#3 Protecting Peat Swamp & Tracking Territories

Photo by Nathalia Segato on Unsplash

Morning Jo(k)e

“According to a new U.N. report, the global warming outlook is much worse than originally predicted. Which is pretty bad when they originally predicted it would destroy the planet.”

- Jay Leno

Greening Pastures

Selangor is a state on the west coast of Malaysia and is home to the Kuala Langat North Forest Reserve (which, as it turns out, is different from the South Forest Reserve). This forest, once spanning over 7,200 hectares, has shrunk to just thirteen percent (957ha) of its original glory. Aside from its rich biodiversity, the forest primarily consists of peat swamp, which is an incredibly important environment that provides ecosystem services such as flood risk mitigation, carbon capture, and safe drinking water.

Despite the incredible value of this reserve, the Selangor state government proposed to degazette (remove legal protection) ninety-seven percent (931ha) of the forest reserve for a development project to build housing (cue that one Counting Crows song). Thankfully, Selangor law requires public hearings to be held for any decisions on degazettement. This facilitated a high level of public involvement prior to making the decision and caused the government to change its original course. Unfortunately, the government only modified its plan. 

Instead of removing protections for 931ha, they changed it to 500ha, which was carried out in May 2021 despite a unanimous vote against the proposal by the executive council (*collective sigh*). The Selangor government justified the decision by claiming the land was degraded due to recurring fires, but this was refuted by environmentalists who retaliated that almost half the area had actually been replanted with Mahang trees through both community and state government efforts.

With the forest left unprotected by the law, the Selangor government moved forward with stage two, announcing in August 2021 the official plans for the forest and revealed they already struck a deal with a private company to develop the area.

This announcement spurred an overwhelming outcry from all facets of the public in the following days. This burst of attention and public involvement caused the government to withdraw these plans, making an official announcement just a week after the original unveiling. Not only did they revoke plans to develop the land as well as retract the agreement with the private company, the government also announced they would be regazetting the area as well (woohoo!). 

However, a portion of the forest will still be developed (don’t worry, it’s not bad news for once). In 1993, the indigenous Busut Baru Orang Asli village was displaced by the government in order to build an airport (of course), and the village was promised over 400ha of land in return. In a series of events which has never before played out in history, the government still has not followed through with its promise of proper compensation as of yet, but the village will receive 42ha of the Kuala Langat North Forest in order to help resolve their “agreement”.

After this rollercoaster of decisions, it seems as though the Kuala Langat North Forest is safe for the time being. Many experts are crediting the legal requirement of holding public hearings as the reason for the enormous community involvement, claiming that without it, the KLNF might not have survived this attack. 

Since the success of this movement, activists and lawmakers have begun pushing for this legal measure to be included in the national law under the National Forestry Act in order to further protect the nation’s forests.

Budding Hope

Within Brazil is an incredibly vast and biologically rich region known as The Cerrado. This area is the second largest biome in the country next to the Amazon Rainforest, mostly consisting of savanna, and it accounts for 21% of Brazil’s land area, originally covering almost 750,000 square miles (that’s a lot), and is home to more than 12,000 plant species, over 900 bird species, and over 300 mammal species (that’s also a lot).

However, only a little more than half of the Cerrado remains in a natural state, and, due to expansion of agriculture such as “I am” farming, according to the google translated paper I read while researching this, over 1,500 square miles of the savanna have been deforested as of 2020. 

Side Note: Almost as alarming, the tracking of the Cerrado’s deforestation is likely to halt. This initiative which generates alerts and annual maps of vegetative loss will cease at the end of this year, with the World Bank who funded the program citing lack of funds (proof that money is fake and the economy is made up). This will have severe consequences for all people who rely on this information, including soy traders and civil society groups who are both speaking out about this decision.

For decades, the Brazilian government saw this region as empty despite over 100,000 people within traditional communities inhabiting the area for over a century. Due to this, traditional communities were purposely excluded from even such seemingly trivial things as maps.

This purposely ignorant view (Honey, who are they, Meghan McCain? *buh-dum-ch*) allowed the government to build the nation’s capital within the Cerrado without any serious consequences as the area was seen by Brazil’s citizens as “unused”. This subsequently encouraged migration and agricultural expansion to the area where, as of 2010, about 76 million people now live in the region. 

It wasn’t until the past few decades these communities were finally recognized as having a right to the land and acknowledged as being a vital part to the land’s ecosystem. Science has been one of the things facilitating this shift. Several studies have found the stewardship which these hundreds of communities provide to the ecosystem have preserved the integrity of the region and have even improved the environment in some cases. 

With the expansion of agriculture, more and more of the Cerrado is being overtaken, displacing the traditional communities who previously resided there. However, these communities have been pushing back, creating land conflicts which the traditional communities often lose despite living on and off of the land for centuries (go figure). Coincidentally, these legal battles which determine who has the right to the land are also one of the only things slowing its rapid development (...yay?).

For decades, the only way for the traditional communities to claim their land was to apply for land titles, a process which can take years to come to fruition despite being granted certain rights under the national constitution (Indigenous people’s rights not being recognized? How unprecedented!). 

It seems the government’s view is “you don’t have to recognize the rights of people who you don’t acknowledge are there”. However, technology has surprisingly done something good without any devastating effects so far.

In partnership between IPAM (Amazon Environmental Research Institute) and ISPN (Institute for Society, Population and Nature), a free and accessible app called “Tô no Mapa” was launched in 2020 for traditional communities to map their territories themselves. This app has given visibility and power to these communities by providing them a platform to show the land they use without having to wait on the government for years to acknowledge their presence.

An initial survey where over 1,000 square miles was mapped revealed there were about 3.5 times more traditional communities in the Cerrado than the government recognized, indicating the estimate of 100,000 traditional people in the Cerrado was much lower than the real number. This lack of recognition leaves those populations vulnerable to losing their land to people like soy farmers. Potentially more important, the app also allows communities to mark land use characteristics and areas of conflict, a feature which may become significant in future legal disputes.

While this mapping service does not guarantee any legal rights, the ISPN considers this tool an important first step in communities actually being considered in public policies and protective measures, which were supposed to have already been promised to them under the constitution (Accountability? Never heard of her!). 

According to the ISPN, the next steps for this initiative are to improve the app and hold meetings with organizations and communities interested in territorial rights for traditional communities.

Feeling Inspired?

If you’re feeling particularly inspired today, or, if you even just feel like reducing your contribution to carbon emissions, I have a simple actionable step you can take:

*fast forwards through disclaimer that individual responsibility for climate change is problematic*

This week (ok, fine. next week is alright too), I encourage you to take a day off from driving to work if you do that. You can carpool, walk, bike, unicycle, astral project, whatever. Just take one day to do so. It’s as easy as that, and it shakes up the old monotonous routine of driving every day. 

If you’re already planning to work from home or something like that this week, that doesn’t count. Choose another day and find alternative transportation. If you don’t drive (brag) or can’t use an alternative transportation system, find something else to do in a similar vein. I don’t know, I can’t come up with everything for you.

Branch Out

Check out this short, funny article by Max Barth, a comedic writer who also has a newsletter on Substack:

"10 daily affirmations that totally gloss over imminent climate collapse"