Protecting Biodiversity for Food Security
Pulut Kelamai, rice cooked in bamboo, is a dish generally made once a year with rice and local ingredients by the Iban Dayak communities in the Kapuas Hulu Region, Kalimantan Barat Province in Indonesia when there is a rice harvest celebration. We also use the pandan leaves to cover the bamboo we fill with ingredients to make Pulut Kelamai. So there would be a specific aroma mixed with bamboo and pandan leaves. Most of the Dayak Iban Peoples in this region still carry out the traditional farming system of slashing and burning— “Ladang”, as called in our language.
According to the story of a young man Juner, from Sungai Abau Village of the Dayak Iban Peoples. From generation to generation, we have been practicing “Ladang” for our survival. It is important to note that farming activities in the fields and the forests are not only for the purpose of food production. The more important reason to keep planting and cultivating crops is to preserve the diversity of local seeds, especially the varieties of rice.
Besides farming, we also obtain food of high value nutrition from our forests. Forests have long been an indispensable part to support our food security to provide us with diverse and abundant sources of protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, and various spices used to cook. Therefore, “protecting forests is to protect biodiversity and food sources,” is an ancient motto passed on for generations.
Imanul Huda as Slow Food Community Leader – Biodiversity and Food Culture Kapuas Hulu, has long been active in assisting indigenous people in West Kalimantan in forest conservation efforts. He added that in recent years, the area and scale of lands and forests for farming is increasingly shrinking, because of the expansion of the large-scale oil palm monoculture. There are also regulations enforced by the local government to forbid or restrict land burning for agricultural land clearing. Since our farming practice is thus limited, relevant skills and knowledge are weakened. And because of these negative influences, people in West Kalimantan are becoming less interested in forests and rice fields. Some of our Peoples, voluntarily or not, began to work in the oil palm plantations as laborers to maintain their livelihood.
With fewer people working in the rice fields, less land accessible to farm and the increased deforestation, the risk to the sustainability of our environment and the preservation of our local rice varieties have emerged.
This is why I started the work to preserve and revive the culture of local food. There are several initiatives conducted to ensure the diverse local food sources and types of food, including activities to build up, or to be more specifically, to resume locals capacity to use and manage our forests sustainably, to campaign and promote traditional ingredients at local, regional and national levels, to increase community members’ capacity in making local food-based dishes, and to teach professional chefs to use traditional ingredients and develop fusion cuisines to attract more people’s attention and interest in eating and getting to know more about those ingredients.
I have to emphasize that we are part of nature. So when we talk about managing the forest, it doesn’t mean that we have to be away from the forest. We initiated a program to work with the governmental forest unit to grant licenses to eligible local people to manage the forest. Once people obtain the licenses, they can develop some small business with the forest products such as honey, resin, and rattan based on the concept of participatory forest product management. . Once people are able to support their livings from the forest products in a sustainable way and gain sufficient knowledge on the natural ecosystem, they would not be interested in working in the oil palm plantation.
Instead, they would be very much motivated to take actions to defend their forests and lands. We also have young people studying forest management in universities. They return to their communities and are involved in forest management with the hope to protect our forests to ensure biodiversity and food security.
Imanul Huda
Leader of Slow Food Community – Food biodiversity and culture of Kapuas Hulu
Director of PRCF-Indonesia