Exploitation of the forests of South Pagai and North Pagai Islands in the Mentawai Islands has caused indigenous women to have difficulty obtaining clean water.
Erminarti Sabelau (35), a resident of Bungo Rayo Hamlet, Sinaka Village, South Pagai District, Mentawai Islands Regency, rowed a boat across the Tattanen River. She brought her three-year-old son. Inside the boat were six 5-liter jerrycans filled with water.
She pulled her boat up to the cement stairs on the edge of the river, where residents usually moor their boats. On the stairs was already her large jerrycan. She transferred water from the six small jerrycans in the boat to the large jerrycan. She did this back and forth three times.
Erminarti fetched water twice a day. She had to boat 200 meters from the Bungo Rayo Hamlet village and then walk another 200 meters. “We have been taking water like this since last August, since the flood hit our village which caused the Pamsimas water channels to no longer flow to the houses,” said Erminarti on October 28, 2023.
Pamsimas (Community-Based Drinking Water and Sanitation Provision) is a national program for the provision of drinking water in villages. The Pamsimas water reservoir in Bungo Rayo Hamlet is located across the Tattanen River. The water source comes from the upstream of the river which is channeled with PVC pipes. From the reservoir, the water is channeled with pipes to the village.
The flood in August 2023 destroyed the water reservoir so that the pipes to the houses no longer flow water. Only the PVC pipe near the reservoir flows water and residents take water there. However, when it rains, residents prefer to collect rainwater for drinking water sources.
“In addition to the current dry season conditions, we have to take water from the Pamsimas water reservoir, after the flood,” said Erminarti.
Usually, Eminarti takes water for drinking and cooking purposes in the morning and evening. Once she takes water, she brings six or eight jerry cans. Then the small jerry cans are transferred to large 30-liter jerry cans on the riverbank near the village.
“Later I will continue carrying it with a cart, it’s also heavy, but if my husband is around he usually carries it, now he’s out in the fields,” she said.
At the place where Erminarti moored her boat, three women were washing clothes and kitchen utensils. One of them was Rami Juwita (32). She was washing dishes and cooking utensils. Rami said she also fetched water for drinking and cooking by boat across the river.
“Sometimes at 6 in the morning I go there to get five jerry cans and in the afternoon around 4 I also go there. The river water here is not good to use, because it is mixed with sea water and many people defecate. Here it is only used for washing and bathing,” she said.
Similar conditions were experienced by residents of Koritbuah Hamlet, where some residents moved from Sinaka Hamlet, Sinaka Village on Simatapi Island after the 2010 earthquake and tsunami. In 2012 they were moved by the government to the Koritbuah area which is located in the hills. During the dry season, the local community’s wells dry up. Due to the water shortage, some residents have even made three wells. That’s what Martina (49) did.
She has one well for bathing, another for washing dishes, and a slightly clearer one for drinking. All three wells are located behind her house on lower ground. “Here there is river water one kilometer from my house, you have to walk downhill to get there,” she said.
There are three locations on the banks of the Koritbuah River that are used by residents. One location is upstream, the middle part, and the taggurat (downstream) part. Unfortunately, said Martina, when she and the residents in the middle wanted to get water to drink, it turned out that the residents in the upstream part had already used it to wash dishes or clean fish.
“We in the lower part have already received dirty water so we have become victims,” she said on October 23, 2023.
Martina said she could no longer take water from the river because she had to travel a long distance and uphill.
Impact of deforestation
Drought also hit Sinaka Hamlet. Its residents have to go back and forth from their homes to the river to get clean water.
Sinaka Hamlet Head, Anto Saogo said that his village had experienced a long drought for eight months in 1998. However, at that time water was not as difficult to obtain as the drought this year. Anto linked the difficulty of water to the logging activities of a timber company that obtained a Timber Utilization Permit in 2002 in Sinaka Hamlet.
“The impact of logging is only being felt now, during the dry season water becomes very difficult,” he said.
Clean water difficulties are also faced by residents on North Pagai Island, a sub-district that is only separated by an 800-meter wide strait from South Pagai Island.
“During the dry season it is now increasingly difficult to get water, the existing wells are dry, even to wash my face in the morning I use bottled water and bathe in the river at night,” said Gabriel Sakeru, Head of North Pagai Sub-district, last November 29.
According to Gabriel, since early September it has not rained and all the residents’ wells have dried up. As a result, around 300 families of Saumanganya Village residents rely on drinking water from the Bat Toktuk River which is three kilometers from the settlement.
Every day, said Gabriel, people are busy looking for water like going to the fields. The women bring their laundry, return home bringing water and the river is also a place for all residents to bathe, from morning to night there are always people in the river.
The cause of the water shortage that occurs on North Pagai and South Pagai Islands, according to Gabriel Sakeru, is closely related to the large amount of forest lost due to logging by concession companies.
