Burning mangrove trees for a living: ‘I’d quit tomorrow if I could’

Nurhadi looking at the fire in a furnace

Indonesia has more mangrove trees than any other country but there’s growing concern about the “dangerous” rate they are being cut down, turned into charcoal and exported to places such as Europe, China and Japan. People involved in the work know the trees are important for the environment and would like to quit but they see no other way to survive.

Inside a wooden hut, near his house on the island of Borneo, Nurhadi keeps two furnaces burning all year round. The 68-year-old employs at least a dozen people.

Four men cut up wood collected from mangrove trees, while another throws it into a furnace made from earth and stones. Once burned, the wood is cooled and packaged, ready to be sold.

Mangrove wood is very hard and dense but not very durable, which makes it ideal for charcoal production and particularly good for barbeques. But it is a resource-intensive process with little return.

Sixteen tonnes of raw material only produces three tonnes of charcoal. “If I produce less than three tonnes, it’s a loss,” Nurhadi says. Once costs are taken into account, he estimates he only makes a profit of about $1,250 (£1,000) per year.

“There’s no money in cutting down mangroves. Nobody gets rich from charcoal furnaces. We do this to have food on our plate,” he explains.

A conversation he once had with a government official sums up his predicament: “He asked me: ‘Are you ready to leave the charcoal business?’ I answered: ‘If you can provide farming land or other opportunities, I’d quit tomorrow.'”

Almost half of the 9,000 people in Nurhadi’s village, Batu Ampar, rely on mangrove charcoal for a living, a tradition dating back to the 1940s. Some families like Nurhadi’s have been doing this for generations – his father and grandfather owned the same furnaces, so he says this is the only work he knows.

Indonesia is home to 20% of the world’s mangroves, and Nurhadi’s area, the Kuba Raya Regency has the biggest mangrove forest in the western part of Indonesian Borneo.

But the number of furnaces is increasing – in 2000 there were 90 but today there are at least 490 – and that is speeding up deforestation.

BBC graphic showing deforestation in the region from 2006 to 2020

Arsyad Al Amin, who is involved in a local research project, predicts that the Batu Ampar mangrove forest will only last for another 74 years if things carry on as they are. “It will all be gone in 2096,” the researcher from the Bogor Agricultural Institute says.

Thick, dense forest areas of mangrove canopy have decreased so much that bare patches can now be seen from planes overhead.

“If there is no effort to accelerate rehabilitation, this is dangerous. We desperately need intervention,” he warns.

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Mangrove forests:

  • Tackle climate change, by reducing carbon in the atmosphere – some do this up to 10 times better than forests on land
  • Protect people from coastal erosion, storm surges and tsunamis
  • Provide nurseries for tropical fish
  • Shield coral reefs from storms and heat waves
  • Boost economies of many developing countries

Source: The Ocean Agency

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Deep in the forest, an hour north of Batu Ampar village by boat, dozens of mangrove trees have been cut down. The people living along the river breathe in air mingled with the smoke coming from rows of furnaces.

There are areas in this forest where it is legal to take wood, but as the number of furnaces grows, it gets harder to source raw materials and loggers venture further into the protected areas.

Among the sound of monkey chatter and birdsong is the unmistakable sound of a chainsaw revving up.

We speak to some men who are cutting down an average-sized mangrove tree. “We would not cut down the big trees,” says one lumberjack who refuses to reveal his name because he is operating in a protected forest. He’s wearing minimal safety gear. “A logger died from being crushed by wood when cutting,” he says. “This is a high risk job, but my children need to eat.”

Man chops down tree with chainsaw

The local environment and forestry agency claims it’s been hard to enforce the regulations on illegal logging.

“There are too many home furnaces and a large number of locals involved in this activity,” spokesman Adi Yani says.

He also thinks that if they impose the rules strictly “it has the potential to cause social unrest”.

“Repressive law enforcement” was carried out a few years ago against loggers and furnace owners in Batu Ampar village, says an official with the local government, Herbimo Utoyo. But, he adds, “it never reached court because it is viewed as a tradition, a culture”.

He also says the government has offered to train people how to farm honey from the forest and produce palm sugar to try to move them away from the charcoal industry, but he admits: “It hasn’t been successful yet. It’s hard to break something that has been done from generation to generation.”

Bare patch of forest seen from overhead

But one man who quit the charcoal business says the government needs to do more. “We feel like we were left alone without the government’s support. If they do have programmes, maybe they only came to the head of the village. No-one came to us,” 39-year-old Suheri says.

Ten years ago, he used to run two furnaces but decided to stop after a peatland fire smothered his village in smoke. “I thought that if the fire happened in our mangrove forest, we’d be devastated,” he explains.

Before the pandemic, he tried farming mud crab in mangrove aquaculture, but the venture failed. “I suffered a huge loss, and I am in debt because of it,” he says. Now he collects honey from the forest’s bees instead.

