilt down a set of stairs, step onto the tarmac – God I love disembarking onto the tarmac! – and into a gust of hot, humid air of a tropical evening. The sun one-quarter obscured as it sets behind a line of tall trees.
Above the entrance to the airport terminal is a typical sign welcoming us to Pekanbaru.
It might as well say: Welcome to Pekanbaru, Riau. Welcome to ground zero of Indonesian deforestation.
I hate flying, especially for twenty hours, as is the case when travelling by plane from New York City to Jakarta. Not only did I have to contend with my usual sweaty palms and stiff knees but also a few bumps and twists while traveling through some storm clouds that were coasting over the South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand. The rain falling from these same clouds has been responsible for over 130 deaths in southern China. As the plane descended into Jakarta, though, these deadly forms seemed more auspicious than ominous – the setting sun shot bright pink and orange hues through the thunderclouds, transforming their dark grays and near blacks into an explosion of color.
Emerging from the airport, I passed by a crowd of taxi drivers seemingly uninterested in seizing fares from arriving passengers like myself. All eyes were on a television. It’s the World Cup after all. Everything else can wait.
I haven’t been to Asia before but there’s a lot that’s already familiar to me here. Over 80% of Indonesia’s population is Muslim, making it the country with the largest Muslim population in the world. Having travelled throughout the Middle East over the past several years, the sounds of Koranic recitations drifting from cabs or the site of dozens of children lingering in front of a madrasah ibtada’iyyah in the afternoon remind me of previous reporting trips to Iraq, the West Bank, and Syria. This time, though, I’m not seeking out war, occupation, or refugees, but trees.
It might come as a surprise but Indonesia is the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, the heat trapping particles that are causing global warming. Indonesia’s big problem isn’t coal-fired power plants or the large number of automobiles chocking its streets (although those are certainly contributors), like in the U.S. or China. It’s deforestation. Over 80% of Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emissions are caused by the clearing of its vast swaths of forests or the draining of its peatlands. Timber. Paper pulp. Palm oil. It’s a classic resource curse. Forests are destroyed, habitats wiped-out, indigenous communities destroyed. And the money made from this destruction flows out of the country, enriching a small group of government officials on its way to financial capitals around the world. And it also pumps a lot of carbon into the atmosphere.
But there’s a newfangled problem in Indonesia. Banks, such as Merrill Lynch, are investing in projects that are meant to generate carbon credits, which are traded like any other speculative commodity. That’s right: rather than cutting down the trees for profit, banks are speculating on the carbon they store when they are not cut down. Governments like Norway are funding projects, too. It’s a type of government green-washing: Norway takes a bit of money from its oil and natural gas industries, gives it Indonesia to preserve forests, and in the process becomes the state equivalent of Virgin Air – pumping massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere by way of fossil fuels but “offsetting” the damage, or at least managing how the public views them.
There’s promise in these schemes though. Not the market-based, Merrill Lynch type, but rather the state-funded model. If Norway and other rich countries can provide funding to the Indonesia government to halt deforestation then there could be a huge decline in global greenhouse gas emissions. Tackling fossil fuel extraction will remain a necessity but forcing rich countries to pony-up money to keep forests standing might be a workable model. Of course it continues to commodify trees. And there are those here who are opposed to continuing that practice.
Over the next week and a half I’ll be taking a look at how these schemes work – and what forest communities have to say about them.
My conversation with Tina Gerhardt about the climate justice movement, published by Where We Are Now.
Robert S. Eshelman: We both just returned from the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, which took place just outside of Cochabamba, Bolivia. Explain what took place there and describe what your impressions of the conference were.
Tina Gerhardt: The World People’s Conference on Climate Change in Bolivia provided a stark contrast to the December climate talks in Copenhagen. In his opening address, Bolivian President Evo Morales, who convened the conference in light of the failed Copenhagen talks, criticized the Copenhagen Accord. First, it was a backroom deal drawn up by five countries – the U.S., Brazil, China, India, and South Africa – in a nondemocratic manner, in that it ignored the progress of the UN’s two working groups – the AWG –KP and the AWG-LCA – and it ignored a basic UN tenet of transparency in protocol drafting. Second, by forcing other UNFCCC delegates to sign off on it last minute, these five countries trammeled on another UN tenet: consensus in decision-making. Morales’ comments echoed the critiques of numerous nation groups – such as the G77, the Alliance of Small Island States and the Least Developed Countries – expressed at the UNFCCC meeting in Bonn in early April.
