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 ForestFocus on Indonesia: Page 10 Many islands, including Borneo (Kalimantan), Sulawesi and western New Guinea have had to absorb millions of people relocated from overpopulated Java under a government program. Beginning in 1978 with partial funding from the World Bank, more than 100,000 people per year were relocated to these and other out-islands costing $2 billion by 1992 (Durrell 1992). By 1996, 6 million people had been relocated from Java; Sumatra received the greatest number of people, followed by Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Irian Jaya (Mydans 1996a).
Irian Jaya’s 350,000 square kilometers of forests are still largely intact, but they are rapidly being destroyed by settlers. More than 250,000 people have been sent here, pushing aside the native New Guinea tribes who have witnessed their pristine rainforests cleared, even on steep slopes, for subsistence farming (O'Neill 1996). One tribesman said, "While we believe we are descended from the forest, most Indonesians believe that devils live in the forest and that the forest must be destroyed" (O'Neill 1996). The Indonesian government clearcuts 5 acres of forest for each family and supplies tin shacks, seeds and tools (O'Neill 1996); these shacks are lined up in rows on the remnants of the rainforest that once rang with the calls of birds-of-paradise. Villagers are encouraged to cut trees and are paid $1.30 for each tree by the government (O'Neill 1996). Roads, schools, clinics and other modernizations are planned, and towns of up to 250,000 people are being carved out of the virgin rainforest (Flannery 1998). New Guinea tribespeople are resentful about the forest cutting and have documented many instances of killing and cruel treatment they have received from the Indonesian military (Flannery 1998). They believe that Indonesia has invaded their lands, and they have organized a resistance movement, demanding that the land be returned to them (Flannery 1998).
The relocation program has been a dismal failure, not only for the people who were unable to farm the thin, infertile soil of cleared rainforests, but for the devastated environment and wildlife (Durrell 1992, Flannery 1998). The rainforest is not the only ecosystem that has been destroyed by these settlers. On heath and sandstone ridges on Borneo, stands of Ironwood (Eusideroxylon zwangeri) grow. These are very unusual trees for tropical areas (Mittermeier et al. 1999a). Many of the Javan immigrants are unhappy with the conditions of their new lives and return home (Mydans 1996a). Irian Jaya is expected to remain a center for relocation, however, since only 4 million people live here, and the giant Freeport mine that has removed entire forests employs large numbers of people who come from abroad to work in the mines, living in air-conditioned, newly built homes. Family planning over the past decade reduced the rate of growth on Java from 2.1 percent to 1.5 percent, or half a million fewer births every year (Durrell 1992), but an influx of as many as 1 million people a year still flood into Java from elsewhere in Indonesia and Southeast Asia (Mydans 1996a). Had Indonesia devoted more of its financial resources to family planning a generation ago, as did Singapore, which now has a stable population with a low birth rate, the highly expensive relocation program would not even have been considered.
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