The CIFOR Forest and the Price of Gas

I am sure I have mentioned this before, but CIFOR is surrounded by a rather incredible forest. Some of it is used for research—test plantings, etc—but most has just been allowed to grow for many hundreds of years. Because it is in Java—the most densely populated island in the world—I doubt it is primary, but it has certainly been around long enough for the trees to reach hundreds of feet into the sky, and the branches to become full of parasitic ferns and vines. There is a word for plants that live off others—I memorized it for the GRE—but I can’t for the life of me remember what it is. Anyhow. What is interesting is the role that the CIFOR forest is playing for people who live in Rawa Jaha-- were I live-- and the surrounding neighborhoods.

Gas has more than doubled in price over the last two months, making it a luxury for most poor families. This includes the price of kerosene, which is used for cooking. Most women who would normally cook on kompor gas can no longer afford it. They only option are cooking fires. It is now extremely common to see four or five women together, walking through the CIFOR forest to collect fallen branches for cooking fires. There is no shame in gathering the wood; almost everyone else in the village has to do it too. And there appears to be no one stopping them, which I think is great. The evening air is now filled with the smell of wood smoke, and people are able to use their money on things oter than kerosene.

There is a fabulous contrast between the employees of the Center for International Forestry Research, driving through the forest in their luxury cars, and the people actually using our “research forest” for firewood. CIFOR researchers drive through the forest everyday to catch a plane to some remote province where they get a bus or a boat, or two or three, to get to a village to study traditional methods of resource extraction and livelihood options. As far as I know, no one has stepped outside the gate to check out how the rising price of gas is affecting the people of Rawa Jaha, and through them, the health of our little forest. Since I live so close, I walk to work, and I see the ibu with the huge piles of sticks on their heads, wrapped up in twine or vines, walking slowly back to their homes with their dry branches.

For those who live too far away of course, there are no options. They either have to find some way to collect wood—city parks, trees in the back yard, whatever—or they have to pay the price of kerosene. And when gas goes up, so does everything else that is remotely connected. The price of rice and other basic food goes up because of the money it takes to transport it. The price of transport obviously goes up, and so people who have to take public transport to work spend a much higher percentage of their wage simply on getting there. Small businesses that export internationally, like the terasi sellers in Kuala Tungkal, are no longer competitive because they are competing with producers in Thailand and Malaysia, where gas prices, and there fore the price of raw materials, has remained the same. There is no one and nothing that has not been affected. Of course, like most such things, the only people who are really hurt are those who were poor already. The government has promised that it is not going to raise gas prices again, but that have said that before, and the prices are still going up.