They sat around their small camp fire where they had brewed a pot of thick coffee. The temperature was in the high twenties; there was just a slight hint of a breeze that mixed the smoke from the fire and from Ohlsson’s pipe. Ennis had opened a half bottle of Hennessey XO and poured a drink that they sipped from their tin mugs.
They had set out on an expedition to explore the forest in region surrounding the Inti Indorayon pulp mill, near Lake Toba in North Sumatra. The mill had been built by Sukanto Tanoto and inaugurated by President Suharto in 1975. The raw materials for the production of rayon were supplied by soon to be depleted pine plantations, a tragic omen for the surrounding regions primary forests where the mill planned to start clear-cutting.
Lars Ohlsson, a renowned but unorthodox botanist, had spent the greater part of his life in research on rainforest ecology. He had struggled for thirty years, in South East Asia, trying to convince successive governments of the need to establish real conservation programmes, to save the rainforests as an irreplaceable treasure house of genetic diversity.
He was a founding member of an exclusive and somewhat mysterious conservationist movement, the Valhalla Club, dedicated to preserving the rainforests and all the plants and creatures that lived in them. The club had been founded in Sweden many years earlier, it had since enrolled many eminent scientists, naturalists and rich philanthropists from several different counties. They were apolitical, maintaining a very low profile, keeping well away from the mainstream ecological movements, and especially political groups who tried to get on the ecological bandwagon. They avoided the green movements whose success in industrialised countries had resulted in a broader political engagement, dispersion and career building.
Ohlsson’s unique goal was the protection and conservation of the rainforests and the peoples who had traditionally lived in them. He and his friends had vowed to achieve their aims by whatever means necessary.
Ennis after their first meeting in Jakarta had soon become a friend of Lars Ohlsson. They had formed a sincere relationship, in spite of their very different goals. He respected Ohlsson, as a father figure, for his learning and experience, which he shared with those around him in a kindly way, unselfishly without fear of competition, in the knowledge that its diffusion would help his life long cause.
Ohlsson sipped his cognac, as he described his passion for the rainforest and its incredible variety of life, which he called biodiversity. He used the term to describe the different ways in which the plants and creatures of the forest lived in a vast and complex but fragile system of interdependence.
‘You know John, it’s essential to understand what this means, it’s the variety of these species of plants, animals and insects, or the number of their species, and the variation within one of these species, that give them-and us-the possibility to adapt to new conditions which arise, for example changes in climate’.
Ennis understood what he meant, as he scratched yet another bite, from one of the infinite variety of winged creatures that preyed on him.
‘All of these plants and creatures interact together and form what we call ecosystems. For example one of these giant hardwoods, that you are so eager to cut down, is an ecosystem and can support up to five thousand different species of insects, birds, animals, plants, fungi and microbes.’
He pointed to an enormous hardwood with the huge buttresses which formed its base, around its massive trunk vines thicker than a mans waist wound their way up disappearing in the canopy forty metres above their heads.
‘Within the ecosystem of that tree, communities of different plants and animals live together. They interact in an incredibly complex and interrelated structure, where every link depends on the other. Even as I talk to you now, these links are being broken and the delicate structure is being broken down in rain forests across the world not only by loggers and developers but also poor disinherited peoples seeking to survive in a world which appears to have abandoned them.’
Ohlsson had persuaded Ennis to join him for his two-man expedition to monitor first hand the loggers’ progress in the Sumatran rainforest. They were in intimate contact with the living forest, observing how it lived and breathed, rather than by the artificial in-vitro processes employed by many modern botanists.
It had enabled him to observe, in areas that he had studied for over many years, the progress and effects of logging and shifting cultivation on the forest.
‘Do you follow me?’ he said questioningly. ‘The constant loss and the threat of losing species, has lead us biologists, over the years to accumulate sufficient scientific material, to show the world that the incredible variety of life that exists in tropical rainforests is being devoured daily to satisfy mans stupidity, disappearing for ever.’
‘Sure I follow you Lars, it’s just that at this moment I wouldn’t really be to disturbed if a few of the insect species around here became rapidly extinct.’ said Ennis scratching furiously.
