Gill Shepherd, Yunus Yumte IUCN Poverty and Landscapes
Theme Lead,
with staff from PEMALI, Kaimana and PERDU,
Manokwari
1. Introduction
We believe that there are around 18,000 people[1]
in the area under study (the western and northern areas of Kaimana Kabupaten,
including Buruwai, Kambrau, Teluk Arguni Atas and Teluk Arguni Bawah districts).
The 40-odd settlements range in size between 40 and 100 households, and typical
household size is around 7.5. This would
suggest that there are about 2,400 households in the area.
Almost all villages are located on the rivers
which flow down into the large inlet from the Arafura Sea
which runs northwards past Kaimana town, or on the sea itself. (see map). The
lower reaches of all the rivers are tidal, and the mixture of fresh and salt
water provides a good habitat for mangroves.
Smaller numbers of villages live much higher on these rivers beyond the
tidal area.
All households in all villages rely on the
forest for hunting (a very important protein source given the almost total
absence of domestic animals), for non-timber forest products and for
timber. Some villages fell timber almost
entirely for domestic use (e.g. Kensi), while others also make an income from
felling timber for sale and chain-sawing it into planks (Esania and Guriasa).
Some villages have commercialised the collection of NTFPs (Kensi) much more
than others.
A second key use of the forest is for
agriculture. Plots can only be farmed for 2 years before soil fertility drops
and weeds infest the site, and a new plot (or a rested fallow plot) must be
cleared. The forest restores soil
fertility in the absence of bought fertilisers, and over time natural forest
becomes in part an agroforest as fruit trees and other tree crops such as cocoa
begin to grow up.
Finally mangrove forests, in the areas where
they grow, are an essential support for fish, shell-fish and prawns, since they
provide a nursery area for young fry. The adjacent swampy land offers the right
growing conditions for sago, the staple carbohydrate for the people of rural
Kaimana district.
If the people of the four districts we are
analysing are to be able to continue with their current livelihoods while they
slowly get the chance of more education and become more employable in the local
economy, they need a transition period in which those livelihoods are
protected. We suggest something like a
25 year period of time.
The sections below help us to calculate the amount
of land that the population will need to continue with and improve those
livelihoods. Since this part of the Kabupaten is structured by the existence of
numerous rivers, which must be used for transport in the absence of a road
network, this land needs to be in the form of an adequate buffer which runs
along the river banks and extends far enough inland to provide for all needs.
2. Agriculture
Each household currently owns an average of 4-6
agricultural plots, often quite widely spread apart which consist of
(i)
a
sago area containing 1-2 separate household plots
(ii)
2-3
agricultural plots which have been farmed in the past and are currently resting
to regain their fertility. They are meanwhile playing host to tree crops such
as cocoa, nutmeg, durian, and coconut etc, originally planted at the same time
the plot was cleared and planted with food crops.
(iii)
1
active food plot which will be in use for about 2 years before weeds encroach
and tree crops begin to shade out food.
Each plot is no more than 0.5 ha in
size, so total holdings per household are currently about 2.5 ha.
Because there is a push for more
intensive nutmeg production in Kaimana district, and because some other tree
crops are doing quite well, agricultural plots are slowly becoming more
intensively cultivated agroforestry plots. This means that a plot will not
offer sufficient space for all the household’s food needs the next time it is
cultivated for food, and an additional area may need to be cleared. Over time
the trees will grow too large for any crops to be grown underneath them. The
implications for this in the future are that each household will have to
slightly increase its holding, so after 10 years an average holding of 3 ha may
become the norm, and even more later for at least some farmers.
At the same time the indigenous
population is growing at a rate of 1.67% a year.
Population
growth at 1.67% growth rate
|
Individuals
|
Households
|
Average
ag. land holding
|
Area
need for agriculture
|
Now
|
18,000
|
2,400
|
2.5 ha
|
6,000 ha
|
After 10 years
|
20,220
|
2,890
|
3.25 ha
|
9,390 ha
|
After 20 years
|
23,850
|
3,410
|
4.0 ha
|
13,640 ha
|
After 25 years
|
25,910
|
3,700
|
4.5 ha
|
16,650 ha
|
This means that, to support the indigenous
population over, say, the next 25 years, a total of 16,650 ha for agriculture has
to be set aside, or just over 166 km².
This area has to be composed of a mixture of
types of land. Each household needs about a quarter of its holding to be in
swampy areas, for sago, and about three quarters to consist of slightly higher,
drier land where tree crops and food crops can flourish. Since longboats will
continue to be the main means of transport for local people in this region for
much of the next 30 years, most of the land, as before, needs to be within
walking distance of the rivers.
In Esania and Kensi, agricultural lands were
all within 3 km of the village, but in the case of Guriasa, the nearest
sufficiently fertile agricultural land is 15 km inland. Though the main village
remains close to the river for transport purposes, particularly for the sale of
sawn timber to middle-men, farmers have to go for several days at a time to
their farm-land to cultivate and bring produce back.