Suheri uses his boat to navigate the waterways and can spend hours looking for beehives that are ready to be harvested.

When he spots one, he puts on a homemade hat with a veil, climbs up the tree and uses smoke from burned nipah leaves to distract the bees. “There are many risks with collecting honey – mud, wild animals, snakes and crocodiles. The least of the risks is getting stung by the bees,” he says with a little laugh.

Suheri on a boat

If he is lucky, Suheri can collect up to five bottles of honey in a day, with one bottle of raw, wild forest honey selling for $10 (£8). It’s a very good price but he says he can’t count on just honey for a living because “the harvesting season is uncertain”.

When he’s not in the forest looking for honey, Suheri breeds croaker fish but the eggs are expensive and there is a high chance they will die.

Even thought it’s not easy, he says he is determined to find something other than the furnaces to make money, in the hope it inspires others in his village to stop cutting down mangrove trees to make charcoal.

“I have to do better… If I want people to change, I have to succeed!” he exclaims.

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Data protection bill: Will India’s hard-won information law get weaker?

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A crucial new law that aims to protect the personal data of Indians will dilute another landmark legislation that brought much-needed transparency into government functioning, experts say.

Until last week, India did not have a law to regulate how the personal information of individuals is collected, stored and processed. The Digital Personal Data Protection Bill, which was passed in parliament, fulfils that long-standing demand.

But privacy experts have raised serious concerns, pointing out that the law does not protect citizens from surveillance and that it gives excessive power to the federal government in terms of application.

One major criticism is the change the legislation makes to the landmark right to information (RTI) law, which allows people to access data from the government. Since it was passed in 2005 – after years of campaigning – millions of Indians have used the RTI law to ask questions and demand information from government departments and officials.

But the new legislation changes a provision of the RTI law to exempt “personal information” from being disclosed – this will affect a majority of the information currently sought under it.

“Everything that people have been using the RTI law for – to hold governments accountable, to fight corruption [etc.] – has somewhere an element of personal information,” says Anjali Bhardwaj, co-convenor of the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information, which was critical in getting the RTI law passed in 2005.

Madan Lokur, a former Supreme Court judge, says that the amendment “will emasculate the RTI to a large extent”.

While the application of the RTI law was never perfect – information was often denied on flimsy grounds and there have been several attempts by successive governments to dilute it – activists fear the latest change will make answers almost impossible to access.

What does the RTI law say?

The RTI law covers a wide ambit of organisations, including all departments formed under the Constitution or any government law or notification. Even organisations that are substantially financed by any government, even indirectly, are covered.

The RTI Act’s default position is that all information should be made available to citizens when requested, barring a few exceptions such as national security.

Protestors against the amendments to the Right to Information Act proposed by the government at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi in July 2019

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One of the clauses, which is under contention, says that if the information is of a personal nature and does not relate to any “public activity” or would cause an “unwarranted invasion” of an individual’s privacy, then the officer can deny the request – unless they find that it should be made available in “larger public interest”.

A 2012 committee on privacy law headed by Justice AP Shah had recommended that disclosures under the RTI Act should not constitute an infringement of privacy.

What will the new law change?

The new data protection law overrides this clause. It merely says that any information that “relates to personal information” can be denied – which could include any answer that identifies an individual.

“Earlier there was a filter that personal information should not have a relationship with any public activity or unwarranted invasion of privacy,” says Shailesh Gandhi, a former Central Information Commissioner who was responsible for deciding on complaints under the RTI Act.

Mr Gandhi says that to ensure that the law was easily implemented, it also spelt out that if information cannot be denied to a legislature, it should not be denied to an individual as well.

But now there is a blanket ban on personal information, which Mr Gandhi says is problematic, as “you could relate any information to a person one way or the other”.

The data protection law also says that non-compliance with it could attract hefty monetary fines, going up to 2.5bn rupees ($30.1m; £23.7m). This can discourage officers from disclosing answers which could be related to personal information.

“Even if they impose a [lower fine], which officer would take the risk [of disclosing personal information in public interest]?” Mr Gandhi asks.

Federal minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has said in an interview that the change in the law takes into account a landmark 2017 Supreme Court ruling on privacy “which said personal data can be processed if it passes the test of legality, legitimacy, and proportionality” and that it won’t affect the RTI.

What will the impact be?

Activists fear the change will affect their ability to seek information that has helped check corruption and ensure the delivery of basic rights.

“For instance, under the National Food Security Act, to check if there is corruption and someone does not get their rations, then people try to access information about fair-price shops and their sales registers to find out who was sold ration,” Ms Bhardwaj says. This helps check for pilferages in the ration given by the government’s public distribution system.

She also points out that Dalit (formerly known as untouchables) students have used the law to ask colleges to provide data about the admission process if they were not allotted a place even when they had the required marks.

Without this information, “the RTI Act would not keep a check on corruption and [this would] reduce transparency”, Mr Gandhi says.