Ohlsson laughed: ‘They need food like you and I, seriously though, you know that the rainforests contain a wider variety of life than any other habitat on our planet and our understanding of it is essential to our future existence. We must do everything in our power to protect this living laboratory of nature, which will help us to solve and understand the very source of many of our human problems.’
As they sat talking in their small bivouac, dwarfed in the buttresses of the giant tree, shafts of light streamed down through the canopy, thirty or forty metres above their heads, illuminating the smoke from their fire, reflecting a pale blue fog, that drifted slowly into the depths of the forest. The air around them was saturated with the smell of the damp earth, and rotting vegetation, mingled with the smoke of the burning wood.
‘For us Europeans, brought up and live in temperate regions, the incredible diversity of life in the rainforests is almost unimaginable. We are used to our northern forests, where single species of trees such as oak or pine dominate. In most tropical rainforests, no single species dominates, an enormous diversity of plants exist side by side.’
Ennis nodded sipping the cognac from his mug; it was a profoundly moving experience for him, deep in the heart of nature’s kingdom, in the company of such a unique and learned guide.
‘Did you know John, in this area of Sumatra there are over two hundred species of trees and lianas with a diameter of...say plus ten centimetres diameter in a single hectare of forest, and 25,000 species of seed bearing plants in this region alone, compared to a mere 1,250 species for the whole of the British Isles’.
Ennis nodded, lighting a coil of slow burning mosquito repellent, in the forlorn hope that it would give some relief from the swarms of insects that were attracted to him.
‘Listen John, I know that this is difficult to absorb and understand, but the local tribes of forest dwellers in these regions understand so much better than we do, the use of a very large number of these plants. They conserve the forests around them using only the minimum necessary for their needs, whilst we outsiders are lost by the diversity, and we destroy the forest replacing it by monocultures. They live in what we could call a primitive affluence, in harmony with their nature, not wanting to destroy it or change it as we constantly do. They have an abundance of food in the form of game and fish, medicinal plants, materials for making tools and building shelters.’
The light was beginning to fade as the evening approached; the air was filled with a cacophony of strange insect sounds that rose into an unbelievable crescendo, making it necessary for Ohlsson to raise his voice to be heard.
‘Twentieth century man lives in cities and what they call nature, the countryside, is in reality a very profoundly modified environment, it bears almost no resemblance to the original ecosystems that existed in our countries just a few centuries back. City dwellers of modern Europe or America, just don’t know what a natural forest is, even those who have often visited their so called forests, which are essentially man made, except for perhaps the remoter regions of Canada.’
‘Are you advocating that the forests be simply left to nature, for a few scientists like yourself?’
‘No of course not, instead of preserving the rainforests as untouchable reserves, they should be exploited by the forest peoples, who can harvest their products without the wholesale and inept destruction by the subsistence farmers or loggers. The rainforest could produce perfumes, cosmetics, nuts, fruit, rubber, exotic wood, medicines, palm oil and spices.’
As darkness set in the fireflies dotted the night blinking like a myriad of stars. The noise was continuous, it was unreal. Ennis had never experienced a world so different to all that he had known. It was totally unlike the logging camps slums, where nature had been abandoned to the chainsaw and the outboard motor.
‘I want to show you this world before it disappears forever, I want you to understand what industries like that you intending to build will do to the lives of the people here, how their heritage will be destroyed, your heritage, my heritage and our childrens.’
They ate with relish the goulash soup from cans they had heated over their campfire, it was not a cordon blue dinner, but they were hungry and tired after their hard trek.
‘Just think of farms in Western Europe today, their solid farmers with their plump healthy wives, farming the lands that they have farmed for hundreds of years. When we look at them, we think we are going back to our roots. The truth is that agriculture in modern Europe is nothing more than a gigantic industrial complex, feed with chemicals fertilisers and insecticides, the land being merely a support for that process.
‘It progresses by ripping up the remaining hedgerows, ploughing the fields with huge machines, sowing highly selective hybrid plants, spreading huge quantities of artificial fertilisers, irrigating the fields with water pumped from deep down in the earth, spraying the crops dangerous insecticides, breeding animals that are as fragile as race horses, that couldn’t survive ten days without mans help, your idyllic image of pastoral England is pure fantasy!’
Ennis nodded, he was beginning to feel sleepy, in spite of a nagging worry that those threatened animals out there in the night, might just see him as part of their food chain.
