There is a variety of different causes for deforestation. However, the majority of the work is usually done by individuals – often for subsistence farming, though often the land is only fertile for a short period of time, requiring more rainforest to be cut down.
However, if people on the ground know that cutting down the rainforest will make life worse, then they will not do it.
Efron Simanjuntak (click here to see a photo in a new window) was once a successful logger (illegally) in Sumatra. In 2017 he was caught, and in 2018 he was imprisoned for 2 years. In these two years, he had a lot of time to think, and realized the damage that he was doing.
Much of the villages income came from harvesting frankincense, but in order for the tree to produce its resin (which is the actual part to sell) it needs shade, so by logging, he was actively damaging his villages own damage. In Batak Toba tradition, the family heritage (while he was not born here, it is where his fathers family lived out their lives) is essential to preserve and pass down, and cutting the forest down is not in line with this.
When he was released, he set out to replant the forest, and at the current time he has reforested an area with 1000 trees many of these frankincense and pine, which produce the resin, which gives his village an income.
On travelling out, on one day, in order to tap a new tree for resin, he found a sign reading that “Protected Forest Area – Do Not Disturb, State Property” – given that he could trace his routes back 10 generations in the clan, he could not accept the government just swiping the land. A bigger worry, is that having made it state property, it is often handed over to miners or a plantation, and the forest is lost (this has happened all over Sumatra).
The village started planting far more trees, as a joint effort, to show that it is a community forest – this is not a new thing, with generation after generation helping end poverty, without cutting down the forest. A huge area of 15879 hectares (around 66 square miles) was eventually decreed as state forest, with around 2 miles of this ancestral forest for this village in question
Unfortunately, tapping trees did not bring in enough money to live on, so he started growing a variety of crops, as well as medicinal plants. When his strength waned, is son took over.
Is this a model which could be replicated? he did grow crops, but all things like coffee, which needed shade to grow – so could grow in the shadow of the forest.
They have repeatedly been offered money by a local eucalyptus plantation, but prefer to continue to eek out a living in the forest.
How can we make this a common story? Generally, wealthy people who do deforestation, get local people to cut down the forest for them – if we can change the financial situation, there will be no incentive to cut any trees down in the first place