Edmond Dounias

OUT OF THE FOREST, OUT OF POVERTY?

ABSTRACT That forest people intimately depend on forests for their livelihoods is widely accepted and. so it is predicted, the rapid pace of deforestation in the humid tropics will soon lead them into utter destitution or, worse, drive them into cities. Socio-economic studies recently carried out among Punan hunter-gatherers in East-Kalimantan (Indonesia) somehow contradict this general belief. In remote upstream villages, where natural resources are still plentiful, families barely survive throughout the year, have very reduced monetary income, no access to education and a very high infant mortality rate. In downstream villages, where forest resources are vanishing, families have access to more cash earning opportunities, they enjoy better education and very low infant mortality. From a strict economic point of view, there is a consensus among all Punan: downstream people are generally better off; but when it comes to well-being…opinions diverge.

City life in the midst of the forest: a Punan hunter-gatherer’s vision of conservation and development

The Punan Tubu, a group of hunter-gatherers in East-Kalimantan, Indonesia, are used to illustrate the very real trade-offs that are made between conservation and development. This group has undergone various forms of resettlement in the 20th century, to the point that some are now settled close to the city of Malinau whereas others remain in remote locations in the upper Tubu catchment. This study is based on several years of ethnographic and household analysis. The Punan clearly favor both conservation and development. In the city, the Punan benefit from all positive effects of development. Child and infant mortality rates are very low, and illiteracy has been eradicated among the younger generation. However, the Punan complain that nothing in town is free. The older generation, in particular, resents the loss of Punan culture. Because of frustration and unemployment, young people often succumb to alcoholism and drug addiction. The Punan do not want to choose between conservation and development, between forest life and city life. They want to benefit from the advantages of both locations, to enjoy both free forest products and the positive aspects of modern life, to go wild boar hunting in the morning and watch television in the evening. In short, they want to enjoy city life in the midst of the forest. The same kind of contradiction has led to identity problems. They want to uphold the traditional life of the hunter-gatherer, but at the same time they reject marginalization and seek integration into the larger society. In short, they want integration without loss of identity. The settlement of Sule-Pipa illustrates how some groups have dealt with the contradiction more successfully. Thanks to good organization and charitable donations, they have secured educational facilities and basic health care, and marketing costs are reduced by collectively organized road and river transportation. The economy of the village is thriving, mainly because of the collection of forest products from the primary forest. Remoteness has saved the community from intensive logging, from uncontrolled and excessive exploitation of local forest products by outsiders, and from forest conversion. But few remote communities enjoy the luxury of charitable injections of funds, and roads will be built to the remote locations sooner or later. However, playing for time can help the Punan develop the capacity and ability to cope with a competitive developed world and maintain their cultural identity.

Interactive land-use planning in Indonesian rain-forest landscapes: reconnecting plans to practice.

Indonesia’s 1999–2004 decentralization reforms created opportunities for land-use planning that reflected local conditions and local people’s needs. We report on seven years of work in the District of Malinau in Indonesian Borneo that attempted to reconnect government land-use plans to local people’s values, priorities, and practices. Four principles are proposed to support more interactive planning between government and local land users: Support local groups to make their local knowledge, experience, and aspirations more visible in formal land-use planning and decision making; create channels of communication, feedback, and transparency to support the adaptive capacities and accountability of district leadership and institutions; use system frameworks to understand the drivers of change and resulting scenarios and trade-offs; and link analysis and intervention across multiple levels, from the local land user to the district and national levels. We describe the application of these principles in Malinau and the resulting challenges.