Indian men and women line up outside the Fair Price Shop with their ration cards to receive portions of wheat, sugar, kerosene and rice from the government in Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh, India, on July 16, 2010.

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He points to an instance during his tenure where a person got a copy of the degrees of doctors appointed at a government hospital. “After going through them, they found out that there were several people who held fake degrees,” he says.

Such answers could become unavailable under the new law, he believes, since they would disclose the personal information of individuals.

Even now, officials deny many RTI requests by just saying that the information is personal, Mr Gandhi says. He now expects these denials to increase.

Are there any exceptions?

The change doesn’t affect a section in the RTI law that says that says that even if the information falls under any of the exceptions (such as personal information), an officer could still allow access to it if the public interest “outweighs the harms to the protected interests”.

But this flips the burden on people seeking the information.

“A person seeking information under RTI does not have to justify why they are seeking the information,” Ms Bhardwaj says. “But now, I will have to prove that there is a public interest and that its non-disclosure has larger harms to the protected interest.”

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Beer clip lands MP in the soup

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Padipat: Posedwith a can

Deputy House speaker Padipat Suntiphada has come un-der fire after posting a video clip of himself drinking beer on social media, which some say could be a violation of the law.

The furore began after Mr Padipat, a Move Forward Party MP for Phitsanulok, reviewed a can of beer brewed in his home province on Tiktok.

This prompted a flurry of criticism from netizens, who pointed to the law which prohibits the advertising of alcoholic beverages.

Tankhun Jittitsara, a former Democrat MP, called on House speaker Wan Muhamad Noor Matha to look into whether Mr Padipat breached the ethical code for political-office holders.

Democrat spokesman, Ramet Rattanachaweng, warned that Mr Padipat’s action may constitute a violation of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Act.

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Orphaned jumbo ‘Tula’ dies from bone disease

Orphaned jumbo 'Tula' dies from bone disease
A veterinarian feeds Tula, a male elephant calf who was abandoned by his herd in October last year. Tula passed away over the weekend after 10 months of treatment.

The orphaned elephant calf Tula has died due to illness after 10 months under the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation’s (DNP) care, the department announced on its Facebook page on Sunday evening.

Tula first came to the public’s attention when a team of veterinarians found him in Chanthaburi’s Khao Soi Dao Wildlife Sanctuary in October last year.

He was abandoned by his herd after contracting herpes in the wild, said Patarapol Maneeorn, chief of the department’s Wildlife Health Management Division.

According to Dr Patarapol, Tula suffered from a metabolic bone disease, which impeded his ability to stand on his front legs. Tula’s condition began to deteriorate last week and on Sunday, his pulse became very weak.

Veterinarians attempted to resuscitate Tula, but he died later that evening.

Dr Patarapol said Tula’s remains will be examined for other contributing factors.

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When geopolitical concerns take priority over open trade, world can expect slower growth, longer-term inflation: DPM Wong

SINGAPORE: A world where geopolitical concerns take precedence over open trade will be one with slower growth and longer-term inflation, Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said. Speaking during a dialogue moderated by journalist Fareed Zakaria from American broadcaster CNN at a conference on Monday (Aug 14), Mr Wong also saidContinue Reading

No agreement with Tan Kin Lian for either to step down if both qualify for Presidential Election: George Goh

There have been questions about whether Mr Goh, founder of Harvey Norman Ossia, will meet the eligibility criteria.

At a press conference on Aug 4 to launch his bid, he said he has a group of five companies with a combined shareholders’ equity of S$1.521 billion (US$1.12 billion) over three years, and reiterated that he is confident of qualifying under the private sector “deliberative track“. 

Mr Goh and Mr Tan are two of four presidential hopefuls who have expressed their intention to contest the upcoming Presidential Election. The other two are former Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam and former GIC chief investment officer Ng Kok Song.

HANDLING RESERVES

On Sunday, Mr Ng said the intricacies of safeguarding Singapore’s past reserves are “not easy to understand”, and that Mr Goh and Mr Tan have yet to prove themselves.

In response to Mr Ng’s comments, Mr Goh pointed to his entrepreneurial experience, having established companies in many countries and handled “billions of dollars”. 

“When you handle billions of dollars, you’re most likely (getting) international support … You travel all (over) the world; you not only talk about business, you talk about politics because (if) you need to invest in certain countries, you need to know what politics (are) going on,” he said.

“You need to know the culture. You also need to know the economy of the country, and you must also know who are your competitors in the country.” 

During his opening speech, Mr Goh said that the way people from the private sector, “especially entrepreneurs”, look at money is “quite different”.

“For us, when we look at money itself, this is like our money. So, no wastage. We have to make sure every single cent, we’re protecting it. It’s very difficult. If we don’t make it happen in a company … we can be removed by the board or the company will go down,” he said. 

“This is not something the public sector has an issue (with) because the fund was basically from the Ministry of Finance … You just have to make sure (there are) many (people) to set up the fund.”

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