Borneon alkuperäiskansojen käsityksiä ekologisesta kestävyydestä
Terveiset Keski-Kalimantanilta. Töiden lomassa olen lueskellut teemaan sopivia artikkeleita.
Ehkä mielenkiintoisin niistä on Doven tutkimus (pdf) Borneon Dayak-kansojen käsityksistä koskien ekologista kestävyyttä.
There is no such objectification in the Kantu’ beliefs that will be discussed in this paper: the Kantu’ concept of ‘dead land’ under rubber is based not on the separation but on the unity of culture and nature. The Kantu’ beliefs to be analysed here will illustrate not how the dichotomy between nature and culture is deconstructed, but rather how it is not constructed in the first place….
…Creation and destruction are linked in a cycle, and anything that interrupts or resists this cycle is seen as a violation of the cosmological order. This is reflected in the traditional Kantu’ pantang (proscription) against the use of Borneo’s foremost timber, from the ironwood tree (Eusideroxylon zwageri), in house cons t ruction. The Kantu’ rationale for this proscription is that the durability of this wood and anything constructed from it surpasses the life-span of the people using it. In light of the current analysis, we might alco suggest that the problem with such long-lived construction is that it represents a bounty taken frorn nature with no human foreknowledge of when it will return to nature. The cycle of destruction and creation, the cycling between nature and culture, is broken by such construction…
…Further, the Malay term mati here does have the literal meaning of ‘death’, but also has the figurative meaning of ‘fixed’ (Wilkinson 1959 II:749-50), which domifiates its uses in Iban (Richards 1981:210). Accordingly, we can interpret the phrase tanah mati (dead land) as a statement about how the combined ecological and social consequences of planting rubber ‘fix’ the land – within the context of a wider (swidden) landscape that is by implication not fixed. Nor, counter-intuitively, does this ‘fixing’ of the land mem its death. In a sense, land planted in rubber is ‘dead’ forever because the rubber is (at least potentially) alive forever (just as the accumulation of wealth from rubber trees is unending because of the lack of social exchange in its cultivation). The value against which rubber cultivation is being measured is not, therefore, life or death, but rather the cycle between life and death, creation and destruction, field and forest, that was described earlier. Unending life without death jeopardizes this value, just as does unending accumulation without distribution. The former severs the ecological cycle of creation and destruction, the morality of exchange between nature and culture; whereas the latter severs the economic cycle of inter-dependence and reciprocity, the morality of exchange between people…
…Notwithstanding all the ills attending logging concessions, Dayak activists say that they are less worried about them than about the HTI (from Hutan Tanaman Industri), or commercial tree plantations. The Dayak say that, whereas the logging concessions wili eventuaiiy go away (even if not until after the last tree has been felled), the tree plantations may stay forever. Where as the logging concessions are part of a forest cycle (albeit one that may run to hundreds of years), the tree plantations are ‘fixed’, like the rubber gardens. This analogy is reflected in the fact that many tenurial conflicts that arise in the development of timber plantations involve locally owned rubber gardens, whereas most conflicts in the development of logging concessions involve locally owned and managed swidden lands. Therefore, whereas the ‘fixedness’ of the rubber gardens protects local landowners in the face of state encroachment, the ‘fixedness’ of the timber plantations dispossesses them…
Huomenna painutaan syvälle sademetsään. Sivilisaation eturintamalle.
Kuva: Metsittyvä kaskipelto Murung-Rayassa (c) Sampsa Kiianmaa/WWF