From Sago to Rice, from Forest to Town: The Consequences of Sedentarization for the Nutritional Ecology of Punan Former Hunter-Gatherers of Borneo

Background The last nomadic peoples of the world are facing strong governmental incentives to renounce their foraging lifestyle. Nevertheless, the shift to a sedentary way of life and the adoption of agriculture do not always result in the promised improvement in diet and health conditions. Objective We compared the dietary regime and nutritional status of three groups of former hunter-gatherers, the Punan of Borneo. All three groups adopted extensive upland rice cultivation almost 6 decades ago, but each has some degree of dependence on agriculture versus forest resources, which varies along a gradient of accessibility of urban facilities. Methods The diet of three distinct Punan groups living in the dipterocarp forest of East Kalimantan was assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively and analyzed in relation to the seasonality of resources and human activities. The physical fitness of the Punan was also estimated from repeated anthropometric measurements. Results The more remote the Punan community was from urban facilities, the more diversified was the diet and the better were its nutritional status and physical fitness. The contribution of forest resources to the dietary regime also decreased with urban proximity. However, the higher dependency on agriculture is not the proximate cause of the deterioration in diet and physical fitness, which is rather due to the transition from the nomadic to the settled way of life. Conclusions The brutal shift in lifestyle among the Punan of Borneo has profoundly affected the integrity of these societies and impacted their social, cultural, symbolic, and political features. In the long run, this may compromise their health status and ecological success.

From Subsistence to Commercial Hunting: Technical Shift in Cynegetic Practices Among Southern Cameroon Forest Dwellers During the 20th Century

Tropical rainforest dwellers, who are currently engaged in bushmeat trade, used to track game for their own subsistence. We investigate the technical evolution over the past century of bushmeat procurement by the Fang, a group of southern Cameroon forest dwellers who are renowned for their extensive cynegetic expertise. This investigation consists of a diachronic approach to assess Fang hunting and trapping technology by comparing firsthand data on bushmeat procurement collected in the early 1990s with detailed descriptions recorded in the early 1900s among the same populations by the German anthropologist Gunter Tessmann. Other archive sources bequeathed by explorers in the twilight of the 19th century are also exploited. The comparison conveys a more dynamic view of hunting practices following the greater involvement of the Fang hunters in the bushmeat trade. Historical sources remind us that projectile weapons were initially destined for warfare and that trapping, mobilizing a vast panel of modalities, was the prominent means to catch game for domestic consumption. Net hunting and crossbow hunting, which used to be typical Fang activities, are now exclusively conducted by Pygmies; spear hunting with hounds has become anecdotal. If a large range of trap mechanisms is still functional, effort is now focused on snares, elicited by the banalization of twisted wire cable. The legacy of other remaining models is left to children who carry out a didactic form of garden trapping. The major detrimental change is the use of firearms, which were initially adopted as a warfare prestige attribute before becoming the backbone instrument of bushmeat depletion. Revisiting the past provides useful lessons for improving current hunting management, through the promotion of garden hunting and wildlife farming, and the revitalization of a collective and cultural art of hunting as an alternative to indiscriminate overhunting by neophyte and increasingly individualistic hunters.

Seasonal Bushmeat Hunger in the Congo Basin

Unlike the Sudano-sahelian regions, which are confronted to severe periods of food shortage, tropical rainforests are known to provide a constant supply of a great diversity of food resources that mitigates the risk of food starvation for omnivorous humans. Nevertheless, several African forest ethnic groups suffer from a seasonal hunger induced by depletion in the procurement of bushmeat, which is a food of paramount importance. Although the diet remains well balanced and meets all the nutritional needs, the bushmeat cravers loose weight and experience a stress that affects their well-being. Bushmeat hunger is a psychocultural form of hunger that generates several mental disorders. We present results from nutritional anthropology studies carried out among various Congo Basin forest peoples, which regularly suffer from bushmeat hunger. We expose the physiological risks that result from this psychological unrest, we argue that this type of unsatisfied compiling desire for meat should be considered as a factor of food insecurity and we conclude on its incidence on bushmeat trade. The immoderate craving for bushmeat compromises the attempts to replace bushmeat by other sources of meat and is a persisting obstacle to conservation initiatives that fail to take the psychocultural values of bushmeat into consideration.