“Logging has been carried out since 50 years ago until now, finally the forest no longer has wood so the soil cannot store rainwater,” he said.
Ade Edward, a geologist who was once the chairman of the IAGI (Indonesian Association of Geologists) for the West Sumatra Region, said that Mentawai as a small island is very vulnerable to changes due to forest exploitation. The reduction in water sources could be even faster if deforestation continues, because the loss of forest cover that should protect the water cushion causes a reduction in water absorption.
“Small islands such as the Mentawai Islands have lower groundwater storage capacity, limited freshwater sources, if the forest is open, the availability of freshwater will run out, the impact will be drought during the dry season,” said Ade Edward.
Currently in South Pagai and North Pagai there is an extension of the Timber Forest Utilization Business Permit in Natural Forests (IUPHHK-HA) of PT Minas Pagai Lumber (PT MPL) covering 78,000 hectares issued by the Minister of Forestry on July 18, 2013. The permit will only expire in 2056.
Previously, PT MPL had been operating logging in North Pagai and South Pagai since obtaining a HPH permit from the Minister of Agriculture on April 13, 1971.
According to Gabriel, the logging company has cut down many trees, but has never planted replacement trees in the forest that has been cut down. “Trees on the riverbanks have also been cut down, even though according to the regulation, 50 meters on the left and right of the river cannot be cut down and it has never been replanted, as a result the river water has receded significantly during the dry season like now,” he said.
Law No. 18/2013 concerning the Prevention and Eradication of Forest Destruction (Article 13) states that there must be no cutting down of trees within 5 meters from the edge of a tributary and 100 meters from the edge of the river.
Flood and drought disasters
On August 25, a major flood hit Matobat Hamlet and Bungo Rayo Hamlet in Sinaka Village and Kinumbuk Hamlet in Bulasat Village, South Pagai Island. The flood that occurred after several hours of rain hit 24 ha of rice fields and banana fields which are the mainstay of the community’s economy.
The flood inundated residents’ fields and roads for three days. This is the biggest flood in Matobat Hamlet since the hamlet was established. In some places in low-lying areas, the flood height reached 2.5 meters, causing huts in the fields to sink.
“The banana and taro gardens that I planted were all damaged, destroyed by the flood, the mud was also thick, I just left it, I couldn’t clean it,” said Anita (45) who was met in her field on September 1, a week after the flood.
Residents believe that the flood was the impact of PT. MPL’s logging activities in the Matobat Hamlet forest since last year. Head of Matobat Hamlet Tarsan Saleleubaja said that since the hamlet was established in 1964, there had never been a flood.
“This is the first time there has been a major flood, rice fields were affected, huts were affected, fields were affected, this is because the logging carried out by the company was mostly on the banks of the river, also wider so that water immediately entered and settlements were flooded. The flood occurred because a lot of land was cleared and cut down by the company, on the banks of the river there were also trees that were cut down,” he said when we met him on August 26.
When the dry season came in mid-September 2023, many rivers in South Pagai dried up. One of them is the Matobat waterfall in Matobat Hamlet, Sinaka Village, which is a source of Pamsimas water for Matobat Hamlet and Bungo Rayo Hamlet, as well as for the community’s rice fields.
Our monitoring in early September, the Matobat waterfall was still flowing. Of the four tributaries, two on the left and two on the right of the waterfall, two have dried up.
The Matobat waterfall area is included in the PT MPL Annual Work Plan (RKT) in 2023. Tree stumps can be seen on the riverbank. Five tree stumps with a diameter of 1.5 to 2 meters can also be seen. The felled trees are only 5 meters from the river below the Matobat waterfall. The trees upstream of the Tatanen River, which is the source of the waterfall, have also been cut down.
When we looked back at the location on November 3, 2023, the Matobat waterfall was dry. The other two tributaries, which still had water in September, were also dry.
The Sinaka Village Government once tried to save the Matobat Waterfall area from PT MPL’s logging plan by making it a village tourism area. In 2021, Sinaka Village disbursed IDR 250 million to organize the tourist location by building a gate, rest huts, several wooden houses on trees, toilets, and footpaths.
The target of the activity was so that young people from Sinaka Village could manage the Matobat Waterfall area to earn income. However, the plan did not go as expected and all of these facilities were abandoned, no longer maintained.
The Head of Sinaka Village, Tarsan Samaloisa, said that even though PT MPL’s work area was in his village, the Sinaka Village Government had never been involved in the preparation of the environmental impact analysis (amdal). He admitted that procedurally he had complained about the flood to the Pagai Selatan Sub-district Head.
“Even the sub-district head became a living witness who saw the flood conditions, we hope that information will be conveyed to the district. The flood has cost the community hundreds of millions of rupiah, because it has damaged the community’s rice fields, causing them to fail to harvest,” he said.