3. Community Logging
In Papua, a standard logging
intensity is about 20 m3 or 5 stems, per ha.
Under the previous Papua plan for local
community participation in logging, it was assumed that communities could log
at a rate of 1,000 ha a year (10,000 ha over 10 years). Such a scale is much too large for most communities
to manage themselves – they cannot manage without contracting
in a logging company, because a capital-intensive rather than labour intensive
logging method is essential at this scale. (Minimum fellings of 5,000 stems a
year/ 100 stems a week would be required.)
Such contracts have always been at very disadvantageous rates to local
people.
However, portable sawmills offer an
alternative, and so in fact do chain-saws. According to the PNG community
logging manual[2],
an absolute economic minimum for a portable sawmill is a daily output of 1.2 m³ sawn timber. This would work out at about
36 m³ a month / 432 m³ a year of sawn timber. At a 40-45% recovery rate this is the
equivalent of 960-1080 m³
of felled logs, 240-270 trees (assuming 4 m³ to a tree – the given figure in Papua) or 48-54 ha a
year. In area terms this represents
about 0.5km² a year.
Marthen Kayoi, DisHut Jayapura is of the
opinion that community groups with a portable sawmill could aim at 2500 ha a
year over 10 years - i.e. 250 ha / 2.5 km² a year. At 5
trees a ha, this is the equivalent of 1250 stems - 5000m3 a year. This is 5 times the volume of the minimum set
out in the previous paragraph, and might be a medium term, but not a short term
goal for many communities.
However, in Kaimana district there is a very big experience range in
current methods of logging using chainsaws.
·
Kensi has only 3 men able
to use a chainsaw among 40 households – and only 2 chainsaws. They sell no
timber commercially, but mainly use what they cut for domestic purposes or sell
it to a neighbouring village. Total cut is
only about 150 stems a year. If cutting at a sustainable rate of 5 stems per
ha, they are cutting over 30 ha / 0.3 km² a year.
·
In Esania there are about
17 chainsaws (among 70 households). Perhaps 350 trees are felled for commercial
purposes and 200 for domestic needs – 550 stems. This represents efforts over 110 ha / 1.1 km² per year.
·
In Guriasa all 40
households have chainsaws, and there is a middleman in the village so they have
been felling heavily. They felled about 2,500 trees last year for commercial
purposes and 200 for domestic purposes – a total of 2,700 stems.
If they kept felling density to 5 stems a ha, for sustainability
purposes, this would represent felling over an area of 540 ha / 5.4 km² per year.
Number of trees felled per year at present
2009
|
Annual forest area needed now
2009
|
Likely annual forest area needed by 2015
|
Likely annual forest area needed by 2020
|
Likely annual forest area needed by 2025
|
Total number of km²
Needed
by 2025
|
|
KENSI
|
150
|
0.3
km².
|
1.0
km²
|
2.0
km²
|
2.5
km²
|
27.8
km²
|
ESANIA
|
550
|
1.1
km²
|
2.0
km²
|
2.5
km²
|
3.0
km²
|
38.6
km²
|
GURIASA
|
2,700
|
5.4
km²
|
5.4
km²
|
5.4
km²
|
5.4
km²
|
86.4
km²
|
Total
|
152.8
km²
|
|||||
Village average
|
Say 40 km²
|
|||||
There are 40 villages in the area under study,
with widely varied access to forest suitable for community logging and, as with
these three villages – widely varying logging skills. If we take 40 km² as the average
area needed by a village for community logging till 2025, and assume that some
villages need more than this and some less, we calculate that a total of 1,600
km² will be logged by villagers over the next 15 years.
Location of community logging areas
In all three villages worked in, Esania, Kensi
and Guriasa, the community logging area is still conveniently close to the village.
- In
Kensi (where only logging for domestic purposes is currently taking place,
and where only three men know how to use a chain-saw) it is only 2 km to
the nearest logging areas.
- In
Esania, where about a fifth of individual households own a chainsaw (and where there are also some
marga(clan) -owned chainsaws), it is about
3 km to the community logging areas at the moment.
- In
Guriasa, where all 40 households in the village own a chainsaw, and where
small-scale logging to sell to a middle-man is well-advanced, villagers
try to get as near their logging site as possible by longboat, to
facilitate log-transport. On foot, this area is about 4 km away.
4. Hunting areas
Hunting areas are in general a good deal
further away than community logging areas.
It is also clear from interviews that hunters not only travel inland up
to 12 km, but also range along the rivers in their longboats to remoter areas
good for hunting.
·
Kensi
hunters have to travel on foot and by longboat to get to their hunting areas.
(They live about 5km inland from the river where they keep their longboats).
They travel along the river about 10km in longboats, and from the point were
they go ashore they have to walk inland 4-8 Km.
·
Esania
hunters also travel by longboat along their river to hunting areas on the
opposite bank, where there are no villages. Time/distance was not specified.