He would certainly have been more comfortable with an explanation at Medan, but he had promised Jenny to go with Lars Ohlsson, and though he would never admit it, he enjoyed the boy scout aspect of camping in the forest and the sense of freedom, no telephones, no meetings. Their only priority was their trek up to Lake Toba, and the thrill of being alone in the dense forest.
‘I’m sure you will support us John. Jenny has told us that you are sympathetic to our aims. I believe you’re too sensitive a person to condone the harm that is being done here in Indonesia and Malaysia.’
They strung up their mosquito nets and hitched their hammocks. Ennis could smell the embers of fire that still glowed in the dark. He felt the living forest around him, the plants, insects and animals. He felt he had the disturbing privilege of glimpsing life as it must have been before mans arrival, he felt uneasy, it was alien.
He lay in his hammock, pulling his mosquito net over him, listening to the night. He soon slipped into a deep sleep, as the warmth of the strange forest night enveloped him.
The next morning they rose with the first light and after brewing coffee they packed their material and were on their way. Ohlsson resumed his nature lesson in the half-light of his huge overbearing lecture hall.
‘Just about five hundred kilometres from here is the mill your friends at Bintang Agung have built, and now they want to clear 150,000 hectares to expand their mill to one million tons a year.”
Ennis made an effort to listen objectively and impartially to Ohlsson criticism of the forest industries.
‘You know what that means! They also intend to develop monospecies plantations, eucalyptus and acacia. They’ve now chosen a new species, five years ago it was gemilina. If you look at Sutrawan’s company brochure a few years back, it was something else, they’ll try anything, without the least concern for the consequences, except their short term profits, worse than that they’re totally ignorant. Most of the decision makers have little or no education in forestry and no knowledge whatsoever of the rainforest, their only motivation is profits, quick profits.’
‘Yes, I remember visiting their first small mill in a place called Tangerang, about thirty kilometres outside of Jakarta. They had planted a few dozen gemilina in the garden in front of their offices. Danny Lau and the Taiwanese told that gemilina was the future, that they would plant thousands of hectares of this miraculous tree.’
‘Yeah, I can remember that.’ Ennis laughed to him, remembering how comical he had thought it was at the time seeing the spindly saplings.
‘And what happened?’ asked Ohlsson.
Ennis shrugged, he knew that nothing had happened, apart from a lot of talk, it was window dressing to satisfy the forestry department, to obtain licenses for new logging areas.
‘I remember the much talked visit by the press to Jambi, it was followed by an article in the industry’s magazine Pulp and Paper International reporting that they had planted 3,000 hectares of eucalyptus and acacia.’
‘Where are they now?’ asked Ohlsson. ‘The target was reported to be four thousand hectares a year, from seedlings produced at their new nursery, designed to supply 125,000 hectares of plantations’.
‘The truth is that they are more than ten years behind their original program, you can’t believe these people. Plantations cost money, but that’s not everything, there’s the knowledge factor. They just don’t have the experience or the know-how, in fact nobody in this part of the world has.’
He paused and a pained look overshadowed his face. ‘I wish they were successful with their plantations - you know why of course?’
Ennis nodded encouraging him to explain.
‘If they were successful with plantations they would leave the forest alone. Its twelve years since they started supplying pulpwood to the mill in Taiwan and then their own mill. Each year they’ve consumed one million cubic metres of pulpwood, and the same amount for the power generating plant boilers. Over twenty million cubic metres, one hundred thousand hectares of forest, gone forever!’
‘What about Aracruz in Brazil or the plantations in the Congo, they’ve been successful.’
‘Yes, but what about them? Firstly they have cost one hell of a lot of money and secondly they are still monocultures.’
‘So.’
‘The money means political backing, state support, public money a lot of it and long term planning, it takes years to realise such plantations. I’m not saying that it doesn’t work. Aracruz is the proof that it can work, but don’t overlook the long term effects, but here, in Indonesia they’ve missed the boat at a critical time.’
‘What about monoculture’
‘Monoculture only uses fast growing trees, that’s their main criteria, just look at any press interview with the owners, that means vast clear cuts, requiring heavy machinery, chemical fertilisers and pesticides.’
