FNPF’s holistic approach means that community development projects are an integral part of FNPF’s wildlife & habitat conservation methodology. Our community development projects aim to:
- show that FNPF cares about the local communities, in addition to caring for wildlife and habitat (local communities often resent NGOs because they perceive they care more for wildlife than people);
- demonstrate how conservation can bring benefit to the local people;
- educate and teach practical methods to achieve conservation in harmony with community wellbeing.
Our primary focus for the community development projects in Kalimantan has been in the village of Tanjung Harapan (also known as Sekonyer village), on the opposite other side of the Sekonyer to Tanjung Puting National Park. The village is located near to FNPF’s reforestation sites at Pesalat and Beguruh within the National Park. Most of our employees are from the village.
Sekonyer Village, Tanjung Harapan
The Sekonyer Village is located on the borders with National Park of Tanjung Puting. Before 1977, the village was inside the National Park (Tanjung Puting). Later it moved to across the Sekonyer river, just outside the park area. Currently, the population has about 540 people from different ethnics, Malay, Bugis, Madura and Java. Conflict often rises between villagers and park authority when it comes to forest protection. The village has been gradually losing the forest and with it the main economic resources. After centuries of nomadic farming, hunting, fishing, wood collection, today only 20% of the forest once belonged to Sekonyer village, is left.
Environment degradation in Sekonyer Village and in the National Park of Tanjung Puting has reached apprehensive levels. Sekonyer River was once used as the main resource of clean water by the inhabitants of this area. Now a days, the pollution from the illegal mining up stream has contaminated the river water and its ecosystem, with mercury.
Meanwhile, there are still many ha of open swamp area, critically left to oil-palm plantation companies and mining.
Farmer from Sekonyer Village who has joined the group “Sekonyer Lestari “ has more than 20 members. With the guidance of Friends of the National Park Foundation, the farmers are committed to protect the remaining forest and to implement the re-forestation of the surrounding area.
Limited access of transportation and lack of knowledge to manage nature resources are main challenges faced by people until today.
Education scholarships
5 girls from Tanjung Harapan village that received FNPF’s scholarships become the first girls from the village to finish high school between 2000 – 2005. Before we started this programme, parent were prone to only send boys receive education after primary school. This scholarship has made a positive impact and parents in the village are now more willing to send girls to take further education.
Conservation education
The programme builds conservation awareness in the young generation. We started this program in 2000 by visiting some high school at Pangkalan Bun, the capital city of Kota Waringin Barat regency in which Tanjung Puting National Park is located. The program was initially run as an extra curriculum programme for one selected highschool. In addition to lectures, we invited students to attend field trips in the park twice a year so that they could receive practical and hands-on knowledge about conservation of wildlife and habitat. In 2007 the highschool adopted our conservation programme into their standard curriculum so that all students now receive conservation education.
Livestock programme
For many years people at Tanjung Harapan did not believe they could keep cows successfully. Many had tried previously, but the cows kept dying. In 2003 we donated 5 cows to 5 different farmers and provided training in livestock management. A cow can provide a family with a regular supply of milk, plus manure for the land (which ties in with our mixed & organic farming programme). In 2008 a calf was born at the village for the first time in their history. This has encouraged more villagers to want to keep cow. Plus it has resulted in the local government and the park authority donating another 15 cows to the village.
Agro-forestry and mixed (& organic) farming
This is one of our primary community development programmes. Agro-forestry shifts farmers from the traditional slash-and-burn farming to a mixed approach. Slash-and-burn causes complete clearance of vegetation, which exposes the thin layer of soil to severe erosion and overtime makes the land useless for agriculture. Plus fires from slash-and-burn farming can cause the underlying peat to ignite, releasing huge volumes of stored carbon into the atmosphere, and uncontrollable fires to spread into the national park. Agro-forestry and mixed farming (especially if organic) provides farmers with higher and more sustainable incomes. Plus it is more harmonious with native wildlife and habitat. Agro-forestry means that a variety of trees will deliver incomes over different periods of time, whilst underneath a variety of vegetables (preferably organic) can be grown.
Ecotourism
There has been a constant growth in tourism activity in Tanjung Puting National Park since the 1980s. But very little benefit has filtered down to the villagers of Tanjung Harapan.
In 2006 we began a program to teach eco tourism to a group of people. The eco tourism prgramme we diesigned for the willage is for camping and trekking tour in the national park. We donated tents and camp cooking utensils, and we built a camping platform at Pesalat, close to FNPF’s reforestation area. In addition we secured exclusive rights from the national park authority for the village to run camping tours in the park. This means that the villagers do not have to compete with established tour operators, the park authority has a close control on the activity because they only interface with one single party, and the tour operators have another product to sell to tourists.
The villagers now interact directly with the tourists. The tourists tell the villagers why they like to visit, and describe the beauty of the nature that they seek to see in the park. This has resulted in villagers recognising the need to protect the wildlife and habitat … not only to generate income from tourism, but also because of their pride they have for their environment.
Art and Culture preservation
We revitalized some of the Malay traditional arts such as the “Gambus” traditional music, “Tirik” traditional dance, “Pencak Silat” traditional martial art, and “Batimung” traditional sauna / spa. We run courses at the village that allow the young generation to learn from the older generation to prevent the arts from being forgotten for ever. We also promote this as a tourist attraction and in 2006 we organized the first arts festival at Tanjung Harapan village with perormances of many aspects of the Malay tradition, including, cooking, crafting, dancing, sport and spiritual items.