To counter this undemocratic process, Morales suggested four goals for the People’s World Conference: 1. reparations from developed nations to developing nations, to assist them with adaptations to climate change; 2. the creation of an International Climate Justice Tribunal, to prosecute crimes against the environment; 3. the development and transfer of technology from industrialized nations to industrializing nations; and 4. a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. Morales also called for borders to be opened to climate refugees.
Morales convened the Bolivian summit to establish a balance of power by bringing together governmental representatives, indigenous people, NGOs and climate justice groups from around the world. In this way, the Bolivian summit aimed for a completely different decision-making structure – one that is bottom up, that includes civil society, that includes indigenous peoples from Bolivia and around Latin America, that basically takes all of their voices into account. There were 17 working groups and panels, which drafted in a final declaration that the Bolivia has already submitted to the UNFCCC for discussion at the UNFCCC’s COP 16 talks in Cancún at the end of the year.
The People World’s Conference provided the climate justice movement a vital opportunity to meet and reevaluate organizing priorities and strategies prior to the COP 16 in Cancún. Furthemore, the Bolivian summit marked a vital shift in the configuration of the climate justice movement, as nation-states, NGOs and climate justice activists work together to address the ticking time bomb that is climate change.
And throughout the conference, a fundamental critique of capitalism as the source of climate change was pervasive, from Morales’s opening speech to the final declaration. Morales underscored the incompatability of capitalism, predicated on the need for ever-increasing growth to ensure continued returns on profit, and environmental sustainability. It echoes the climate justice movement’s call in Copenhagen for “System Change not Climate Change.”
RSE: I expected the conference to be a precursor to – a type of preparatory meeting for – Cancún but, now that it’s over, I think the conference served a much more basic function of bringing together disparate political networks and establishing a framework for strategizing and communication. In order to block implementation of the Copenhagen Accord and to check the power of rich nations, there’s going to have to be a tremendous upsurge of oppositional power. The Bolivian conference created a forum for building that power. It was an incubator of sorts.
Bolivia is putting forth this very long-term set of demands – the establishment of a climate justice court, a call for an international referendum on climate change, passage of a UN declaration on the Rights to Mother Earth, and distribution of climate reparations. All of these demands are really far from the core discussions occurring within the UNFCCC process, which is not to say that they are not demands we shouldn’t get behind. But I think in order to push those demands a lot more organizing has to be done to connect social movements around the world and build cooperation between these movements and nation states like Bolivia that are not neo-liberal ones but have direct connections with political movements. So I think the benefit of the Cochabamba conference was to establish an imagination and establish a set of principles upon which social movements may be able to organize around – in conjunction with several states like Bolivia – and begin to build relationships that can push these demands.
I agree though that one of the more interesting things about the conference was this relationship between nation states and social movements. There’s a vexed relationship here. And in Cochabamba we saw, in some ways, how bringing social movements on board with their program benefits nation states, such as Bolivia. Bolivia will go to Cancun with the final conference declaration and say that we had 35000 people supporting our platform and I think that that will give them a certain amount more power in negotiations just as, conversely, social movements having the backing of certain nation-states are benefitted by the conference. This type of relationship gives both nation states and social movements some added cache yet their interests are not always aligned.
Also, looking back to Copenhagen and in light of Cochabamba, I think there’s a crucial question. During Copenhagen the demand coming from the climate justice movement was for governments to “sign a deal.” But I think that that was a shortsighted demand because it never took up the details of what that deal might entail – say the establishment of billion dollar carbon markets or continuing World Bank-funded deforestation under the guise of preserving forests. Maybe now, given the tenor of international negotiations, the demand should be “no deal” and push forward with Bolivia’s platform.
But you were just in Bonn for the last UNFCCC talks and maybe you’ve got some insights on whether or not a deal that adequately addresses the need for greenhouse gas emissions reductions is really possible.
TG: You bring up a very valid point. As I mentioned, the UNFCCC process is predicated upon two key principles – transparency in protocol drafting and consensus in decision-making. Additionally, there are two working groups that meet regularly to extend the Kyoto Protocol. These two working groups – not some self-appointed nations – provide draft texts that go before the full UNFCCC membership for approval.