‘And the selection of species for the plantations?’
‘You introduce a new species that is not native to these regions; it takes decades of selection, developing hybrids, testing, to determine the right variety of tree. What effect will it have on the local ecology? What about parasites, insects, disease? Look at what happened at Picop in the Philippines!’
‘Yeah, I was there after the typhoon.’
‘Yes, a good part of their 100,000 hectares of plantations were destroyed in one night; planted with trees called albizia falcata.’
‘Yes, I flew over that area a few days after the typhoon, from the air it was as though somebody had emptied a giant box of matches over hundreds of square kilometres, the trees had snapped at about three or four meters from the ground.’
‘That was due to the culture of a species not adapted to local conditions and not adapted to monoculture! They planted trees, not suited to a climate where typhoons frequently occur, especially on the pacific coast of Mindanao. Every decade or so, there is an exceptionally destructive typhoon which hits that coast.
‘It takes decades, maybe even centuries, to select the right species. Those foresters took trees whose natural habitat is in West Africa, where such storms do not occur. The normal habitat of these trees is like I described earlier, in climatic equilibrium with a great diversity of other trees and plants of different ages.’
‘I can see what you mean, the big trees form a protective shield for the smaller trees.’
‘Correct, even the creepers and lianas hold the whole thing together, though that doesn’t mean to say trees don’t get blown down, they do, but not like in Mindano, where hundreds of thousands of hectares of trees were blown down in one night.’
‘Here in North Sumatra, the plantations were made some thirty years or more ago and have been very successful, but do you know why?’
Ennis had difficulty replying as he gasped for breath struggling to keep up, puffing and wheezing behind Ohlsson. The going was hard as they followed the wet slippery trail. The air was cool and damp in the pine forest, the trail rose slowly as they advanced towards the mountains that could be seen from time to time through the clearings.
‘It’s easy here, at one thousand meters altitude!’
‘Easy?’ panted Ennis
A thick ground mist carpeted the surrounding forest; the air was damp and heavy. As they walked through the ground vegetation they were sprayed with the heavy dew kicked into the air by their boots.
‘That’s right, easy, because at one thousand meters the climate is not unlike the southern temperate climates. The ecosystem is different compared to that on the coast, down at Medan. Here its a lot like in the southern states of the USA, a mild climate with a lot of rain and cold nights, so there are natural populations of certain varieties of pine.’
‘I see, you mean it’s within the realms of known sylvaculture.’
‘Yes! Its like we’ve been doing for hundreds of years, it doesn’t present too many problems outside of our present scope of knowledge, and the trees planted here are natives to the region.’
Inti Indorayon was near Aceh, six kilometres from the little town of Porsea, near Lake Toba, half a kilometre from the river Asahan. They used wood from the aging pinus merkusi plantations, which surrounded the 150,000-ton a year pulp mill. The mill manager had told the press, that they would use mixed tropical hardwoods from the natural forest when the existing pine ran out. Then they would switch their supply to 150,000 hectares of new plantations of pinus merkusi and eucalyptus-which was still in the planning phase.
They were at 920 metres above sea level, in a temperate tropical climate on a coarse volcanic sandy soil. They could already see the erosion, on the hilly terrain after clear-cutting of the plantations, and the effects of acid water from the mill bleaching plant, which should have been collected and neutralised. Ennis knew that Finntech that had supplied the bleaching plant, and that the mill had omitted much of the environmental protection equipment, to save money.
Lars told him that 2,500 cubic metres a day of wood were trucked up to mill, over rough cut roads in the natural forest, opening up the way for the poor farmers, whose primitive shifting cultivation methods would continue the destruction started by the loggers and pulp producers. The mill imported by road each day, from Belawan on the coast 250 kilometres away, 100 tons of salt, 25 tons of sodium sulphate, 60 tons of limestone. In the opposite direction 500 tons a day of pulp was transported to the port. Every day, day in day out, including food people equipment and other supplies, that’s over 200 heavy vehicle movements in an area which had been almost entirely virgin forest only a couple of decades ago.
‘You see John, this is a classical example of how they neglect all advice, and they now intend to use the natural forest, they will exploit it like a mine, and then when the mine is exhausted what will they do? Abandon it, leaving a derelict ruin behind them for future generations!’