- Section 1.1.3
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Despite repeated assertions to the contrary [e.g. Jones, 1976], forest-fallow
swidden cultivation practised by indigenous populations is a productive
use of forests, more so than commercial logging in terms of size of
population supported; and on the whole it is ecologically efficient
in its rapid recycling of regrowth. Indeed, it has been argued that
the view of swidden agriculture as a destroyer of valuable resources
and the creator of grass wastelands is simply a convenient ideology
to legitimate commercial extraction in areas where the indigenous
population has become an obstacle [Dove, 1983b: 195], or a justification
for introducing large numbers of transmigrants with their supposedly
more 'advanced' sedentary systems [Potter, 1991: 188]. One of the
virtues of the term 'swidden' is that it highlights the crucial difference
between this kind of agricultural system and unplanned naive pioneer
slash and burn, with which it is often confused.
Although Nuaulu in central Seram expressed a preference for cutting
mature forest during the early nineteen-seventies [c.f. Dove, 1983a:
133], the amount cut during that period seldom exceeded 30 percent
of forest cut in any one year [Ellen, 1978: 83-4]. Overall, 90 percent
of swidden land in use during the same period had been cut from secondary
regrowth or bamboo scrub [Ellen, 1993a: 200]. This is high by comparative
southeast Asian standards, but probably a consequence of recent population
growth, and well within the parameters of what is sustainable. In
addition, technical constraints on cutting (the use of axe and bushknife)
have effectively restricted the amount of forest conversion for subsistence
farming, leaving aside large trees such as Koompasia excelsa.
Clearing for agriculture has in some areas (e.g around Wahai on Seram)
left tracts of Imperata cylindrica [Edwards, 1993: 8],
but in most cases grassland succession is either due to historic clearance
for plantations, logging, or a result of reducing fallow periods as
a means of intensifying agriculture to compensate for demographic
stress. The incursions of non-indigenous settlers [Dove, 1983b: 90-3],
entrepreneurial shifting cultivators, or what Secrett [Secrett, 1986]
has appositely called 'shifted' rather than shifting cultivators,
are generally linked in the Moluccas to the expansion of transmigration
settlement into surrounding areas, and the planting of cash crops
[c.f. Dove, 1993: 19; Vayda, 1981]. There is no doubt that rapid forest
conversation of this kind is damaging, and that long-standing sustainable
practices are being eroded by technological innovation (e.g. chain-saws),
population pressure and market forces, but the inevitable conclusion
that all indigenous systems are to be discouraged is ignorant and
counter-productive.
We have already noted that the establishment of nutmeg and clove
groves occurred very early in Moluccan history. Even by the sixteenth
century this had resulted in severe depletion of rainforest on the
small spice-producing islands of Ternate, Tidore and Banda. Heavy
denudation on small islands led to the development of zones of inter-island
trade in which small islands became dependent on the forests of the
larger islands for basic resources, such as sago, fuel, timber and
thatch [Ellen, 1979]. The rise in international demand for spices
led to the spread of production in the central Moluccas, and under
the Dutch monopoly clove production was focused on Ambon-Lease, and
native groves planted on the Hoamoal peninsula, western Seram and
elsewhere extirpated [Ellen, 1987: 41-3]. Nutmeg production after
1621 focused on the Banda islands under a Dutch settler regime. The
demise of the Moluccan spice trade from the early eighteenth century
onwards mitigated the ecological consequences of further clearance
for plantations.
In the present century there has been renewed clearance: for clove,
nutmeg and other tree crops, such as cocoanut, cacao and coffee.2
Initially, this was in the form of small groves adjacent existing
subsistence plots, and was sustainable in the context of an overall
low-intensity agricultural regime. Indeed, groves continue to be intercropped
with various swidden species. However, since the seventies, and with
government encouragement, indigenous swiddeners have cut increasingly
large areas for plantations, by preference from primary forest [Ellen,
1993b; Grzimek, 1992]. Up until the massive influx of transmigrants
over the last decade or so, this expansion in cutting represented
the main threat to forest. Commercial estate plantations have recently
become important in some areas, such as on Seram (e.g. cacao in Wahai
sub-district), on Halmahera (cinnamon) and on Yamdena, where the government
has granted concessionees 30, 000 hectares.
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Updated Mittwoch, 8. Mai 1996