Inception Workshop October 26, 2015

Persist or vanish: the future of the Dayak Iban

swidden agriculture in northern Kapuas Hulu,

West KalimantanAlfa Simarangkir, Nicolas Labrière, Tina Taufiqoh, Selly Kharisma,

Imam Basuki, Cecilia Luttrell and Yves Laumonier

FLARE Annual meeting

University of Edinburgh, U.K. December 2 – 5, 2016

BACKGROUND

What is the current nature of tradeoffs among natural resource management and livelihood development for the past 20 years?

What are the impacts of migration and remittances on forest, agriculture practises and livelihood since Wadley’s study ?

Objectives and Research questions

To explore if there has been a shift in agricultural intensification, extensification, livelihood diversification, migration trends and patterns, swidden practices and labor exchange arrangement for the past twenty years.

Satellite 2013

Study site, Batang Lupar District, Kapuas Hulu, West Kalimantan

Method 1: Livelihoods

Based on the survey instruments of the IFRI

Focus Group Discussions with representatives of age and gender groups:

History of settlement, socio-economic status

Use and rules for swidden area

Use and rules for forest products

Governance related to forest resources

Households surveys

Semi-structured questionnaires (10 villages, households, 139 respondents)

Method 2: Ecosystem functions and services

Remote sensing and land cover

Vegetation sampling (40 plots 20 x 20 m)

Land uses, soil and erosion

Soil: Hierarchical sampling design of the Land Degradation Surveillance Framework (Walsh and Vågen 2006)

Soil erosion monitoring (Labrière et al. 2014)

Results

Mostly Dayak Iban (96%),population distribution mostly similar between women and men.

Swidden for subsistence purposes, and get income from selling rubber, wages or salary and remittances.

About 60% of the population can read and write in Indonesian language, while the remaining 40% speak Iban language only. In the most remote villages, Iban language only.

Most of the population attended elementary school (41%) and junior high school (15%), while still as much as 33% never attended school.

Land assets, mode of acquisition and ownership

Each respondent own between 4 and 14 land plots varying from 1 to 4 hectares,

Mostly inherited (80%) or by clearing new forest (about 10%).

Period Number of land plots Size of land plots (ha)

1960-1970 4 10

1971-1980 7 12

1981-1990 17 65

1991-2000 30 76

2001-2010 30 76

2011-2014... 3 4

Unknown* 2 3

Total 93 246

Distribution of land-use types vs. distance from villages

The Ibans of Batang Lupar prefer nowadays to open new field crops (ladang) by re-opening the fallows situated near the villages.

Distance category

Number of food crop plotsNumber of rubber/mixed

rubber plots

Total

LadangYoung

fallow

Old fallow

Secondary

Forest

Rubber

plantation

Mixed

Rubber

garden

0 – 3.00 km 171 141 20 86 270 688

3.01 – 6.00 km 49 101 6 10 43 209

> 6.01 km 12 45 15 7 16 95

Grand Total 232 287 41 103 329 992

What is the impact of opening the ladangs near the villages? ie. on soil fertility?

a

b b

a

Soil texture (sand and clay) significantly different among land cover types,….. indicating a loss of clay through erosion processes.

Result: Soil texture, fertility and land cover types

b

b

a

a

b

a

aa

Also a significant decrease of soil C and N in swidden system in comparison with natural forest

Main shocks and stresses affecting the farmers

Crop disease, falling sale prices and rising food prices, rising agricultural input prices

Average rubber production was 805 kg/year, with 2 villages producing more than a ton, but the price of rubber fluctuates between IDR 5,000 and 15,000/kg.

Paddy yield declining: Change in size of ladang and also paddy yield between the past and now…• Average size ladang reduced to half, i.e. from 3.6 ha to 1.8 ha • Average rice production also reduced to less than half from

about 1 ton to only about 480 kg• Most of the respondents consumed their rice within 10 months

after harvesting

Use of forest products

Type of natural resourcesNumber of respondents who

Used Collected Bought Sold

Firewood 138 138 0 0

Wild vegetables 135 132 1 0

Fish 118 99 25 0

Bush meat 73 44 42 18

Edible insect 56 56 0 0

Fodder grasses, leaves or pods 52 50 0 0

Wild fruits 51 51 0 0

Illipe nuts 41 41 0 41

Rattan 35 35 0 14

Timber 31 31 1 0

Poles 24 24 0 0

Number of respondents were 139 respondents

Migration and remittances

• 60% of respondents have a family member working in Malaysia or nearest regencies who send remittances

• The migrants have low skill jobs in logging, construction, plantation companies, or government offices

• Cash remittance is among the three most important sources of income for respondents,

• Remittances are either money, food or labor. Most of these remittances are not sent at a regular basis, but on request

• No differences although between respondents who get remittances and those who did not for sending the children to school

Comparing with Wadley’s study (1997)

• Only few migrant nowadays come back to the village to help their family opening new fields

• In the past, the poor households relied only on male labor exchange arrangement to open new fields, but now the trend is also to hire labor

• Soil fertility in the past was managed by monitoring the fallow length, but now many of the farmers use fertilizers and herbicides

Conclusion for Batang Lupar Iban landscapes

Losing the male labors through wage migration continue to cause a shortage in labors availability

Observed soil impoverishment related to reduction in rotation length is a serious threat likely to jeopardize the production of goods and services in the long-term.

In the rapidly transforming socio-environmental context of this region, the long-term persistence of the swidden agriculture system seems jeopardized.

Both factors above lead to less sustainable swidden agriculture practices and to a declining paddy yield over time.

Thank you

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