A backroom deal – like the Copenhagen Accord – ignores the progress of by these two working groups and up-ends the entire consensus-based process. When I was in Bonn in April, which was the first UNFCCC meeting since Copenhagen, most nations and nation groups critiqued the way things went down in Copenhagen. In essence what you had is a majority of the world’s nations expressing displeasure at the way the U.S. and several developing nations – China, Brazil, India, and South Africa – crafted a last-minute deal that they attempted to push through the UNFCCC process.
While these nations critiqued the backroom deal for its nondemocratic manner, reaffirming the UN tenets of transparency and consensus, they also reaffirmed their commitment to the Kyoto Protocol and to Bali Action Plan, which established the two working groups.
Coming out of Bonn, I think two issues were key: 1. A reaffirmation of the UNFCCC process; and 2. A reaffirmation of which text will serve as the basis for Cancún, not the nonlegally binding Copenhagen Accord but the Kyoto Protocol.
Additionally, what I continued to see in Bonn was the U.S. deputy climate negotiator John Pershing really tried to throw a wrench into the process. For example, he called the UN process into question and thereby derailed the talks. Then, 45 minutes later, he complained about how delays are indicative of how the UN process does not work. These kinds of moves by the U.S. are intended to impede and derail the UN process. But they are actually indicative not of the UN’s failings but of the U.S.’s intention to block the UN process. Having said that, even without the U.S.’s antics, I question whether the UNFCCC process is the most effective way to address climate change.
In Bolivia, the climate justice movements had the opportunity to meet with nations that are keen to address climate change. And this really could provide the seeds for future action toward climate justice, which could really add up to significant efforts to confront the dire and increasing realities of climate change.
But as Bolivian envoy Solon put it in Bonn: “we’re not trying to save a summit. We’re trying to save humanity.”
RSE: Much of this reminds me of the situation during World Trade Organization protests in Cancun in 2003. The WTO was also consensus-based. But, as we know from consensus-based decision-making processes within leftist organizing, not every party within a consensus process necessarily has an equal voice. There are all sorts of dynamics that grant one person’s – or one nation’s – greater or lesser power than another nation. Just as with international trade negotiations, the small island nation of Tuvalu does not have the same amount of power in climate negotiations as, say, the U.S., despite the fact that Tuvalu will soon be underwater due to rising sea levels. The U.S. is a leading geo-political player and wields any number of coercive means to bully and “convince” nations into agreement and Tuvalu – or perhaps more relevantly Bolivia – does not. And let’s be honest: one of the most outspoken critics of the U.S. during Copenhagen was from the Sudan – a country that may give us pause when considering whether or not to align ourselves behind them. Not to mention, when we discuss climate aid, do we really want to advocate for the U.S., the E.U., or any other rich nation of the world to funnel aid to poor nation-states that continue to be kleptocratic? You know, the ones that skim international aid from poverty programs? There are many NGOs putting forth demands about climate aid without considering the mechanisms of how climate aid would be distributed.
So I agree there are many problems with pushing for a deal on the international level. Hoping and organizing for a silver-bullet solution within the UNFCCC process that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and provide climate aid to poor nations overlooks the strategic difficulties in pressuring rich nations, through the UNFCCC process, and in the ways that governments of poor nations don’t necessarily work in the interests of the people living within a country’s borders.
If we want to continue to organize internationally – and I think its important to do so – perhaps the climate justice movement could pressure leaders of the G20 nations to end fossil fuel subsidies that add up to billions of dollars annually. Obama promised last year to work toward ending these subsidies. How about organizing around that?
Regardless of the demands, though, there’s clearly a need for some movement building and Cochabamba went a good deal of the way in building that sense of power. We’ll see how different the climate justice movement looks though in Cancun at the end of this year.
Tina Gerhardt is an academic and independent journalist. Her articles have appeared In These Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as on Alternet.org, Grist.org, The Nation.com and Salon.Com. She has covered the UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December and in Bonn in April. She was a correspondent for Alternet.org and Grist.org at People World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in April. Robert S. Eshelman is an independent journalist. His articles have appeared in The Nation, Abu Dhabi’s The National, In These Times as well as on HuffingtonPost.com and TomDispatch.com. He was a correspondent for The Nation at the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen this past December and at the Bolivian government-sponsored People’s World Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in April. His website is http://robertseshelman.com.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-s-eshelman/world-peoples-conference_b_543211.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-s-eshelman/bolivian-government-outli_b_545411.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-s-eshelman/from-cochabamba-to-cancun_b_557293.html