·
Guriasa
hunters walk 10-12 km to areas where hunting is possible, or go about 15 km
along the river by longboat.
It is impossible to calculate the sizes of area
needed for hunting, since these are dictated by animal ranges – and the need
for them to have corridors in which to move about safely - rather than human
use. We suggest that a well forested
strip along the river banks, extending back on average perhaps 10-12 km (with
local variation) , would serve both for hunting and for careful low-intensity
community logging and the gathering of NTFPs. Villagers would have an incentive
to log with care and to maintain the ecological values of the forest since those
values would also enable them to go on hunting productively.
5.
NTFP areas
Fairly low value NTFPs such as forest fruits,
wild green vegetables and honey seem to be readily available in both the areas
where agricultural plots lie fallow and in slightly remoter community logging
areas. They could be gathered as before in such a 10-12 km strip.
A few villages (Kensi, for instance in our
village sample) specialise in the collection of a few specific high value NTFPs
which come from very remote areas indeed – probably beyond the borders of
Kaimana Kabupaten, in fact.
- Lawang
trees are found 3 days’ walk from Kensi, and villagers stay in the area a
month while they process the oil.
- Gaharu
(Eaglewood) involves searches over great distances.
- Masohi
trees are sought for their medicinally valuable bark.
We do not suggest that we attempt to factor in
these remote NTFP-gathering areas in our security plan for local people.
6. The nature of forest dependence in Kaimana
In April and May 2009 we conducted short but
intensive activities in our three study villages, Esania, Kensi and Guriasa, to
understand better the nature of their dependence on forests.
The full report will be available next month,
but some brief findings are presented here, in the following three pages. It is
important to be aware in this area that cash income, though of course vital, is
not the only or even the main income. It
is also worth noting that only tiny fractions of the annual income – about 3%
on average – come from non natural-resource-based activities.
In every case presented here, the value of the
non-cash components of people ‘s livelihoods is at least as high as the cash
components and usually higher. And
whether the components are characterised as from forest, from agriculture or
from fishing, all highly dependent on the forest in one way or another.
In Esania,
men earn about 50% of their annual income from cash, and 50% from non-cash
components. Women earn about 45% of
their income in cash and 55% in non-cash items. Assuming an average village
cash income of about $600 a year, it means that an additional $600-700 a year
from the forest in consumptions items.
The picture
is very similar in Guriasa.
In Kensi,
men get only 43% of their income from cash, and 57% from non-cash income, while
women get only 41% of their income from cash and the rest (59%) from
consumption items worth $800-860 in value.
The charts
show that though men often derive more cash from forest activities than women
do, while women have a stronger cash interest in agriculture than men, the
non-cash value of forest for women is high – and sometimes higher than that for
men.
Villages
vary greatly in the kinds of income they make from forests, however. Kensi has
specialised in the gathering of high value non-timber forest products, and
hardly undertakes logging at all. In Guriasa, every single household cuts
timber to sell.
Agriculture
varies, as a component of cash and non-cash incomes, between 35% and 45%
($400-630), depending on the extent to which the forest can supply other
incomes.
Fishing for
both cash and subsistence is extremely important in all three villages (all on
rivers, not the sea). The total value of fishing to annual income averages
about 17%, around $200-250 dollars in cash and non-cash.
7. How much land is needed and how much is available?
The dryland areas (i.e. not islands or the
marine areas which fall within district boundaries) of Buruwai, Kambrau, Teluk
Arguni Atas and Teluk Arguni Bawah total 8,405 km². (See map at end). We suggest that a buffer
area 12km in width be extended all along both banks of the main rivers in these
districts so that the highly forest-based livelihoods of the indigenous people
in these areas can continue, while education and other government assistance
(such as agricultural extension) slowly help them to exit from poverty.
This means that other commercial forest-based
ventures in these areas would be located further inland. Such a buffer would
make almost all of Kambrau a community area, but there would be some land
available for commercial activity in the higher areas of Buruwai, and quite a
lot in Teluk Arguni Atas and Teluk Arguni Bawah.
We see several advantages to such a plan, in
addition to livelihood security and better sources of income for local Papuans.
- The right kind of logging regime can have considerable conservation benefits.
- It may be that such areas will be able in due course to fall within the criteria for carbon payments through REDD.
- Careful
and conservative use of the riverine areas will protect fisheries, which
are a vital source of cash and protein throughout the area, and will also
keep water in springs and wells clean.
[1] On the basis of the three villages we worked
in intensively, we assume an
average of 60 households to a village, and an average household size of 7.5 –
450 people to a settlement. Since there are currently close on 40 villages in
the area which falls within the LLS Kaimana landscape, we can judge the total
population at about 18,000 for 2009.
[2] “Small-Scale
Sawmilling Information Pack” Published by The Papua New Guinea P.O. Box 590West New Britain Province
Tel: 983 5464 Fax: 983 5852 Email: teff@global.net.pg
Website: www.ecoforestry.org.pg 1st Edition - February 2001
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