A national drive to convert some 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of peatland into rice fields by then-president Suharto clear-cut a vast tract of Bornean rainforest in the 1990s, which many Indigenous Dayak considered to be a violation of customary rules.
The project became a notorious environmental catastrophe. Much of the land alongside the Sebangau, Kahayan, Kapuas, Kapus Murung and Barito rivers was destroyed by fire. The aftermath left the landscape prone to floods in monsoon seasons and wildfires during droughts, seasonal patterns now aggravated by climate change.
A decade ago the entire landscape was also ablaze here in Pulang Pisau, a district in Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan province. In mid-2015, toxic wildfire smoke seeped under doors of Dayak longhouses, through the cracks in the timber frame, and past the blood-brain barrier of the people sheltering inside.
The haze hung over most of Borneo for months as the fires spread across the peat. Around 2.6 million hectares (6.4 million acres) burned across the country during that year’s dry season.
The catastrophe will have likely caused tens of thousands of premature deaths in Indonesia due to the pollution. In response, President Joko Widodo vowed to reform the land-use sector, which included bans on peatland development and accelerated devolution of land management to local communities.
The Indonesian government intends to release a total of 13 million hectares (32 million acres) from the national forest estate for leasehold management by local communities, a policy known as social forestry. Data from the Ministry of Environment and Forestry showed the state had released 6.1 million hectares (15.1 million acres) to community-managed leases by end-September 2023.
A number of problems afflicted farming families before the community became the leaseholder here in Pulang Pisau.