Worrying about forest destruction
Data from the West Sumatra Provincial Forestry Service in 2021 shows that PT MPL has cut down 1,284 trees or 5,458.66 cubic meters. In 2022, 621 trees or 2,795.52 cubic meters were cut down.
There is no data yet for logging in 2023, but from our monitoring in early September, thousands of cubic meters of wood were loaded onto pontoon ships and large piles of wood in PT MPL’s logpond in Aban Baga Hamlet were ready to be transported out of Mentawai.
We tried to contact PT MPL manager Bil Kusna on November 29 and December 4, 2023 to confirm his company’s activities in Matobat Hamlet. However, he did not answer the phone. He also did not respond to questions submitted via WhatsApp messages.
When asked about the logging carried out by PT MPL on the banks of the Matobat River and the river’s drought, the Head of the West Sumatra Provincial Forestry Service, Yozarwardi, said that his service only had a little authority given by the center.
The one with the supervisory authority is the BPHL (Sustainable Forest Management Center) Region III Pekanbaru UPT (technical implementation unit) of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry.
“The Pekanbaru BPHL is the one monitoring, not us. We do not have the authority to take action against them (PT. MPL), so if there is information about violations, I will report it to the BPHL. In addition to HPH in production forests, logging on South Pagai Island also occurs in natural forest areas in Other Use Areas (APL),” he said.
This large-scale logging is taking place because BPHL Region III in Pekanbaru continues to issue logging permits in natural forests in Other Use Areas owned by the community through SIPUHH (Forest Product Administration Information System) access rights permits in the Mentawai Islands to Land Rights Holders (PHAT) communities.
Throughout 2021-2023, there have been 34 SIPUHH access permits issued by BPHL Region III to landowners in the Mentawai Islands.
The landowners then make agreements with investors to carry out logging in the APL and they only receive a payment of IDR 70 thousand for each cubic meter of wood.
Each permit is valid for 50 hectares of land and is valid for 1 year. This permit can also be extended.
Based on data from the West Sumatra Provincial Forestry Service, the largest SIPUHH in 2023 was on Sipora Island, there were 7 PHATs with the number of trees cut down as many as 15,1777 trunks or 24,444.35 cubic meters. Then Pagai Selatan with 1 PHAT with the number of trees cut down as many as 1,066 trunks or 5,494.46 cubic.
Head of Planning Section of BPHL Region III Pekanbaru Ruslan Hamid who was interviewed in July 2023 said that BPHL Region III had granted SIPUHH rights to the PHAT community in the Mentawai Islands Regency for two years. He added that the PHAT owners had met the requirements.
“The APL area is not our domain, but because there are naturally growing forest stands on the land, SIPUHH access is needed for land owners who will manage their wood, so that state rights can be collected from there. In the forest there is potential that they must pay to the state every time they cut down wood,” said Ruslan who was contacted by telephone on July 24, 2023.
Yozawardi admitted that he was worried about seeing a lot of logging being carried out in the APL area in the Mentawai Islands and hoped that the policy of granting SIPUHH access rights in the APL area would be evaluated.
“I am also worried, if something like this happens, Indonesia’s forests in the APL will be destroyed. The owner did not participate in planting, now he is cutting down, under the pretext of PHAT (Land Rights Holder). The land rights holder is a local person, working with investors,” said Yozarwardi.
“Because we do not have any authority, of course we can only suggest that the policy be evaluated, I have written to the Director General at KLHK.”
Environmental impact
Citra Mandiri Mentawai Foundation Director Rifai Lubis said the government must evaluate the presence of wood utilization activities in Mentawai because they cause environmental impacts that must be borne by the community.
“Even the smallest intervention in the forest will definitely have an impact on the environment, so the Mentawai forest should not be exploited,” said Rifai, November 23, 2023
Mentawai Islands Regency DPRD Chairman Yosep Sarogdok also asked the central government and the West Sumatra Provincial Government to review logging permits in the Mentawai Islands, both in production forests and in APL forests.
“Deforestation in the Mentawai Islands is currently increasingly worrying, the impact on the environment is very large. For example, now the residents of Mentawai are all experiencing a water crisis because it has not rained, the wells are dry, the river water is shrinking,” said Yosep who was met on October 5, 2023.
Acting Regent of the Mentawai Islands Fernando Jongguran Simanjuntak who was confirmed in Tuapeijat on Thursday, October 5, 2023, promised to investigate the impact of deforestation in the Mentawai Islands.
“Later, when I have investigated with the staff, we will make an official stance on this matter,” said Fernando.
This article was produced with the support of the Earth Journalism Network, first published in MentawaiKita and Uggla.id on January 8, 2024.
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